Every host I talk to right now asks me about video. Should they add it. Do they need it. Are they falling behind without it.
Here’s the short version of what I tell them. Video podcasts, as a category, aren’t the future. There’s a version of video that does work, and it works really well. But the broad assumption that every show needs to be on YouTube as a full-length sit-down conversation, with two cameras, ringlights, and a producer in the corner — that version is wrong for most shows, and it’s killing hosts who chase it.
Let me explain what’s actually happening, because the conversation about video has gotten flatter than it deserves.
Where the “Video is the Future” Idea Came From
The argument is real. YouTube is the biggest discovery platform for podcasts in 2026. Spotify has pushed video. Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Theo Von, Diary of a CEO — all of them are video shows, and they’re the shows everyone references when they think about scale.
So the logic goes: video is where podcasts live now. If you’re not doing video, you’re invisible. Add the camera.
The flaw in that argument is that the top of the chart isn’t representative. The shows that work as video shows have specific properties. Long format. Famous or near-famous hosts. Big personalities. Set design that signals seriousness. Production budgets in the tens of thousands per month.
The host I’m talking to about adding video usually has none of those. They have a 45-minute interview show, a decent mic, and a guest pool that mostly records remotely. Adding video to that show doesn’t get them onto the Joe Rogan curve. It gets them three extra hours of work per episode and a video that performs worse than their audio.
That’s not future-proofing. That’s adding cost to chase a model that wasn’t built for them.
What I Mean by “The Right One”
There is a version of video that’s working for the kind of shows we produce. It’s not the full-length sit-down with two cameras.
It’s clips.
The shows in our portfolio that have actually grown their audience through video aren’t running video podcasts. They’re running audio podcasts with a clip strategy on top. A producer cuts 3 to 5 short pieces from each episode — 30 to 90 seconds each — captions them, posts them to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Those clips do the discovery work. The full episode lives in audio, where it always has.
This is the version that works. And it’s not the version most hosts are asking about when they ask me whether they should add video.
The reason this works and full video doesn’t, for most shows, is simple. A clip is the right unit for discovery. Nobody finds a podcast by watching a 75-minute YouTube video of two people talking at desks. They find a podcast by seeing a 45-second clip that catches them, and then they go listen.
If you have the clip strategy, you don’t need the full video. The full video is doing nothing for you that the clip wasn’t already doing better.
The Hidden Cost of Adding Full Video
Hosts almost always underestimate what video adds to the production load. Let me run it.
You need a camera setup that actually looks good. Not a webcam. Not the front-facing camera on your laptop. A real camera, or a phone in a usable position. You need lighting. You need a background that doesn’t look like a home office accidentally.
You need to brief every guest on the same setup. That conversation alone kills 20% of your booking pipeline. The guest who would happily hop on Zoom isn’t willing to fuss with a camera setup, lighting, and a 45-minute test.
You need a video editor. Audio editing and video editing are different crafts. You either pay more or you stretch your existing editor into work they don’t do well.
You need to host the video somewhere. YouTube, Spotify, both. Each platform has its own publishing rhythm. The publishing surface grows.
You need to deal with the fact that video shows look bad when guest audio is great but their video is mediocre. The “lowest common denominator” problem hits hard in video. Audio is forgiving. Video isn’t.
For most founder-led or expert-led shows, that’s six to eight hours of additional production load per episode, multiplied across however many episodes you publish. For a return that, in our experience, doesn’t materialize.
What the Numbers Actually Say
I want to be careful here because I don’t have a controlled study. But what we see across the shows we produce is roughly this.
The shows that added full video without changing anything else about how they were promoting the audio? Their audio downloads stayed flat. Their video views were small. The video version of the episode rarely cracks 5% of the audio downloads in the first month. There’s no detectable lift.
The shows that added a clip strategy on top of audio-only — short pieces from each episode pushed across social — saw real audio growth. The clips do the discovery. The audio is what people actually consume.
That suggests video isn’t the lever. Discovery is the lever. And clips are a cheaper, faster, better way to do discovery than full-length video.
The Cases Where Full Video Actually Makes Sense
I don’t want to be absolutist. There are shows where full video is the right call.
If your show is a brand-building vehicle and the on-camera presence of the host or guests is part of the value, video is necessary. CEO shows where the visual matters. Interview shows where the guest’s reactions are part of the substance. Shows where you’re staging something visual — a tasting, a demo, a workspace tour.
If your distribution model is YouTube-first and audio is the secondary listen, video is the format. The growth path is different.
If you have a budget that lets you run a video team without it pulling on the host, video can be additive. The constraint is the host’s time, not the video itself.
If none of those apply, the cost of video usually outruns the benefit.
The Question I’d Actually Ask
When a host asks me about video, the question I push back with is this: what are you trying to fix?
If the answer is “I want more listeners” — clips, not video. If the answer is “I want to be on YouTube” — that’s a vanity goal, not a strategy. If the answer is “I want my show to look more serious” — fix the audio first, then the artwork, then think about video. If the answer is “I want to attract better guests” — guest list, not format.
In most cases, the underlying thing the host actually wants can be solved without adding video. Adding video is the loudest, most expensive, most disruptive change you can make to a show. It’s usually the wrong tool for the job.
A Quiet Prediction
Here’s what I think happens over the next two or three years.
The “every podcast must be a video podcast” idea fades. The top of the YouTube charts keeps belonging to the big shows. The shows underneath them — the founder-led shows, the expert shows, the niche shows that compound — settle into a model that is audio-first with serious clip distribution.
The hosts who chased full video without a real reason will quietly drop it. They’ll keep the clips and let the video version go. Because they’ll have noticed, by month nine or ten, that the video isn’t doing what they thought it would.
The hosts who never added video, and instead invested that production budget in better audio, a better clip operation, and more episodes — those hosts will look like the smarter operators in retrospect.
That’s not a bet against video. It’s a bet against the version of video that most shows are being told they need. The right version of “video” for almost every show I work with is a clip operation, not a video podcast.
If you’re trying to decide right now, that’s the bet I’d make on your behalf.
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