YouTube has introduced a U.S. Top Podcasts Lineup, giving U.S. advertisers the ability to purchase ad space across curated selections of leading shows organized by content category.

The new product covers five verticals: Sports, News, Comedy, True Crime, and Society & Culture, following the same model as YouTube Select, which bundles premium ad space on high-performing channels into category-specific packages.

YouTube reports that more than 1 billion users watch content on the platform each month, with podcast viewing now exceeding 100 million hours per day globally. According to a Q4 2025 Edison Research report, YouTube (including YouTube Music) is the most frequently used service for podcast listening among weekly podcast listeners in the U.S., at 41.2%, ahead of Spotify at 20.4% and Apple Podcasts at 11.3%.

Video Podcast Ads Outperform Audio

Alongside the lineup launch, YouTube released findings from a 2026 Kantar study commissioned by Google, which analyzed 22 brand campaigns across nine major industry verticals. The research found that video podcast ads on YouTube outperformed audio ads across six brand metrics: aided brand awareness (7.3x), ad recall (5.8x), brand favorability (3.5x), consideration intent (5.6x), purchase intent (4.5x), and long-term brand equity (5.6x).

YouTube expanded its podcast advertising capabilities in 2025 by introducing dynamic ad insertion and swapping features.