Voxnest Issues Mid-year State of the Podcast Universe Report

RADIO ONLINE | Thursday, July 2, 2020

Voxnest

Voxnest has released a mid-year State of the Podcast Universe Report covering a sampling of trends in the podcast business, advertising, listening and content segments. It found that programmatic advertising is continuing to trend upwards (65% throughout the first five months of this year), while Portuguese (+103%) and Spanish (+94%) language podcast creation is up sharply. The report also details the pandemic lockdown's impact on listening behavior.

A difficult to reach audience with traditional advertising -- podcast "Super Listeners" as PodcastOne and Edison Research calls them -- is quite open to ads in podcasts. Nearly half of them (44 percent), say they pay attention to ads in podcasts more than any other media form, and 37 percent of them say that podcasting is the best way for a brand to reach them. In the time since this study was conducted, data from within the Voxnest Audience Network highlights this fact.

Not only did the report highlight programmatic advertising growing by 137 percent year-over-year at the end of 2019, but that growth continues just in the first five months of this year. Since January, programmatic advertising within its network has increased by 65 percent. Brands and agencies - like Xaxis, who we now works with in the U.S., Latin America and Europe - that were just testing podcast advertising in previous years, are seeing the continued acceptance and engagement from listeners, and they're diving deeper.

The first quarter showed big results for Spotify. Not only did it take over some larger countries, like Australia and Ireland, but they also finally started to loosen Apple's grip on the U.S. podcast listeners. As of the end of May, they haven't held on to the states, but for one month periods throughout the first five months of the year, Spotify led in California, New York and New Jersey. Spotify saw an increase in listens by 32 percent, where Apple only saw a 13 percent increase. From a global perspective, they made even more significant progress by increasing total podcast listens by 51 percent compared to Apple's 20 percent.

In the battle between the two for share of voice (not considering other listening platforms), Apple is currently holding at 59 percent and Spotify is at 41 percent. In the same five month period of 2019, Apple sat at 77 percent and Spotify at 23 percent. Needless to say, Spotify's short two year time in the industry is making a pretty massive impact.

The report is also seeing a surge in listeners from a global audience. While it's no surprise to see many Spanish-speaking countries on the list -- thanks to their increase in podcast creation -- it's quite interesting to see countries like Turkey, India, Philippines and New Zealand make the top 10 fastest growing podcast consumption list for the first five months of 2020.

During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Voxnest Audience Network started to see behaviors shift. Especially with Voxnest-owned Spreaker's large presence in Italy and Spain. In March, in Italy, Voxnest saw increases of 10 percent initially, and then, upon reviewing the data again at the end of April, it saw massive worldwide growth. Global podcast listens increased by 42 percent and European listens were up by 53 percent. It was found that listening was up by 29 percent in Italy and up by 25 percent in Spain. Meanwhile, the U.S. is showing a decline of 20 percent, however, certain categories saw a massive uptick in the U.S.

Based on the devices that consumers are using, it's very evident that people are listening to podcasts at home, possibly even as a family. Three of the top five devices -- desktop (58 percent increase), phone and tablet (32 percent increase), TV (28 percent increase), Smart Speaker (11 percent increase) and Smart Watch (11 percent increase) -- experienced the fastest growth over the last five months.

It's hard to say exactly what lies ahead for the remainder of 2020, but thanks to the agility of podcasting, Voxnest think's there's a lot of potential for the industry to remain on track to fulfill the IAB's 2019 projections of podcast ad revenue reaching $1 billion by 2021. With podcast listening leveling out since the start of the global pandemic, and a steady upward trend in Voxnest Audience Network's advertising earnings, the company thinks 2020 will likely still turn out to be podcasting's biggest year.

For more on this report, click here.