Summary:
- Podcasting has consistently achieved records amount of growth in listenership, attracting a well-educated and affluent audience attractive to advertisers
- The podcast space is highly fragmented, making it challenging for brands to start advertising since they typically don’t know where to start
- Leveraging expertise and data, Vertione One leverages hundreds of established relationships to make it easy for you to get started with your first podcast advertising campaign
It’s no secret that spoken word media formats such as podcasting have surged in popularity. A variety of factors have contributed to this growth, such as the frequently discussed topic of pandemic-induced consumption habits. Aside from these factors, audio-related media simply has a leg up over other media types given its flexibility in consumption.
With podcasting as an audio-first format, people can consume this content as a video, offering greater flexibility for listeners to consume how they want. While 80% of podcast listeners listen in the home, another 20% listen to them on the go. This flexibility has helped podcasting achieve record amounts of growth, making a case for podcast advertising to hold a share of the marketing budget among other channels.
Growth in Podcast Consumption
Podcasting has consistently achieved growth in both reach and audience share. Two key groups, people aged 18 to 34 and 25 to 54, have both increased their podcast consumption by 43% and 51% respectively. Key segments within these age groups have also achieved a double digit increase in how much of their time is spent consuming podcasts. All this growth has been within the last two years.
In 2021, there were more than two million podcasts, four times more than 2018. As of June, of this year, there’s over 65 million episodes available for consumption. There were 80 million podcast listeners in America in 2021, more than Netflix account owners in the US. And by 2025, it’s expected that there’ll be over 144 million monthly podcast listeners in the States.
Contributing to its growth is the diversity of consumption platforms. With so many different avenues for people to discover podcasts, the medium can continuously grow. The following chart highlights the market share of broadcasting platforms:
Furthermore, podcast listeners are as diverse as the US population, which is why the channel has the attention of advertisers. In addition, these consumers are overwhelmingly cord cutters, highly-educated, and affluent, which makes them hard to reach on the one hand but on the other a highly desirable audience to tap into for advertisers. Despite massive growth and an ideal audience to target, how effective are podcasts for advertising purposes?
The Effectiveness of Podcast Advertising
According to a recent podcast report by Voices, which surveyed approximately 1,000 podcast listeners in the US ranging in age between 18 and 69 years old, 75% of these listeners were happy with a purchase they made because of a podcast ad. Over 50% of the audience surveyed also said they prefer ads to be read by the host. That aligns well with the fact that host reads are high performing. Signal Hill Insights for Stitcher found that host reads generated 91% more lift than announcer reads.
Podcast hosts are powerful influencers. Statistically, host-read ads outperform traditional ads because they are seen as trustworthy and often speak to listeners in a more authentic way compared to other ads that can be disruptive to the listening experience. In addition, the platform seems to have something to do with it as well. With how many different platforms, vendors, networks, agencies, and salespeople are all taking a slice of the pie, it’s challenging for companies to determine who, what, and where to advertise.
While the numbers speak for themselves, there’s a lot that goes into executing a successful campaign. Understanding the type of read, where to advertise, and with who might seem simple, but it takes not only expertise but data to narrow down your options to achieve the best results faster and with maximized efficiency.
Why Podcast Advertising Works
With podcast advertising brands gain large exposure to a diverse audience. Advertisers can use the increasing popular platform to align their brand with the demographic most likely to find their ads relevant.
Podcast advertising also allows brands to tell their story — to an already primed and engaged audience. Brands can use trusted voices to keep listeners highly engaged. With podcast ads being the most recalled type of ad – with over 70% of respondents saying they remember seeing or hearing an ad.
Achieving Results with Podcast Advertising
Navigating across the podcast ecosystem typically holds brands back from fully investing in the channel. And although podcasting is still relatively the new kid on the block when compared to radio and TV, having the right agency partner takes the hypotheticals out of the equation. With buying experience and ad performance tools, a brand’s podcast advertising strategy has a reduced runway in not only launching but also achieving results faster without spending too much budget experimenting.
Leverage the full buying power of an agency to tap into incentivized pricing structures, first looks at new programming, and preferred partnership opportunities. Veritone One will help you align your goals, maintain brand safety, and help you reach your audience with performance tools to ensure that decisions are made through data and experience.
Further Reading:
Find out how we helped Babbel scale their growth and increase ROI with podcast advertising.