Here's Why Popularity Of Podcasts Is Finally Turning Into Revenue

Publishers and media companies across the United States and beyond have invested significant time and resources into launching and running podcasts in recent years.

For many, building a large audience has not been an issue – in America alone, there are 80m people who listen to podcasts on a weekly basis, according to Edison Research. But turning this reach into revenue has proved to be a challenge.

The UK Press Gazette reports the latest forecasts from eMarketer, though, offer some encouragement. This year, the US podcast advertising market is on course to hit $1.3bn, up nearly 40% from $960m in 2020, according to figures calculated last month. And the forecasters estimate that total US podcast marketing revenues will top $2bn by 2023.

One of the major drivers behind the growth of the US podcast advertising market is advancing programmatic technology for the sector, according to eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle.

Asked why podcasts currently underperform compared with other mediums, Vahle told Press Gazette: “They didn’t have the same advertising tech behind them for a lot of these publishers. They weren’t able to advertise at the same scale.

“That’s largely because of the host-read ads which still have a huge presence in the podcasting world. And moving forward, those will be more of a premium offer. They’ll always be around. But now, with programmatic advertising becoming so much more popular and present within podcasting, that’s how they’re really able to start scaling up.”

The advancement of programmatic podcast advertising is particularly good news for small publishers who currently “aren’t able to negotiate and reach out and find advertisers the same way the big media and publishing companies could,” said Vahle.

“They can take advantage of programmatic, which means that the long-tail, smaller publishers will be able to monetise and advertise a lot more efficiently. That’s another thing that’s leading to this strong growth in the next couple of years.”

Vahle also believes podcast creators are benefiting from marketers taking the podcasts more seriously, especially after they proved resilient through the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown rules that ended commuting in many parts of the world.