Nielsen: Half of Households Are Listening to Podcasts

There's a podcast listener in half of all U.S. households, and boy do they love beer and bottled water, according to new data from Nielsen that aims to help consumer brands match purchase behavior to podcast audiences.  "Advertisers are eager to explore the world of podcasting but they don’t really know much about the podcast audience," said Bruce Supovitz, Nielsen Audio svp. "That is all about to change."

According to Billboard, the just-released edition of Nielsen Podcast Insights looks at the correlation between podcast tastes and spending habits of audiences across 300-plus categories, including gum, olives, deodorant and frozen pizza, but narrowed its public findings to three life-giving products: bottle water, baby food and beer.

Nielsen gathered the data from its Homespun Panel of thousands of U.S. households, who allow the ratings firm to measure their purchases. The survey found that over 60 million households in America are home to a podcast listener, with 22 percent of those fans considering themselves "avid" fans. Those millions of podcast listeners also spend billions of dollars on consumer products every year, so the key for marketers is to know where to best reach them.

Nielsen has released highlights from the correlation between podcast audiences and three key categories (bottled water, baby food and beer) have been released in a new report that presents definitive insight.

Among the three categories, bottled water has the greatest household penetration, as 104 million U.S. homes (84%) buy bottled water. Of the homes that buy bottled water, 51% are podcast listeners. Drilling down even further, almost 12 million are avid podcast fans. Avid podcast fans are those who consider themselves extremely interested in a certain genre of podcast. When we look at the amount of money these consumers spend on bottled water per year, we see that the podcast audience influences $2.8 billion in annual bottled water sales. More importantly, the avid podcast fan spends more per year on bottled water, making them a more desirable target for advertisers

The baby food category is much smaller than the bottled water category, but there are similarities between the two. Fans of Religion & Spirituality podcasts spend the most per year on bottled water, at $124.91, while baby food is bought in 18.9% of all households who are fans of Kids & Family podcasts, the most of any other genre. These specific genres of podcasts offer advertisers a very unique environment to engage with baby food consumers.

Conversely, the beer category has a much different audience than bottled water and baby food. Fans of TV & Film podcasts spend the most per year on beer, at $125.43 per household. Fans of podcasts in the Arts genre scored the highest penetration of all podcast genres at 43%. Clearly, beer consumers are seeking entertainment from the podcast genres they are most interested in.