Podcast Webinar Shows Listeners Are Engaged

Westwood One Wednesday hosted “The State of American Podcasting” webinar, featuring new insights about the podcast consumer and advertiser sentiment about podcasts.

The webinar was hosted by Pierre Bouvard, CMO of Cumulus Media/Westwood One, and featured insights and commentary from Stuart Last, VP of popular podcast and on-demand platform audioBoom; Jenna Weiss-Berman, Director of Audio at the phenomenal pop culture website Buzzfeed; and Brendan McDonald, co-creator and executive producer of the incredibly successful podcast WTF with Marc Maron.

Here are a few quotes from the event:

On Millennial Demographics and Podcast Audience Profile:
Stuart Last: We see it at a global level, not just the U.S… the U.S. podcast industry is much more mature than the rest of the world; it’s led by the radio industry. There is great opportunity here to bring the media age down…this is the chance for people to connect with younger audiences in a way that audience is consuming content.

On Listening Location Numbers:
Jenna Weiss-Berman: Cars...that’s the real opportunity here. If someone can figure out how to make podcasts more easily accessible in the car. If the technology improves there and there’s some way I can just press “play” on my podcast app or if it’s somehow built into cars, I think you’ll see that numbers rise pretty dramatically.

On Brand Marketer Interest:
Brendan McDonald: What we found through our audience survey is that listeners were much more receptive to entertainment-based products in the sense of saying that would be the first thing they would be likely to patronize… We know our listeners are engaged on that level. Our survey respondents tell us 49% of them listen to every episode—104 a year, twice a week—and they’re long, they’re not 15 minute episodes, they’re an hour to an hour and 15 minutes… Even if they’re not listening to every minute of every one, they’re showing a very high level of engagement. They are the super-users, the lovers of audio.

On Effectiveness of Advertising on Popular Shows vs less Popular Shows:
Brendan McDonald: I think that the analogy for the popular shows holds true across platforms… podcasting is really “narrowcasting.” We’re talking about shows with audiences that might not amount to gigantic numbers—even looking at standards of what is considered a successful podcast—but smaller numbers might still be a very high concentration of enthusiasts. You can do a very successful ad buy for that if you have a very specific product for those listeners. It I were an advertiser, what I would be interested in is the ability to mix and match and play favorites by my own knowledge of the content. We’re finding that in dealing with ad sellers, the ones who are most successful are the ones who know podcasts.

L-R: Stuart Last, VP, audioBoom; Pierre Bouvard, CMO, Cumulus Media/Westwood One; Brendan McDonald, Executive Producer, WTF with Marc Maron; and Jenna Weiss-Berman, Director of Audio, Buzzfeed

Westwood One also unveiled several new findings from its forthcoming “State of American Podcasting Report.” You can read the full insights on the Westwood One blog.

Here are a few highlights:

• Consumers are engaged with podcast advertising: 65% of podcast listeners recalled an ad after listening to a show one day earlier, according to a 2015 poll by Ipsos.
• 41% of advertisers have discussed podcasting; 15% are currently advertising in podcasts, according to a poll by Advertiser Perceptions.*
• Almost 20% of marketers and agencies say they "definitely would consider" advertising in podcasting in the next six months.*
• In the next six months, nearly 1 out of 10 agencies and marketers said they “definitely would advertise” in podcasting in the next six months.*
• 50% of both agencies and marketers said they “might advertise” in podcasting in the next 6 months.*

*Source: Advertiser Perceptions, 2015 Omnibus Study, September 2015

**Source: Ipsos, August 2015, Persons 18-34; percentages shown denote cumulative/net scores