How companies like McDonald's and Facebook use podcasts, such as Gizmodo-produced The Sauce, as subtle brand-building efforts meant to entertain and persuade
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times : Tweets: @sameepa and @nytimes See also Mediagazer Tweets: Sameepa Shetty / @sameepa : “there are now as many as 750,000 podcasts..major companies are creating their own...more consumers...are actually listening to them. Within a day “The Sauce” broke into iTunes' top-100 #podcast chart No. 94.” Would You Like a Podcast With Those Fries? https://nyti.ms/2P6nt5p @nytimes : With podcasts rising in popularity, it's no surprise that companies are producing their own. What's more surprising is that people are actually listening to them. https://www.nytimes.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
When Blubrry counted more than 700,000 podcasts last month, the open question was whether anyone would listen to all that supply. A February survey found roughly a quarter of US adults tuning in weekly and about half at least monthly, so the audience is real — and McDonald's and Facebook are answering it by producing shows instead of buying ads inside other people's.
The twist in this story is who is making the content: Gizmodo, a media outlet, producing 'The Sauce' for McDonald's — a publisher renting its craft to a brand. The show hit No. 94 on iTunes' top-100 chart within a day of launch, evidence that corporate-funded audio can compete for attention on entertainment terms rather than as an ad read.
First-order effects
- McDonald's gains a branded channel that charted on iTunes immediately, reaching listeners as entertainment rather than interruption, while Gizmodo opens a corporate-production revenue line beyond its own audience.
Second-order effects
- Rivals and adjacent brands face pressure to match owned-audio presence, shifting spend from spot ads toward commissioning publishers and studios — and podcast platforms gain catalog depth that makes brand-made shows a normal part of the chart mix.
Third-order effects
- If brands keep funding content that sidesteps journalists, the pattern extends from marketing into communications itself — visible today as tech CEOs using friendly podcasters to go direct instead of facing traditional media.
- As consumption shifts formats, these brand-built franchises are positioned to follow audiences into video, where YouTube already leads US podcast listening per the Times' own coverage of the format's rise.
The trend: Brands are moving from buying podcast ads to owning podcast content, turning audio into a self-produced channel that competes with both advertising and press coverage.