Podcast Statistics and Trends For Podcast Marketing [May 2022]

Did you know 59% of podcast users spend more time listening to podcasts than using social media?

Not only is the world becoming increasingly open to listening to podcasts, but businesses are starting to understand their marketing potential. And we all know that marketers and brand owners will always strive to make the most of any new channel on the rise. 

But using a podcast as a marketing option, how does one market this marketing channel? Well, podcasts are notoriously difficult to advertise. So understanding podcast statistics and why they matter is key to producing a top-tier show and leveraging these trends to help strategize for promotional purposes. 

Keeping up to date with podcast statistics is essential here at Lower Street. Trends help us refine our podcast promotional strategies and marketing efforts because they give us a broader understanding of podcast audiences and their listener habits.   

Brands are investing in podcasts as a marketing channel to attract new customers more than ever before. So when we see statistics like 20% of people have bought a product or service after hearing about it in a podcast- you can understand why. 

But how do we know which advertising channels to take when using podcasts for marketing purposes? How can podcasters target the right kinds of audiences? Who is listening to podcasts, and would they be considered your ideal target market? 

Yearly podcast statistics reviews can certainly help answer that. 

Monitor Podcast Trends

In 2019, the podcast world experienced one of its most significant developments. Google initiated an algorithm update that started indexing podcasts to include them on search engine results pages (SERPs). As a result, voice search is on the rise and works to help listeners find podcast episodes and content that addresses their search queries. 

But it's nowhere near perfect. 

This means that podcast producers and hosts need to put some stock into their podcast SEO efforts if they want to grow their audience. Quality show notes, blogs, social media threads, and video content is a good start. 

There are many marketing opportunities in podcasts, and over the last few years, we've seen a rapidly growing pool of listeners ready to pledge their loyalty to a show. 

Monitor trends and create great content that taps into the subjects and topics your ideal listeners are searching for.

How Popular Are Podcasts? 

It's fair to say that podcasts have grown in popularity over the last decade. However, with this growth, the audience demographics have also evolved. The older demographics are no longer the ones who adopt podcasts but instead appeal to the younger generations. 

• 49% of monthly U.S. podcast listeners are aged between 12-34 (Edison)

Now, marketers are allocating a greater amount of their media budget to podcast promotion, mainly because the demographic scope has increased drastically. 

• In 2022, 62% of the population 12+ has listened to a podcast, and roughly 78% are familiar with the medium.

• 73% of the U.S. population 12+ have listened to online audio in the last month.

• Over 104 million Americans listen to podcasts regularly

• 28% of Americans are weekly podcast listeners.

• Each week, more Americans listen to podcasts than have Netflix accounts.

Who Listens to Podcasts?

Marketing your podcast isn't always easy. Often, when podcasters look to promote their show, they try to cast a wide net to get the most podcast subscribers and listeners possible.

While having millions of subscribers is amazing, you need to ask yourself how many of those subscribers would stay subscribed? How engaged will they be with your content?

You can narrow down your target audience by defining:

• Demographic: personal information such as age, education, income, gender, relationship status, etc. 

• Psychographics: human characteristics, such as opinions, values, interests, behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyle. 

• Behavioristic: their listening behavior can include knowing if a listener is brand loyal and how much time they spend listening to a similar podcast to yours. Where do they listen (at the gym, washing up, on their commute)? 

WHY IT MATTERS:

Any marketer worth their salt knows the best tactic for growth is to target the right people who will find value in the content. 

• 51% of monthly podcast listeners also tend to work in a full-time job

• 17% of those full-time workers have a household income between $100K-$150K. 

• 28% have a university degree

• 66%+ of podcast listeners have a college degree. 

• 56% of podcast listeners are male, while 44% are female.

• 43% of podcast listeners in the U.S. are non-white

• Podcasts embody 10% off all content that millennials listen to.

• Podcast listeners in the United States are "hyper-engaged, super-supportive audiences.

Ideal listener personas based primarily on their education and employment stats can allow marketers to focus their efforts on the right people, i.e., people who can make purchasing decisions. 

Podcasting Genre Statistics 

Genre can play a big part in how listeners interact with a show. If you think about it, podcasts act as a form of escapism, with listeners tuning in with one of two agendas in mind; to be entertained or educated. 

• 74% of people listen to podcasts to learn new things

• 71% to be entertained, 60% to stay up-to-date

• 51% to relax

• 47% to feel inspired.

So, it's no wonder that comedy is one of the most popular genres (22%), closely followed by news (21%). 

Then, true crime (18%) and sports (17%) take the next few spots. So, what does this mean for marketers? If the podcast's content isn't tapping into either the entertainment or education camp, you could find marketing the show as a whole relatively difficult. 

Within Lower street's marketing department, we have a saying: 

"The show you're promoting needs to be good. No amount of money in the world will trick people into loving a terrible show."

So, if you have a technology show that's dry as a cracker, you will have a difficult time marketing that to listeners. So, from a content standpoint, how can you get into that entertainment and/or education grouping to make the show more marketable? 

Some Stats:

• 7% use podcasts as a daily source of news

• Ted Talks Daily and The Daily are the second most popular shows on Spotify

• 97.7% of podcasters agree that quality content is essential.

People Listen To Podcasts at Home

In just a matter of years, humanity went from carrying around brick-like phones to having powerful mini-computers in their pockets. With this revolutionary advent of the smartphone, we can all tune into a podcast wherever and whenever we want. 

So, as podcasts have become portable, you may be surprised to learn that 90% of podcast listeners say they would rather listen to podcasts at home. 

Some Stats:

• 65% of commuters tune in in the car. 

• 49% listen while they're walking

• 43% at the gym or while they're working out

• 37% while they're at work

• 37% on public transportation.

Promoting your podcast using host-read ads could be a great option to tap into those home-based listeners. 

Listeners, when tuning in, in the comfort of their own home, are less likely to skip ahead 30 - 60 seconds and opt in to listen instead.

How Listeners are Listening

Finding how podcasters are tuning in can be relatively tricky. From our standpoint, tapping into Apple Podcast listeners, especially during the beginning 24-48 hours of a podcast's release, can be beneficial for visibility. 

If Apple Podcast's algorithm sees a lot of interaction and engagement with a podcast, they'll likely feature it on the home page. Apple Podcasts is an app that is preinstalled on iPhones

• 65% of podcast consumers are most likely to listen to episodes on a mobile device.

• 39% of smart-speaker owners listen to podcasts at least once a week

• 88% of Americans own a smartphone 

• Smart speaker ownership grew by over 22% during the first year of the pandemic as more people worked from home.

Quality Content Matters

Quality podcast content takes time and work, but it's worth the effort.

Engaging content builds loyal fan bases; it's as simple as that. So it's no surprise that podcast growth goes hand in hand with compelling podcast content. Loyal listeners are the ones who tune in to a podcast every week, leave positive reviews, and share the content- and the quality of the show is what will help with that.

• Quality content is essential to 97.7% of podcast listeners 

• 80% of podcast listeners stay tuned in for most or all of the episodes they listen to. (Podcast Insights)

• Listeners want original content that is fresh, consistent, specific and has personality

Listeners Want Consistency

Release times can also impact how you market a podcast. For example, consumers generally download content primarily on Mondays, Tuesdays Wednesdays, so you could aim to publish episodes within that time frame. 

But, that shouldn't be the golden rule. Overall, consistency breeds trust, which is important for getting your brand messaging to land within the podcast itself. So, regardless of how often you decide to upload weekly or monthly, your podcast consistency depends on you sticking to those deadlines.

• Successful podcasters are 7.7 times more likely to have published over 100 episodes and 15.8 times more likely to have published over 200 episodes. 

• Success in Podcasting comes with time and experience. 

• 69% of podcasters whose show is over 24 months old are monetizing it successfully

• 80% of lower-income podcasters have shows younger than 24 months

Podcast Promotion

According to Insider Intelligence, by 2028, Podcasting Is expected to become a $94.88 Billion Industry. But, of course, a large part of that profit pie is thanks to paid advertising. 

Marketing a podcast can be a tricky affair. The misconception that social media channels are a great way to tap into a new audience is, quite frankly, laughable. So while you can get some traction, you're ultimately having to drive listeners from Twitter-feed-scrolling-mode and push them towards long-form podcast-content-mode. And that's a challenging task- trust us. 

Sometimes you need to meet your ideal audience where they're already listening- within the podcast apps themselves (banner ads, dynamic ads, pop-ups, etc.) and on the podcasts, they're already listening to (host-read and voice-over ads). 

• 32% of marketers say advertising on podcasts is effective and drives expected outcomes

• Comparatively, podcasts generate around four times better brand recall than scroll, pop-up, and static ads

• Taking out an advertisement for a podcast can cost as little as $50 per slot.

• 80% of listeners can recall a brand advertised in a podcast.

• Compared to traditional advertising, 10% more listeners are likely to buy after exposure to podcast ads.

SUMMARY

Podcasts are beyond popular, and that trend is set to grow. As you've seen above, younger generations are getting on board. And while it is often classed as a form of "entertainment," podcast content can be incredibly fluid and tap into all the areas that your ideal audience is looking for, whether through marketing efforts or within the content itself.