YouTube Looks to Hire Its First Executive Focused on Podcasts

(Bloomberg) -- YouTube is looking to hire an executive to oversee its podcasting business, a new position for the video giant and a sign that its parent, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is starting to take the category seriously.

YouTube is already one of the top destinations for podcast listeners, with many producers creating videos while taping episodes and uploading them to the site. “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the biggest podcasts in the world, has more than 11 million subscribers on YouTube. And some popular YouTubers, like Logan Paul and h3h3, have branched out into podcasts. 

Yet YouTube has thus far done little to customize its app or website for podcast listeners, with teams on the mobile apps division at Google handling the work. Now YouTube is seeking an executive to be in charge of organizing and managing the millions of podcasts that already exist on the site, a spokesperson confirmed.

Podcasting is a small business relative to online video. YouTube generated almost $20 billion in advertising sales last year, while the entire podcasting business didn’t top $1 billion in the U.S. But podcast advertising sales are expected to double this year. 

Many of Google’s competitors compete for podcast listeners. Spotify Technology SA has spent billions of dollars buying podcasting companies and shows, while Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. are both starting to invest more as well. Spotify has also begun to dabble in video podcasts — known as vodcasts — and limits the length of videos that Rogan can post to YouTube.

Podcasts have had a couple of different homes at Google. They were first slotted inside Play Music, a service that shut down to make way for a YouTube-branded offering. Then Google moved them into a dedicated Android app. 

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