Video Podcasts Open New Doors for Advertisers: Omnicom Media’s Maureen Bosetti
CANNES, France – Podcasts were once the place where two people could talk into microphones for three hours and confidently assume nobody needed to see what they were wearing.
That era is ending. Podcasts are rapidly becoming a video medium, giving advertisers new ways to combine the intimacy of host-driven audio with the visual impact of television, Maureen Bosetti, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media, said at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The expansion onto YouTube, streaming services and free ad-supported television channels has turned leading podcasts into full-fledged video properties. Netflix is making podcast deals, while Prime Video has added “The Oprah Podcast.”
“The audiences really want to see that visual medium,” Bosetti said in a fireside chat with Zach Rodgers, principal at Sensical Consulting. “You can’t beat that, right, in terms of seeing the ‘SmartLess’ cast and how they interact with each other. What are they wearing? What are their facial expressions?”
For advertisers, those facial expressions are not merely entertaining. They are additional commercial real estate.
Everybody has a podcast
Podcasting has attracted celebrities, journalists, comedians, reality stars and an untold number of people who recently purchased a microphone.
“Everybody has a podcast,” Bosetti said.
Only some of them develop the loyal audiences needed to interest major advertisers. Shows such as “SmartLess,” “The Joe Rogan Experience” and Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” have risen to the top, while true-crime programming continues to perform strongly.
The difficulty is keeping listeners and viewers engaged when another show is always waiting in the queue.
“What’s going to keep that person coming back or not skipping and going to the next one?” Bosetti said. “Some of them have done it incredibly well, and then others will just kind of fall off the map.”
Reach remains important for large insurance, wireless and beauty advertisers. Yet Bosetti said smaller podcasts can also be valuable when their audiences show strong engagement.
A specialized business or finance podcast may lack celebrity-sized numbers, but it can offer access to a narrowly defined group of potential customers. That can make it particularly useful for business-to-business and financial-services marketers.
Trust gives host reads their power
Podcast advertising has revived one of media’s oldest selling techniques: Have a trusted personality tell the audience about a product.
Host-read advertisements can sound more credible than conventional commercials because listeners have developed a relationship with the person delivering the message. A gifted host might even persuade an audience that a software subscription has brought profound joy to an otherwise empty life.
“These host reads, they’re incredibly engaging,” Bosetti said. “You believe them, you believe that they’re using these products, you believe in what they’re saying.”
That sense of trust is difficult to reproduce with an ordinary inserted advertisement. It can also encourage people to pay closer attention to the product and its message.
“If it’s done well, it can lend itself to a high degree of trust and engagement that you don’t see everywhere,” Bosetti said.
The catch is that authentic host reads require work. Marketers must adapt the language to the program, the host and the audience. The process can involve more customization and negotiation than distributing the same 30-second television spot across multiple channels.
“The more customized it is, quite honestly, the better it is, the more engaging it is,” Bosetti said. “But it is hard to scale that.”
Measurement is improving, slowly
Direct-to-consumer advertisers have some of the clearest ways to measure podcast performance. They can track visits to a website, assign promotional codes or connect an advertisement with an online purchase.
Brands without a direct sales relationship must rely on tools such as brand-lift studies and marketing mix modeling, or MMM. These models estimate how different forms of advertising contribute to sales and other business results.
Bosetti acknowledged that podcast measurement remains imperfect.
“We’ve got to get the models to be better certainly, so that we can make sure that we can show the ROI on this medium that is continuing to grow,” she said.
Views and downloads still matter, but they do not necessarily show whether people paid attention or took action. After all, the internet has demonstrated a remarkable ability to produce views without producing much of anything else.
“Sure, views are important, but you can kind of get views anywhere,” Bosetti said. “It’s really going to be more about some of these other metrics that we’re looking at.”
Fragmentation complicates the buying process
A podcast may be owned by one company, distributed by another and viewed on several platforms. The same episode can appear through SiriusXM, YouTube, Netflix or other services, creating an organizational chart that may require its own podcast to explain.
For media buyers, this fragmentation makes it harder to transact, measure audiences and understand where advertising is appearing.
Bosetti said the market needs “simplification, better measurement, easier ways to transact.”
Programmatic buying is becoming more widely available, but advertisers still need a more unified system that connects content owners, distributors and platforms.
“How do we help simplify the process, create more of an end-to-end solution?” Bosetti said. “It’s so fragmented in this space and it’s confusing in terms of where everything lives.”
Video opens the aperture for brands
Podcasts can offer audience precision that broad television programming often cannot. Shows tend to develop around specific subjects, personalities and interests, creating communities whose connection goes beyond demographic targeting.
“It’s very passion-driven,” Bosetti said.
That relationship becomes especially appealing when video is added. Advertisers that once hesitated to spend on audio because viewers could not see a logo, product or brand color now have more opportunities for visual integration.
The result is a hybrid format that combines television’s imagery with podcasting’s intimacy and audience loyalty.
“The fact that they’re on video has opened up the aperture for a lot of brands,” Bosetti said. “We’re just seeing a lot more interest, especially in a lot of these talent that we had not seen before.”
For advertisers, video podcasting therefore presents an unusual proposition: the targeting of digital media, the persuasive power of a familiar host and the comforting presence of a logo somewhere in the frame.
You’re watching Beet Talks at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Basis. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France – Podcasts were once the place where two people could talk into microphones for three hours and confidently assume nobody needed to see what they were wearing.
That era is ending. Podcasts are rapidly becoming a video medium, giving advertisers new ways to combine the intimacy of host-driven audio with the visual impact of television, Maureen Bosetti, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media, said at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The expansion onto YouTube, streaming services and free ad-supported television channels has turned leading podcasts into full-fledged video properties. Netflix is making podcast deals, while Prime Video has added “The Oprah Podcast.”
“The audiences really want to see that visual medium,” Bosetti said in a fireside chat with Zach Rodgers, principal at Sensical Consulting. “You can’t beat that, right, in terms of seeing the ‘SmartLess’ cast and how they interact with each other. What are they wearing? What are their facial expressions?”
For advertisers, those facial expressions are not merely entertaining. They are additional commercial real estate.
Everybody has a podcast
Podcasting has attracted celebrities, journalists, comedians, reality stars and an untold number of people who recently purchased a microphone.
“Everybody has a podcast,” Bosetti said.
Only some of them develop the loyal audiences needed to interest major advertisers. Shows such as “SmartLess,” “The Joe Rogan Experience” and Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” have risen to the top, while true-crime programming continues to perform strongly.
The difficulty is keeping listeners and viewers engaged when another show is always waiting in the queue.
“What’s going to keep that person coming back or not skipping and going to the next one?” Bosetti said. “Some of them have done it incredibly well, and then others will just kind of fall off the map.”
Reach remains important for large insurance, wireless and beauty advertisers. Yet Bosetti said smaller podcasts can also be valuable when their audiences show strong engagement.
A specialized business or finance podcast may lack celebrity-sized numbers, but it can offer access to a narrowly defined group of potential customers. That can make it particularly useful for business-to-business and financial-services marketers.
Trust gives host reads their power
Podcast advertising has revived one of media’s oldest selling techniques: Have a trusted personality tell the audience about a product.
Host-read advertisements can sound more credible than conventional commercials because listeners have developed a relationship with the person delivering the message. A gifted host might even persuade an audience that a software subscription has brought profound joy to an otherwise empty life.
“These host reads, they’re incredibly engaging,” Bosetti said. “You believe them, you believe that they’re using these products, you believe in what they’re saying.”
That sense of trust is difficult to reproduce with an ordinary inserted advertisement. It can also encourage people to pay closer attention to the product and its message.
“If it’s done well, it can lend itself to a high degree of trust and engagement that you don’t see everywhere,” Bosetti said.
The catch is that authentic host reads require work. Marketers must adapt the language to the program, the host and the audience. The process can involve more customization and negotiation than distributing the same 30-second television spot across multiple channels.
“The more customized it is, quite honestly, the better it is, the more engaging it is,” Bosetti said. “But it is hard to scale that.”
Measurement is improving, slowly
Direct-to-consumer advertisers have some of the clearest ways to measure podcast performance. They can track visits to a website, assign promotional codes or connect an advertisement with an online purchase.
Brands without a direct sales relationship must rely on tools such as brand-lift studies and marketing mix modeling, or MMM. These models estimate how different forms of advertising contribute to sales and other business results.
Bosetti acknowledged that podcast measurement remains imperfect.
“We’ve got to get the models to be better certainly, so that we can make sure that we can show the ROI on this medium that is continuing to grow,” she said.
Views and downloads still matter, but they do not necessarily show whether people paid attention or took action. After all, the internet has demonstrated a remarkable ability to produce views without producing much of anything else.
“Sure, views are important, but you can kind of get views anywhere,” Bosetti said. “It’s really going to be more about some of these other metrics that we’re looking at.”
Fragmentation complicates the buying process
A podcast may be owned by one company, distributed by another and viewed on several platforms. The same episode can appear through SiriusXM, YouTube, Netflix or other services, creating an organizational chart that may require its own podcast to explain.
For media buyers, this fragmentation makes it harder to transact, measure audiences and understand where advertising is appearing.
Bosetti said the market needs “simplification, better measurement, easier ways to transact.”
Programmatic buying is becoming more widely available, but advertisers still need a more unified system that connects content owners, distributors and platforms.
“How do we help simplify the process, create more of an end-to-end solution?” Bosetti said. “It’s so fragmented in this space and it’s confusing in terms of where everything lives.”
Video opens the aperture for brands
Podcasts can offer audience precision that broad television programming often cannot. Shows tend to develop around specific subjects, personalities and interests, creating communities whose connection goes beyond demographic targeting.
“It’s very passion-driven,” Bosetti said.
That relationship becomes especially appealing when video is added. Advertisers that once hesitated to spend on audio because viewers could not see a logo, product or brand color now have more opportunities for visual integration.
The result is a hybrid format that combines television’s imagery with podcasting’s intimacy and audience loyalty.
“The fact that they’re on video has opened up the aperture for a lot of brands,” Bosetti said. “We’re just seeing a lot more interest, especially in a lot of these talent that we had not seen before.”
For advertisers, video podcasting therefore presents an unusual proposition: the targeting of digital media, the persuasive power of a familiar host and the comforting presence of a logo somewhere in the frame.
You’re watching Beet Talks at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Basis. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
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