Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
This week on Blindside — 5 structural threats the market isn't pricing yet. The heaviest: Fake Podcasts Flood the Charts, about $253m/yr at risk. Here's where each one sits:
Podcast advertising rests on one number — the download count — and it can be faked. With 39% of new feeds now machine-made and online fraud at 21–32%, the model sees $253 million a year at risk.
Blindside index 78 · about $253m/yr at risk →
Electric cars are dropping AM radio from their dashboards, quietly cutting off the pipe that talk radio depends on to reach drivers — and a rescue law has only one-in-three odds of passing.
Blindside index 75 · about $89m/yr at risk →
Carmakers and the phone giants are seizing the screen in your car — and they earn more pushing their own services than the radio dial. We estimate about $586 million of in-car radio and satellite revenue is at risk each year.
Blindside index 75 · about $584m/yr at risk →
Audiobooks have tripled their share of the listening day since 2016, quietly pulling hours away from ad-supported podcasts. The podcast ad market is still growing — and hasn't noticed yet.
Blindside index 73 · about $155m/yr at risk →
AI tools can shrink an hour-long podcast to a few lines. Text publishers already lost a third of their clicks to the same trick. If listeners read the point and skip the show, podcast ad money — up to $204m a year — goes with it.
Blindside index 62 · about $134m/yr at risk →
Every entry links to its live model — drag the assumptions and watch the range move. Blindside · FASTMaster Intelligence.
