The News Podcast Consumer from Sounds Profitable and NPR
Today the latest report in the Sounds Profitable Educational series was published, built from 2024’s The Podcast Landscape survey of 5,071 Americans aged 18+. One particularly interesting facet of News consumers is their propensity for co-listening. 67% of non-News consumers rarely or never co-listen to podcasts with other people. For News consumers that drops to 56%, with 30% of respondents occasionally co-listening and 14% co-listening at least most of the time. News listeners trend younger than the general podcast listener, and are highly likely to be commuters. All of which makes News consumers a kind of “force multiplier” for podcasting as they’re both passionate about the content and sharing it around.
MAGNA Media Trials and Vox Media have published a new report looking at how and why brands should action against audience mindset when they’re listening to podcasts. The study is built from a panel of 2,003 podcast listeners aged 18+ who kept a diary on a podcast listening session that occurred within the past 24 hours. Three core mindsets were established: interconnect, inspiration, and indulgence, all of which can be targeted based on tone, topic, and formats that best suit that mindset. Indulgent-mindset audiences are best targeted with multiple, shorter ads while “interconnect” audiences benefit from fewer, longer ads.
How podcasters are tackling the challenge of subscriber churn by Sara Guaglione
During last week’s On Air Fest sessions, several different corners of podcasting addressed how they’re handling subscriber churn now that premium subscriptions are such a core part of podcasting. One anonymous exec said during a breakout session about churn that their company is pushing internal self-promotion, having podcasts promote other podcasts within the company’s umbrella to ensure audience cross-pollination. One tactic used by Supporting Cast that can regain churned subscribers is to automatically turn an expired ad-free subscription feed into a free ad-supported feed that regularly drops mini-episodes that feature the host encouraging lapsed subscribers to rejoin for subscriber-only benefits, sometimes offering a discount as incentive. There’s also the move to make subscription platforms have a free option to act as a one-stop-shop that will eventually drive free members to subscribe due to FOMO, such as Patreon’s launch of free following back in 2023 that now can be leveraged with the Autopilot tool to automatically ID potential subscribers and emails them with discounted first-month offers.
“Low-cost leftovers” with Adam McNeil
ADOPTER Media SVP, Client Services Adam McNeil has posted data representing a case study he’s still mulling over. The data charts an ad campaign starting in March of 2024 through to this month, showing visit percentage, conversion percentage, and total conversion. The campaign has had a rough Q1 start due to a variety of potential factors (client increased price of their product, the LA fires, macroeconomic conditions depressing consumer purchasing). McNeil’s three core takeaways are that the efficiency of ads getting people to click through to the site has not changed much since March, purchasing behavior has changed since the end of 2024, and there’s a potential the client is more seasonal than first expected. McNeil offers up his findings and asks readers for their comments based on what they see in the provided data.
As for the rest of the news…
- YouTube announced they have reached over 1 billion active monthly viewers of podcast content on the platform
- AdNews takes a look at the IAB Australia Audio State of the Nation report, including the finding 79% of agencies intend to increase their podcast investments in 2025.
- NOVA Entertainment has appointed Kim Kerton as Head of Podcast Partnerships
Industry Opportunities
Sounds Profitable is committed to ensuring our partners and readers are exposed to as many opportunities that’ll help grow the podcast industry. With that in mind: Amplitude Media Partners (AMP) is looking to represent more independent creators across podcasting and YouTube, with a specific (but not limited) interest in tech, business and finance. They have an application form up now for publishers, which you can find here.
