Should Your Business Start a Podcast? Five Beliefs, Checked Against the Data

Here are five beliefs a marketing leader might bring to the decision, each checked against what the data shows. Most of that data comes from the platforms themselves or from the US, and I have said which, because none of it should be read as an India figure.

“Podcasts are an audio medium”

The platforms’ own numbers have moved past this. In the same announcement, dated 26 February 2025, YouTube said viewers watched over 400 million hours of podcasts a month on living room devices in 2024. People are watching podcasts on the television.

In the US, Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2026, as reported by Inside Radio, found that 57% of Americans aged 12 and over have both listened to and watched a podcast. That is US data. I would not stretch it to India, and I have not seen a current Indian figure I would trust.

For the decision, this changes the picture you should hold in your head. Two people and two microphones is the older, smaller version of the medium. The version your audience meets is a video on YouTube, and some of them watch it on a TV.

“You need a big show for it to matter”

You are not going to have a big show, and that is fine. Spotify says its video podcast catalogue had grown to nearly half a million shows by November 2025, and that counts video shows on one platform only. A new branded show joins that list with no audience of its own.

There is no credible benchmark I know of for how large a business podcast’s audience has to be before it pays back, and I would be wary of anyone who quotes one. What matters for a business show is whether the right people hear it: buyers, partners, people you would like to hire. Decide who that is before you record, and judge the show on whether those people turn up. Download counts will not tell you that, which is the argument I made in what makes a podcast worth ranking.

A show built for one kind of listener, say, finance heads at mid-sized manufacturers, can stay small and still be the most useful thing that person hears all week. That is the only kind of business show I would fund.

“Video is optional”

It is still a real choice, but it has become the narrower one. Spotify said in May 2026 that more than 500 million users have streamed a video podcast, up nearly 50% year on year. Put that next to YouTube’s billion and you can see where the growth is showing up.

Make this call before the first episode, because it sets the cost of every episode after it: cameras, lighting, editing time, thumbnails and a plan for YouTube. Moving a show from audio to video later means changing the format in front of whatever audience you have built. Audio-only can still be right if your listener is mostly commuting or your budget is thin. Make it a decision rather than a default.

“A podcast is a content format”

This is the belief I would push back on hardest. A blog post is a format: you write one, and if it does not land, you write a different one next week. A podcast is a promise that the next episode is coming, on a schedule, for as long as the show exists.

Listening is a habit, and the US numbers show how regular it is. In Edison’s 2026 survey, 58% of Americans aged 12 and over had listened to a podcast in the past month, about 167 million people, and 45% in the past week, about 130 million. If a show goes quiet for a month, its listeners fill that slot with something else.

That is why I set the bar at 26 episodes before you record: six months of a weekly show. If you cannot list 26 now, you will be inventing topics under deadline long before the show has had a fair test. The practical side, from equipment to platforms, is in how to start a podcast in India. This is the step before it.

Writing the list does two jobs. It shows you whether the subject is deep enough to carry a show at all, and it gives whoever books, records and edits the episodes something to work from. If the list runs dry at twelve, you have found out cheaply that this should have been a series of articles.

“A podcast will generate leads”

I have not seen credible data on podcasts as a B2B lead-generation channel. The statistics that circulate mostly come from vendors who sell podcast services, and I will not quote them here.

If you need pipeline this quarter, a podcast is the wrong tool. It is slow, and its effect is hard to trace back to any one deal. What a business show can do is build familiarity with a small, specific audience over a long stretch, and give you a reason to talk to people you would otherwise struggle to reach. If that is worth two years to you, judge year one on it and leave leads for later. If it is not, I would put the money somewhere you can measure.

If you do go ahead and want something to track in year one, track the conversations: how many people mention the show when they get in touch, and who they are. It is crude. It is also much closer to what a business show is for than a download chart.

When yes is the right answer

I would start the show if all four of these are true:

• You can write down the first 26 episode titles today without padding the list.
• You can describe the one listener in a sentence, and you know where that person already spends their time.
• You have chosen video or audio-only deliberately, and budgeted for what that choice costs every week.
• One named person owns the show for two years, with the time written into their job rather than added on top of it.

And before launch, everyone involved has agreed to judge the first year on who is listening and what conversations it opens.

If you cannot tick all four yet, the planning is not wasted. Whatever titles you did manage to list are a set of articles, and a run of articles is a commitment you can pause at any point without leaving anything half-finished in public.

If any of these is a no, wait, and work through the five questions in this older piece first. A show means an episode every week for two years, made by people who also have other jobs, and one abandoned halfway through its first season stays online with your company’s name on it.

Write down episode 26 before you buy a single microphone. And if you think 26 is the wrong bar, too high or too low, argue for your own number below, with the reason.