“Audio reaches the brain quicker” — Tom Webster holds forth at Podcast Movement
Rain News coverage of Tom Websters’ keynote presentation from Podcast Movement in Washington, D.C. His keynote address contained teases of data from Sounds Profitable’s 2024 edition of the Podcast Landscape study, built from surveys of over 5,000 respondents. 97% of them had heard of podcasting, 37% listen on a weekly basis, and for the first time ever over 50% had listened to a podcast. The full study will be published this Wednesday, alongside a free live webinar in which Webster presents key findings. Registration is open now.
Publishers fight the brand risk myth of advertising with hard news
Advertising is full of received wisdom regarding the ‘risks’ of brands running their campaigns on news website ad space. Bodies like ThinkNewsBrands are working to fight against those common presumptions. Similarly to how studies like The Medium Moves the Message finds podcast audiences self-select content and actually prefer when brands support their favorite shows, 60% of respondents to ThinkNewsBrands’ study say they trust ad more when they appear next to premium news content.
Time is time by Brian Morrissey
Journalistic content, especially traditional news rooms with full staffs dedicated to fact-checking and reporting stories, are up against far more agile competition. Morrissey points to the viral clips of a recent Theo Von podcast episode in which he interviewed Donald Trump. While Von is a standup comedian, his interview is competing with formal journalistic content and winning. For journalistic content to survive competition with smaller, more agile media spinups like a standup comic’s podcast that gained viral success over two years, the old-guard will need to become more lean and agile themselves.
Podcasts Used to Be Ad-Light Oases. Not Anymore. By Katie Deighton
A new Wall Street Journal takes a look at the ad load of podcasting. Oxford Road’s recent study with Podscribe data found ads took up an average of 10.9% of podcast runtime in Q2 of this year, compared to 7.9% in 2021. The study also found a respondent’s likelihood to follow through on an ad decreased noticeably the more ads were added to an episode. There is a sweet spot to the ‘right’ ad load in podcasts, and finding it comes with a load of variables (total ads per break, how many breaks, who is reading the ads, length, etc.). It would be beneficial for podcasting as an industry to reach a point where companies state their perspective on ideal ad loads. Putting out a hard number either drives others to agree with it, or challenge it. In either instance, the overall industry is able to grow and progress having discussed something openly to find a consensus.
HVAC podcasts are a hot product for a cooling market by Erik Wemple
An op-ed from the Washington Post that focuses on the smaller side of podcasting. While most coverage of the industry focuses on powerhouse shows like The Joe Rogan Experience or The Daily, Wemple points to podcasting’s ability to not only reach broad audiences, but also drill down to metric-defying niche audiences. Micro-fandoms that are more engaged and powerful when it comes to branded content than other forms of media. A notable example being Bryan Orr’s podcast that diagnoses HVAC issues and provides tutorials on how to repair them. A podcast concept that has since grown to 7.5 million downloads and $400,000/year ad revenue from HVAC companies who know their ads are going directly to their target audience.
As for the rest of the news…
- A report from WARC predicts global advertising expenditure will increase by 10.5% in 2024
- Spoken audio subscription service Podimo has acquired the Dutch podcast production house Tonny Media
- Sunday Sports Club with Allison Kuch has joined Dear Media
- The science behind Consumable’s podcast measurement product PodIQ™
- Broadcaster ARN Media has reported that profits are down but advertising is ‘resilient’
