By Bill Bernardoni
Substack wants to handle your podcast’s hosting, ads, newsletter, and community. That can be a real help. Just don’t trade radio’s gatekeepers for a new one without keeping the keys.
When I started in radio, the deal was simple. The station owned the transmitter, the sales staff, the logs, and the relationship with the advertiser. The host owned a voice. When a host left, the audience was supposed to stay with the frequency. Sometimes it did. Often it followed the host, and the host had to rebuild everything else from scratch.
Podcasting was supposed to end that. For a while it did. You owned your feed, you picked your host, and you could take the show anywhere.
Last week Substack announced it’s moving into podcast advertising. It’s a smart move, and for a lot of shows a useful one. It’s also a reminder that every platform now wants to be the whole business, and podcasters should be careful which keys they hand over.
What Substack Is Actually Offering
Credit where it’s due. According to Podcast News Daily, Substack podcasters already bring in more than $200 million a year in subscriptions. Now the company is opening early access to dynamic ad insertion, so creators can sell sponsors directly and swap ads across a whole back catalog without re-editing a single episode. Access to third-party sponsorship marketplaces is planned for early 2027.
It’s voluntary. Creators decide how many ads to run and which sponsors to accept. Substack was also recently certified by the IAB Tech Lab for podcast download measurement, which gives small shows the kind of standardized numbers advertisers ask for.
For an independent show, that’s real help. “Subscriptions remain the foundation, but sponsorships give creators another way to fund ambitious work,” Substack’s Zach Taylor wrote. I agree with him.
The Part Worth Reading Twice
Here’s the line that caught my eye. The company’s larger goal, Podcast News Daily reported, is to eliminate the need for podcasters to rely on separate services for hosting, advertising, newsletters, websites and community.
That’s convenient. It’s also exactly how radio worked. One company held the tower, the sales, the schedule, and the listener. It was efficient right up until the day the company’s priorities and the host’s stopped lining up.
I’m not saying Substack will turn on its creators. I don’t think that’s the plan, and other platforms are chasing the same model. The same week, Podcast News Daily reported that Supercast, the podcast subscription platform, added native newsletters so creators can build email lists without leaving it. Newsletter companies are adding podcasts. Podcast companies are adding newsletters. Everybody wants to be the one place you need. The point is structural. When one company handles your feed, your list, your sponsors, and your payments, its rule changes become your business decisions.
Three Keys to Keep
I’ve worked the sales side of podcasting, sitting between an agency, an advertiser, and a host and trying to keep all three happy. The shows that came through rough patches had a few things in common. Use whatever platform helps you, but hold on to these:
- Your list. Make sure you can export subscriber emails at any time. If you can’t reach your audience without the platform, it’s the platform’s audience.
- Your feed. Keep a public RSS feed you control, so the show can move without starting over.
- Your sponsors. Marketplace ads are fine filler. The advertisers who renew are the ones who know you, and that relationship should run through you, not a dashboard.
Keep the actual keys, too. Podnews reported this week on a creator whose dormant show was hijacked: someone got into his podcast account, switched hosts, cloned his voice with AI, and kept publishing. It earned $1,293 on RSS.com before the company paid that money to him and moved the show back. That’s rare, and the platform did the right thing. But a feed you own is only yours if the password is, too.
I’ve compared it to building a franchise in a stadium you don’t own. Play there all you want, just keep the team.
Why the Host Still Matters Most
The reason any of this works is the same reason radio’s best hosts keep their audiences: people follow a person. Tools are great, but the platform can’t sell your voice for you.
The Bottom Line
Substack’s ad tools are good news for independent podcasters, and creators should use them.
But podcasting’s best feature was always portability. Take the help. Keep the list, the feed, and the sponsor relationships in your own hands.
Podcasting got rid of one gatekeeper. Don’t hand the keys to a new one.
Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing in Ottawa, Illinois, and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence with former Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman.
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