It’s been nearly 20 years since Apple took podcasts mainstream, but the tech giant seems to be losing its grip on audio audiences: A recent study out this summer found that YouTube is now the most used podcast platform in the U.S.

That’s left some publishers and podcast production houses scrambling to figure out a video strategy to complement their audio-only offerings. But there’s at least one player in the game that seems well prepared for the platform shift: Crooked Media. 

The company, which is focused on news, politics, and liberal-leaning commentary and analysis, currently boasts more than 40 podcasts in its portfolio. And video is a big part of Crooked Media’s strategy — but they’re not just playing on YouTube. The company is also pushing video content on TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter). And even better? Crooked Media is generating revenue along the way.

The YouTube video-podcasting strategy

“We ​​started putting streams of Pod Save America on YouTube in early 2018,” says Matt DeGroot, the company’s vice president of production. 

These days, every audio-only episode of an ongoing and regularly published Crooked podcast also has a video component, which is uploaded to YouTube. For Crooked, the foray into video has been part of a deliberate plan to grow its audience.

“Really the biggest impetus there and why we’ve pushed so hard is that people who consume podcasts on a traditional platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, tend to go to those platforms knowing exactly what they’re looking for. So, there isn’t a ton of discoverability,” DeGroot says. 

“Everyone uses YouTube, and YouTube — for better or for worse — knows what people want to see. YouTube will find our shows and basically serve it up to people,” he says. “And people on YouTube might be a little more curious and willing to take a chance on new content.”

Over time, Crooked has built a significant audience that is unique to the platform. It has 10 channels and playlists that are updated regularly, and the company currently claims more than 1.2 million YouTube subscribers. 

When a big news event happens, Crooked can leverage its political commentary and analysis from a show like Pod Save America and tap into an audience who may already be searching YouTube for information. “If there’s a big story happening and Pod Save America is doing an episode, reacting to it or explaining the context, that’s a great opportunity for someone new to sort of stumble upon it,” DeGroot says.

For example, earlier this month, the company posted a segment from Pod Save America that featured the hosts of the show discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’ debate performance, and global superstar Taylor Swift’s endorsement of the Democratic candidate. 

Those events were dominating broadcast news, digital media outlets, and social platforms. And Crooked was there, ready and waiting for curious YouTubers to find them. Their video on the subject got nearly 730,000 streams as of this writing, and is one of the top 15 most popular videos on their channel.

“We’ve really been able to harness that power and seize those moments in a way that is hard to do on a podcast platform, where, like I said, people really know what they’re looking for when they open the app,” DeGroot says. “YouTube just gives us more opportunity to find new people.” 

Beyond giving people a new entry point to their content, video gives audiences a new format to access the Crooked universe. “More and more with the advent of smart TVs, we’ve been seeing a lot of people who are really consuming the YouTube product from their televisions and treating it like watching the evening news,” DeGroot says.

This is especially true for older audiences.

“My mom, bless her heart, she does not know how to use a podcast,” DeGroot says. “She doesn’t know how to find a show there. But she knows YouTube and she knows how to type in Pod Save America and get to the channel and pull up the latest episode.”

However, while video has helped build Crooked Media’s audience, the experience remains audio-centric. “We get anecdotal comments of people saying, ‘Oh, I put this on while I’m making dinner.’ They may not be watching it a hundred percent with their eyes on the screen the whole time, so it’s still somewhat of an audio experience, because they’ll have it on in the background while they’re cooking.”

Cashing in on YouTube

Because the company publishes Crooked Media’s podcast content as YouTube videos, its ad sales team has more touch points to offer potential sponsors. 

“YouTube runs ads and we have that aspect of monetization. But then our sales team also does sell against that for the podcasts,” DeGroot says. “So an episode of Pod Save America, for example, the ads that appear in the podcast when you listen are also in the YouTube version.” In this way, a client gets a two-for-one. It can buy ads from one media company and get two distinct audiences.

In addition to selling to two audiences, Crooked is also leveraging video content to create exclusive offerings for advertisers. “That’s something we’ve started doing this year — having a single sponsor,” DeGroot says. “Someone like ZBiotics sponsors Hysteria’s ‘This F*cking Guy’ series. So we’ll include a 30 second ad read in the middle of the video, and maybe a short mention of the sponsor at the beginning. It’s a great way to add that additional revenue and help pay for the production costs that do naturally come with video, because it is a time consuming and work intensive thing.”

However, Crooked is looking beyond advertisers when it comes to monetizing video. The company has a paid subscription offering — called “Friends of the Pod” — which provides subscribers with ad-free podcast feeds, bonus content from Crooked hosts, and the ability to talk directly with on-air talent on Crooked’s subscriber-only Discord server.

“Friends of the Pod” also get subscriber-only YouTube shows. “One is a weekly, called, Terminally Online, and then we have a couple biweekly shows — Dan Pfeiffer’s Poller Coaster, and another election special called Inside 2024,” DeGroot says. “Those are available as both audio and video components to subscribers.”

Social video strategy

While Crooked Media is going big on YouTube, it’s not the only social video platform the company is publishing on. “There are real opportunities in that sort of shorter form content,” DeGroot says. “We are not oblivious to the fact that a lot of people, if they see a video on YouTube even if it looks really appealing to them, if it’s 90 minutes long, they’ll say, ‘I don’t have time for that. I’m not gonna take a chance on this random video.’” 

To counter this, Crooked Media will splice one of its full length episodes into shorter clips — something that’s 60 or 90 seconds long — and upload that content to TikTok, Instagram, or X. “People are willing to give that a chance,” DeGroot says. “They’ll see a video short clip and be like, ‘Oh, what are these people saying?’ And from there it draws them in and makes them curious to hear more,” which could lead them to YouTube or a podcast platform.

Pod Save America has about 14,000 followers on TikTok, but their short videos reach way more people than that. A recent post discussing a press conference that former President Donald Trump had garnered more than 100,000 views.

Crooked’s podcast host will also create what DeGroot calls “ancillary” content — behind the scenes moments that still speak to the brand’s broader tone. That might include the hosts’ live reaction to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his recent criminal trial, or an on the ground video message from the Democratic National Convention.

“For those videos that live on  TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube shorts, it’s a feature that we’ve been really pushing lately and finding a lot of success with,” DeGroot says.  “We’ve found that doing those types of things really helps the content spread on those platforms and bring in new people who then get excited to watch the podcasts.” 

For DeGroot, the video strategy across platforms is all about creating more touch points — for audiences and advertisers. 

“It’s gonna take some time to build that audience, and you really have to nurture it over time,” he says. “As long as you keep on your patterns, stay with it, and stay consistent, you will get the rewards from that.”