The Stream 2025: Audience Insights Shaping Streaming
A new report from Tubi features the findings of a survey conducted by The Harris Poll in November of last year, encompassing 2,502 adults aged 18+ who had streamed at least one hour of content that week. 79% of respondents say they expect no ads if they pay for a streaming service, while 81% say watching ads is a fair trade-off to access free content on streaming services. The average respondent is spending $129 a month on streaming services and paid TV subscriptions, a 7.5% increase year over year, with 56% of respondents actively monitoring their streaming budget so as not to over-spend.
Dedicated ‘Podcast’ tab available more widely on YouTube for Android TV by Damien Wilde
Recently Android TV apps received a dedicated “Podcasts” sidebar option in the YouTube app. A simple but important update in a time when YouTube has highlighted the growing trend of video podcasting becoming big-screen experiences. The biggest platform for video podcast discovery having a dedicated button in the main UI for accessing podcasts, instead of accidentally stumbling into podcast episodes in Recommended or subscriptions, encourages viewers actively seeking out podcasts for the sake of consuming podcasts instead of a subgenre of video in general.
Data Builds the House of Insights by Paul Riismandel
A look at the difference between data and insights. While data can be useful, not all of it is created equal and requires nuance to understand. Riismandel gives an example of a national brand debuting new messaging in a digital audio campaign that, at first, appeared to simply perform not as well in podcasting because they’re not a good fit. Signal Hill Insights dug into the specifics and discovered the creative behind used was not designed for podcasting, and thus had a tone and style that did not fit the shows being placed. With that combination of data and insight, the brand remade the creative for the following quarter and saw greater ROI in podcasting, something that wouldn’t have happened if the plain data-based conclusion had led to simply cutting podcast spend.
As for the rest of the news…
- Three new podcasts are joining the Radiotopia from PRX network, including Mike Rugnetta’s Never Post, Proxy with Yowei Shaw, and the Mitra Kaboli-hosted Selects from Room Tone. In addition, Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway is launching a new series this spring titled Key Change.
- RSS.com has built an infographic charting the most-searched celebrity-hosted podcasts for each U.S. state, as well as a chart for athlete-hosted series (Smartless and Club Shay Shay top each respective chart)
- Headliner has announced an update to their Eddy editing suite to add automated transcription, as well as using that transcript to generate context-aware promo assets.
- True Crime network Law&Crime has announced their first new podcast of the year is LUIGI, a Wondery+ exclusive series covering the trial of alleged murderer Luigi Mangione.
