Good morning, Podcasting! Today marks the start of SXSW, with the official Podcast Stage ready to present podcasting to the wider SXSW world yet another year. While I’m back at home base, you can catch Bryan and Lauren around the event, say hi for me. Let’s get into the news.
What’s Happening with Podcasting @ SXSW
This Thursday re: SXSW, Bryan Barletta has put together a handy Google Sheet detailing podcasting-related events (after-parties, meetups, etc.) and 24 sessions relating to podcasting from this Friday through Tuesday. The majority of the sessions take place at the official Podcast Stage in Ballroom B of the Austin Convention Center. If you’re reading this first thing Friday morning, the first session kicks off at 11:30am.
We’ve heard through the grapevine that the Podcast Stage’s sessions are among some of the most-favorited events of SXSW overall, so let’s make that even more so. If you’re headed to Austin for SXSW, we encourage all attendees to log into your SXSW accounts, fill out your profile with a photo and information, and then favorite podcasting panels you intend on attending.
Having a fully-built profile really helps with networking within the SXSW app, and will help highlight panels to people who might not have come across them organically in the wider SXSW ecosystem.
What Makes News Podcast Consumers Special
This Wednesday from Tom Webster, in anticipation of Sounds Profitable’s upcoming branded podcast research, Webster takes a last look at the first entry in the Sounds Profitable Education Series. The three findings include a look at the growing age disparity (the mean age of News podcast consumers is around 47 while the average age of cable TV news viewers is in the high sixties). News consumers are incredibly social with their podcast consumption, choosing to co-listen to content and consume podcasts while travelling more than the average non-News respondent. A quote from Webster:
“News podcast consumers are much more likely to listen to or watch podcasts with other humans – often 2 or more. Part of this is down to the context for habitual daily news consumption, which (unlike other forms of podcast consumption) is likely tied to a specific morning ritual, or a commute. 88% of news podcast consumers who co-listen with others rate “listening in a car or while traveling” as an important benefit of podcasts, compared to 66% of podcast consumers in general.”
21% of News consumers report abandoning a podcast because it had too many ads. They are a pond that can be over-fished. However 61% say they are likely to listen to brand-sponsored podcasts, and 46% say a company’s involvement makes them more likely to try a new podcast.
Webster recalls when nightly news broadcasts were tentpole family events. Podcasting’s social nature with co-listening makes it less of a lonely activity than reading articles and social media posts. News fans present a strong draw for bringing more people into podcasting as a medium, and a powerful selling point for advertisers.
News podcast listeners over-index on video podcast consumption
The past few days have also seen outside coverage of the above report, covering different angles of the data. Such as this Monday from Sara Guaglione, when Digiday covered The News Podcast Consumer. Specifically, the piece focuses on findings regarding video consumption. News podcast audiences are falling more in with podcasts in general, with 50% of them reporting spending more time with podcasts in the past year, compared to 42% for non-news respondents.
News fans are 6% more likely to consume video podcasts (87% vs. 81% for non-News fans). According to Digiday, executives at news publishers such as The New York Times, Bloomberg and Vox revealed that pushing video production has helped grow their podcast audiences, and they are looking to continue this move towards video in 2025.
YouTube is firmly the place News audiences find new podcasts, clocking in 65% vs. non-news fans’ 49%. 93% of those news podcast listeners had consumed video on YouTube in the past month, in comparison to 78% of non-news consumers. Audiences who regularly consume News content are no stranger to video, are hungry for more podcast content, and actively seeking it out. For more coverage of the report as a whole, see Inside Audio Marketing’s article.
Smaller Shows Win On Efficiency, Says Podscribe’s Quarterly Dive Into Podcast Ads
This Monday from Podscribe, a look at the Podscribe Podcast Performance Benchmarks for Q4, 2024, built from 12 months of data encompassing 64,000 podcast campaigns, over 240 advertisers, and 20 billion impressions.
CEO Pete Birsinger highlights the benchmarks showing shows with smaller audiences are more efficient at driving visitors per impression: “Big shows, because they’re more likely to have more transient listeners that pop in and out, is that their listeners are not quite as committed, whereas smaller shows may have more committed, niche audiences that are more connected to the host. Smaller shows, if you can organizationally find a way to buy them and achieve the scale you need, we think there are benefits there. But of course buying a bunch of them obviously comes with more costs too, and more overhead. Maybe that’s sort of what the market has priced in, and the difference is the difficulty in buying more of those small shows.”
In general, episodic ad buys delivered 1.52x higher visitation rates and 1.44x higher purchase rates than impression-based buys, along with being 10% cheaper.
Quick Hits
Finally, it’s time for our Quick Hits. These are articles that didn’t quite make the cut for today’s episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading. This week:
- Sounds Profitable is hosting a webinar next Wednesday, March 12, at 2 PM Eastern. Tom Webster will be joined by Liz Hames from JAR Audio and special guest Andrea Marquez from Amazon as they present The Power of Branded Podcasts, featuring new research from Sounds Profitable and a key case study from Amazon. Register for this free event here and be the first to receive the report!
- Nomono Unveils the World’s Easiest Way to Create Immersive Audio at SXSW 2025 An overview of Nomono’s new Spatial Audio bundle, a $79/month subscription that gets users access to a Nomono Sound Capsule, Nomono’s spatial audio tools, and AI-powered cloud platform (and you can catch them at SXSW!)
- How City Cast picks its new cities by David Plotz and Andi McDaniel A piece that breaks down the decisions that went into expanding the company’s coverage to two new markets: Seattle and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul).
- Reviewing Spotify’s Pivot to Video By Amanda McLoughlin Multitude Podcasts’ founder and CEO took to LinkedIn to share her thoughts on the efficacy of Spotify’s new Spotify Partner Program, including why one of her clients ultimately chose to opt out after one month in the program.
- Four Ways to Use Audience Surveys for Podcasts, Video, Ads and Branded Content By Paul Riismandel As podcasters, we’re constantly trying to get feedback from our listeners; but what do you do with that data? Signal Hill Insights’ CEO breaks it down.
