🎙️TODAY’S BRIEF

• 🔥 Podcast Advertising Reaches Only 25% of Potential Audience: Major Growth Opportunity Revealed

• 🚨 Podcast Insight: From 6M to 19M Listeners: The Unstoppable Rise of True Crime Podcasts

• 🌏 Podcast Elsewhere: Yumi Stynes and Tony Armstrong Lead Winners at 2024 Australian Podcast Awards

• 🏆 PodBusiness : BBC Studios Partners with Triton Digital to Expand Global Podcast Reach Beyond UK

• 🛠️ 3 New AI Podcast Toolbox to boost your productivity

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⬇️Listen : A comprehensive summary of the latest developments in podcasting, based on insights from the Podwires newsletter. Powered by AI.

PODSCRIBE
🔥 Podcast Advertising Reaches Only 25% of Potential Audience: Major Growth Opportunity Revealed

Podscribe's Q3 2024 Performance Benchmarks show that 99% of podcast advertisers reach only a quarter of the ~130M US monthly podcast listeners. In analyzing data from 63,000 campaigns and 200 advertisers, this report shows that reaching all ~130M US monthly podcast listeners requires 1B+ impressions (views or interactions with ads) monthly.

The report offers information on podcast advertising performance metrics, such as the rate at which listeners visit the advertised sites, the rate at which purchases are made, how effective ad placements are, and the cost of attaining a customer across industries and ad types.

The Key Points:

• Mid-roll ads perform best with a 0.35% visitor rate compared to pre-roll ads at 0.29% and post-roll at 0.23%.

• Longer ad reads (60+ seconds) show a 15% increase in conversion rates and are 10% more cost-efficient than the shorter ad format.

• Host-read ads drive about 30% more purchases per impression compared to producer-read ads since such an ad format is delivered in a personalized and authentic manner to better connect with audiences.

• The median Cost Per Acquisition, or CPA, across industries is $149, but sectors like technology report CPAs as low as $50, and for luxury brands, CPAs were over $300.

• A total of 75% of all advertisers have run a YouTube Simulcast campaign within the last 12 months, a practice where content is simultaneously broadcast on multiple platforms to leverage the visual appeal and reach the platform offers for better visibility and engagement across several touchpoints.

The Big Picture: These findings represent both current effectiveness and future potential for the podcast industry. This information will be invaluable to podcasters in terms of pricing and positioning their ad inventory, while producers can use the information to optimize ad placements and lengths for maximum effect. High incrementality rates-44% for podcasting, 23% for streaming-indicate that podcast advertising drives hard-to-reach value versus other channels. Even more interestingly, the YouTube simulcast data shows how the industry is shifting toward multi-platform strategies.

🗞️ TL;DR - PODCAST NEWS

• 🎧 Podcast Advertising Drives 57% Website Visits: New Engagement Data Revealed Podcast advertising connects with audiences, with more than half of listeners visiting advertised brands' websites and nearly one-third making purchases after hearing podcast ads, according to a study.

• 🎧Adobe Launches Enhanced Speech v2: Professional Audio Clean-Up for Every Creator Adobe released in version 2 the Enhance Speech tool, which removes background noise and enhances quiet voices so that customisable audio clarity and promotion design features can make even low-quality audio recordings sound professional.

• Apple Reveals Most Popular Podcasts of 2024: The Daily, Crime Junkie, and Joe Rogan Top US Charts. Apple's yearly podcast rankings for 2024 include "The Daily," "Crime Junkie," and "The Joe Rogan Experience" as the top three shows in the US, while other trending categories include new shows, series, and most shared content across nearly 100 countries and regions.

• 🎧 Australian Podcast Rankings: Hamish & Andy Maintains #1 Spot in October 2024 Charts The top three publishers in Triton Digital's October 2024 Australian Podcast Ranker are ARN/iHeart, LiSTNR, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation, while "Hamish & Andy," "Casefile True Crime," and "ABC News Top Stories" dominate the top podcast spots. Several new shows debuted in both the Top Podcast and Australian-Made.

• 🎧 Top Podcasting Talent Celebrated at the 2024 Australian Podcast Awards At the 2024 Australian Podcast Awards in Sydney, "Ladies, We Need to Talk" won Podcast of the Year in one of 31 categories honouring diverse voices and storytelling in entertainment, sports, history, and culture.
  
  
  

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From 6M to 19M Listeners: The Unstoppable Rise of True Crime Podcasts

True Crime podcasts have seen an astonishing 185 percent increase in weekly listenership, surging from 6.7 million in 2019 to 19.1 million today, to take fourth place in podcast rankings.

This has catapulted the genre from a fringe element to a mainstream powerhouse, now sitting firmly in fourth place, just behind News, Comedy, and Society & Culture.

According to Edison Research's True Crime Consumer Report, presented by audiochuck, the True Crime podcast genre has seen listenership increase almost threefold in just five years.

The Key Points:

• Listeners of True Crime podcasts went from 6.7M to 19.1M weekly listeners

• The format jumped places from fifth to fourth in the ranking of podcast categories

• True Crime is more popular than Sports today

• Comedy and Society & Culture continue to top the charts among podcast categories

• The reasons for this growth include good storytelling and intriguing cases

The Big Picture: This trend portends to podcasters and producers a golden opportunity in the True Crime space, but at the same time, it increases competition. Professional storytellers, researchers, and production teams have all been spawned by the genre's success. And here comes the advertising dollar money-ontracted substantial ad dollars; True Crime podcasting has proved to be a lucrative business model, as evidenced from substantial revenue streams it generates. To the larger podcasting industry, it's a great example of how a niche genre can blow up mainstream, cultivating new innovation and investment in specialized content, as evidenced by the uprising of Science Fiction and Personal Development podcasts.

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AUDACY
🚨Podcast Advertising Revolution: How Major Brands Are Transforming Audio Marketing in 2024

Podcast advertising has come a long way from simple host-read spots, featuring nearly 100 million Americans tuning in each week. Innovative brands produce experiences that blur the line between entertainment and ad as true crime narratives and social interactive campaigns take center stage for this format in engaging listeners.

Matt Casey, Audacy's VP of podcast partnerships, spoke to how leading brands are transforming podcast advertising through new and innovative tactics, such as next-generation host reads, cross-platform sponsorships, social media integrations, and improved video units. The Edison Super Listeners Report brings this into perspective, showing that a majority-86%-of frequent listeners report superior recall of podcast ads compared to any other channel.

The Key Points:

• Almost 100 million Americans listen to podcasts on a weekly basis

• 86% of frequent podcast listeners have better ad recall than any other medium

• Brands are creating thematic integrations that organically fit within podcast storytelling

• Podcast advertising effect is extending with cross-platform content sponsorships.

• Video-enhanced podcast ads are emerging as a powerful new marketing format

The Big Picture: For podcasters and producers, this means more creative freedom and better monetization opportunities. Since they can now offer advertisers multiple ways to reach audiences-from traditional host reads to complex multimedia campaigns-it can mean more revenue per episode. For the industry at large, these innovations are attracting bigger advertising budgets, which helps fund better production quality and enables more creators to make a living from podcasting. Its influence spreads outside of audio, opening up more routes for growth in video content, social media engagement, and cross-platform storytelling. - ms

📢 PODBUSINESS

⏭️ 🎧 BBC Studios Partners with Triton Digital to Expand Global Podcast Reach Beyond UK This marks the first time BBC Studios will monetize its extensive podcast library outside the UK by partnering with audio technology company Triton Digital to make it available to international audiences through more than 50 digital advertising platforms.

⏭️ 🎧 Acast Partners with TED Audio Collective for Global Podcast Distribution and Ad Sales Acast, the world's largest independent podcast company, has partnered with TED Audio Collective as their exclusive ad sales, hosting, and distribution partner worldwide (except Australia and New Zealand), adding 26 popular podcasts with 176 million annual listens.

🎧 FROM THE COMMUNITY

⏭️ Survey Reveals: 56.5% of Podcast Listeners Trust Human Recommendations Over Apps. Despite advances in technology, 56.5% of podcast listeners found their latest podcast through human recommendations compared to 3% through algorithmic suggestions, according to a new survey.

⏭️ Global Podcast Trends Reveal Surprising Platform Preferences: Why Spotify Dominates in Australia While YouTube Leads in US. New research shows that audience preferences and platform choices vary by country: Spotify leads in Australia with 40% of listeners, while YouTube leads in the US at 34%, underlining the need to craft podcast strategies in particular markets rather than adhering to US trends.

⏭️ YouTube Emerges as Top Podcast Discovery Platform for Both Video and Audio Listeners, Study Finds. A new study from Sounds Profitable finds that podcast video viewers and audio listeners have similar demographics, debunking age and gender assumptions, while video is becoming more important for podcast discovery though audio remains the dominant way people consume podcasts.

⏭️ New Voices AMPLIFY Launches 2025 Podcast Marketing Accelerator with $1,000 Stipend for Marginalized Creators. New Voices From February to April 2025, AMPLIFY will host an 8-week marketing accelerator programme for independent podcasters from historically marginalised backgrounds, offering 16 selected creators a $1,000 stipend, industry mentorship, and AIR membership through workshops and webinars.

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