Today, many consumers are willing to pay a premium price to avoid ads completely through services like Spotify Premium, YouTube Premium, and Apple Music.
Edison Research’s Share of Ear study captures the amount of time Americans 13+ spend with audio in a day. Share of Ear also provides subscribers with a deep understanding of what consumers listen to, how they listen, and where they listen. Using newly released Share of Ear data from Q1 2025, Edison reports that the U.S. population 13+ spends most of their daily audio time with ad-supported audio sources (64%) as compared to ad-free audio sources (36%). Ad-supported sources include AM/FM radio and radio streams, music on YouTube with ads, SiriusXM talk channels, free versions of streaming audio sources, and podcasts.
As the figure below shows, time spent with ad-supported sources is highest among Americans age 55+, with 75% of their audio time spent with ad-supported audio compared to 25% with ad-free. It is with the youngest listeners that ad-free is nearly as high as ad-supported listening. While 18-34s do spend the majority of their audio time with ad-supported audio sources, 46% of their listening time is spent with ad-free audio. The strength of ad-free audio with this age group is not surprising considering that younger Americans spend more time on platforms that make removing advertisements easy and not terribly expensive, such as Spotify and YouTube.
Ad-supported audio remains an effective way to reach consumers and increase brand and product awareness. It will be interesting to see how this data changes as consumers are offered more opportunities to remove advertisements from their audio sources. Inquire here to learn more about Edison’s Share of Ear and gain further insights into how people spend their day with audio.
No comments:
Post a Comment