Audio and Video Podcast Consumers in 2024, Part One by Tom Webster
The first of a two-part article series about both audiences who primarily listen to audio when consuming podcasts, and audiences who primarily watch video podcasts. The Podcast Landscape 2024, built from a survey of 5,000 Americans, found 47% of respondents estimated the percentage of podcasts they consume as video is 0 to 24. On the opposite end, 14% consume podcasts via video 75 to 100% of the time. Webster dubs these two extremes of the spectrum “audio prime” and “video prime” and breaks down their respective demographic data to compare and contrast, including age, gender, and years spent listening to podcasts.
This American Life Announces Premium Feed
Starting yesterday, This American Life now has a premium offering dubbed This American Life Partners, a paid monthly subscription that gives access to ad-free cuts of episodes and bonus content. The official announcement of TAL Partners says the decision is due to expectations that TAL will make 33% less ad revenue this year compared to 2023. At the end of last year an update to Apple Podcasts was included in iOS17 that stopped an unintended behavior that caused excessive over-downloading of older episodes if a listener returned after taking time off. This impacted most of the industry, and older shows with large backlogs were hit the hardest, including TAL. Overall, the advertising side of podcasting has followed expected trends and settled into a new version of normal after the pandemic boom.
Spotify paying audiobook publishers hundreds of millions annually by Sara Fischer
According to internal figures obtained by Axios, Spotify has paid audiobook publishers hundreds of millions on an annual basis, as well as recently doubling the amount of books available for premium subscribers from 150k to 300k. As Bookstat details noted late last year, the audiobook industry grew 14% without Spotify in 2024. With Spotify it grew 28%. Axios highlights one of the under-stressed success points of Spotify bringing audiobooks to new audiences is revitalizing backlog content. In the same way streaming services brought old TV shows back to popularity, older audiobooks are finding new life, with six of the top ten most-streamed books on Spotify being books released over five years ago.
What Brands Want: How the Audio Industry Can Win Over Advertisers
A new study from Oxford Road surveyed Chief Audio Officers (brand marketers who own audio advertising within their organizations). The survey included five of the top fifteen podcast advertising spenders according to Magellan AI’s tracker. Key findings include 64% of surveyed CAOs measuring lower-funnel metrics. 43% use pixel-based tracking for measurement of audio campaigns. On the topic of AI, respondents were asked to rank their comfort with the idea of an AI-generated host reading ad copy or use of cloned voices for personal endorsements. The ranking was done on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the worst. 80% said their comfort level was on the scale from 0 to 2. Only 8% said their comfort was at 4 or 5.
Elliott launches podcast in attack ploy aimed at Southwest by Michael Flaherty and Kerry Flynn
Activist investor company Elliott Management has had its sights set on Southwest Airlines since June, when the company called for Southwest’s Chairman and CEO to step down. The campaign included invoking a Southwest bylaw allowing investors the option of calling a special shareholders meeting to replace directors if it has 10% stake in the company. This week Elliott is enacting their push for a December meeting by releasing Stronger Southwest, a podcast series built around conversations with Elliott’s nominees for director candidacy. Podcasts, even niche ones intended for a specific audience of shareholders, have the power to disseminate a message, and organizations like Elliott Management are recognizing that power.
As for the rest of the news…
- Headliner and Hubhopper have announced a partnership aimed to simplify podcast transcription by adding Eddy integration into Hubhopper’s platform.
- Next Broadcast Media and AudioStack have partnered to bring AI-driven audio production capabilities to advertisers in the Middle East/North Africa region.
- A new podcast from the Washington Post’s Impromptu series covers both U.S. presidential candidates’ podcasting tour over the past two months.
Jobs in Podcasting
Senior Accountant at SoundStack
Senior Supervising Editor, Planet Money at NPR
