Smart speaker ownership has plateaued since 2021. Smart TV usage, however, has risen dramatically, and YouTube has been a big winner and big driver in that trend.
33% of Americans owned a smart speaker in 2021. Since then, that figure has only risen to 35%.
In 2022, data from Edison Research suggested that 47% of smart speaker owners purchased the product with the intent to listen to podcasts with it.
Interestingly, 31% of weekly podcast consumers said they used smart speakers to listen to podcasts in 2021. That figure, despite the slight uptick in smart speaker ownership, has dropped to 20% in the latest data released by Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights.
The podcast space hasn’t retracted in listenership. In fact, those calling themselves monthly podcast consumers have risen 14 points — up to 55%.
Where did those 11% points go, then? YouTube. And more importantly, YouTube on smart TVs.
In 2021, 70% of television households featured at least one smart TV. In 2025, that figure has risen to 82%. Additionally, 32% of weekly podcast consumers say they use their smart TVs for podcast listening. That figure is higher than laptops and smart speakers, and only trails smartphones.
The ubiquity of smart TVs has been a major driver in the consumption change.
“Everybody has this device that is pretty easy to use to access something besides linear television or cable, and YouTube is right there, up front,” said Signal Hill Insights President Paul Riismandel. “So now it’s a really easy, simple way to access YouTube and possibly access it in a way where it’s more like when you would watch TV.
“Think about how people have consumed linear television. There’s a lot of TV that is kind of listening viewing. If you think about news programming, people who stay glued to CNN, Fox, or MSNBC throughout the day, are they sitting there watching, or is it kind of on and they’re paying attention? They’re listening, and they’re going about their day. Same thing with a lot of daytime talk. A show like The View: are people sitting there watching the same way that they watch a drama? Or do they have it on while they’re doing other things. And that’s what we know a lot about podcasting, is that people use podcasting to accompany other activities.”
Riismandel added that now, smart TVs have the ability to operate similarly to other devices, which helps in podcast consumption.
“People are, to some extent, conditioned to use it that way,” he said of smart TVs. “So podcasts, and very specifically podcasts on YouTube, I think, fit very well into that niche.”
In the Cumulus Media/Signal Hill Insights Download data from Spring 2025, 39% of weekly podcast consumers say they are using YouTube as their primary platform. Those users, unsurprisingly, are overwhelmingly more likely to use smart TVs than those who call Spotify or Apple Podcasts their primary platform.
While it would be logical to think that the uptick in smart TV usage could be the reason for a complete plateau of smart speaker ownership, Riismandel wasn’t so sure.
“I’m not certain the two have a relationship,” he shared. “Smart speakers plateaued awhile ago. (Smart speakers) are one of these things that, for whatever reason, hasn’t attracted mainstream acceptance. There’s a segment of people who like to have smart speakers and have adopted them and used them.
“And there’s a bunch of people that just aren’t very interested in them, is what really seems to be the case,” he continued. “I think that there are probably, at least some folks, who are uncomfortable with the fact that the device is listening and they don’t really want that.”
Smart speakers were introduced as a new, futuristic-style gadget when they first hit the market. In some aspects, the technology hasn’t ever gotten over that hump, with Riismandel pointing out that some people “aren’t really sure what to do with them, for lack of a better way to put it.”
But there is no ambiguity on how users should operate a TV. The technology hurdle of a smart TV is drastically smaller for the average person than implementing a smart speaker into their lives.
So, simply put, the general public simply deferred to their TVs.
It is important to note that while YouTube has a firm grasp on the use of podcast consumers utilizing Smart TVs for their listening/viewing, dwarfing the next closest challenger — Spotify — by a 69%-7% margin, it doesn’t hold a monopoly on the podcast space as a whole. Smart TV usage for podcast listeners is still in the minority, despite its rise in prominence in recent years. Less than a third of podcast consumers are utilizing smart TVs for their consumption.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
