Today in this post we are presenting some interesting podcast statistics that you must know.
Podcasts are the best medium to connect with loyal audience. This is an effective content marketing strategy to increase brand awareness.
Podcasts are a great way to increase and build the network and relationships. With this on-demand, portable, easy to consume podcasts you can skyrocket your traffic.
In this post let us look at some interesting podcast statistics.
Here are the podcast statistics you should know
Infinite Dial, the longest-running survey of America reported the telephone survey conducted by Edison Research in February 2019 with 1500 12+ aged U.S. People.
The reports give various stats as below:
Podcast listener statistics:
Podcasting familiarity:
The report says that around 70% of the U.S. people are familiar with the term podcasting. This is up from 8% as compared to 2018.
The below graph shows the podcasting familiarity of the U.S.
It's great that the familiarity has increased significantly year by year. It is also estimated that podcast popularity will grow to 132 million in 2022.
Podcast awareness:
In 2017, 19% of the U.S. people were aware of podcasts, while in 2018, 20% of the people were aware of podcasts. In 2019, it was again down by 1% and 19% of the people are aware of podcasts.
Podcast growth statistics:
51% of the U.S. population have listened to podcasts in 2019. In 2018 only 44% of people have listened to podcasts while it was just 40% in 2017.
Also, the survey revealed that 32% of U.S. people have listened to podcasts at least every month. This is up from 6% as compared to 26% in 2018.
It is clear from the graph that monthly podcast listeners are growing gradually.
Podcast consumers gender-wise:
If you want to know the percent of men and women who have listened to the monthly podcast we have data here:
- 22% of men have listened to monthly podcasts in 2017 and 2018. While this number has increased to 36% in 2019.
- Compared with men, the percentage of women listening to podcasts is a little low. Only 21% of women have listened to monthly podcasts in 2017, 24% in 2018, and 29% in 2019.
Among the total U.S. podcast listeners, 49% of listeners are men and 51% of listeners are women. But when it comes to monthly podcast listeners 54% are men and 46% are women.
When we analyze the monthly podcast listening stats age-wise it appears as shown in the graph.
You can see that the people aged above 55 are less interested in listening to podcasts.
Among 12-24 aged Spotify listeners, 32% have listened to podcasts in 2018, and in 2019, the listeners have increased to 53%. Such a huge growth!
Composition of monthly podcast consumers:
Among the monthly podcast listeners
- 66% of the consumers are White-Americans
- 11% are of African-Americans
- 9% are Hispanic
- 4% are Asian
Weekly podcast stats:
Earlier, we saw the stats of monthly podcasts. Let us know how people are interested in listening to weekly podcasts.
In 2019, 22% of the U.S. population have listened to weekly podcasts. In 2017, the number was just 15% and in 2018 it was 17%, up by 2%.
On average, these weekly podcast listeners will listen to 7 podcasts. While 16% of them have listened to 1 podcast in the last week.
- 16% have listened to 1 podcast in the last week.
- 15% have listened to 2 podcasts in the last week.
- 17% have listened to 3 podcasts in the last week.
- 21% have listened to 4 or 5 podcasts in the last week.
- 17% have listened to 6 to 10 podcasts in the last week.
- 14% have listened to 11 or more podcasts in the last week.
The survey also has estimated that compared to 2018
- There are 14 million more weekly podcast listeners
- There are 17 million more monthly podcast listeners
- 17 million more people are aware of podcasting
Reasons for people not listening to podcasts:
The survey also analyzed the reasons for not listening to podcasts. There are many reasons for people not listening to podcasts like they need to pay to get the subscription, the podcasts are lengthy, and they don't have time for listening to podcasts.
Let us know exactly what are the reasons people say and how many agree with these reasons.
Apart from these major reasons, there are some other reasons that are very important to figure out why people are not interested in listening to podcasts.
- 35% of people say that they don't know how to find a podcast.
- 33% of them are not aware of how to listen to a podcast
- 32% are confused with too many podcasts so that they don't know where to start.
- 22% don't know what a podcast is
- 18% don't know the difference between a podcast and a radio show
- 16% say that podcasts are for educational purposes
- 16% say that there is no podcast with music in them
Till now we have seen the reasons for not listening to the podcast.
Let us now focus on the reasons podcast listeners give for listening to the podcasts.
These stats are analyzed with 5 point scale.
It is interesting to know that 74% will listen to podcasts to learn new things.
How typically people listen to podcast episodes?
- 52% of the 12+ monthly podcast listeners listen to the entire podcast. It's great!
- 41% of them stay throughout the podcast
- 5% listen to less than half of the podcast
- Just 2% listen to the beginning of the podcast
As per the results of the phone survey, in 2018, 19% of listeners have increased the podcast speed to listen to them faster. In 2019, as per the online survey results, 26% have increased the speed.
Most often used devices for listening to podcasts:
- Smartphone/Tablet/Portable devices are the majorly used devices for listening to podcasts with the share of 65%
- Next to that is the computers or laptops with 25%
- Smart speakers have a share of 10%
Podcast listening locations:
90% of the listeners listen to podcasts at home. Only 37% of listeners listen to the podcast while working.
Sources used to discover the podcast occasionally or frequently
U.S. monthly podcast listeners aged 12+ have discovered the podcasts through these below-displayed media.
The Internet is the most widely used media and it has the highest share of 73%. While social media posts contribute 67% to discover the podcasts.
Podcast audience employment:
Among the 18+ aged monthly podcast listeners, 51% are full-time employees, 17% are part-time employees, 3% are homemakers, and 10% of them are students.
Also, among the monthly U.S. listeners, 80% of them have attended college, some even have a degree. But only 20% of them had school education.
How long do people are listening to podcasts?
Percentage of people who are listening to podcasts for
- More than five years – 11%
- Three years to less than 5 years – 12%
- One year to less than three years – 29%
- Six months to one year – 21%
- Less than six months – 27%
Percentage of the monthly podcast listeners listening to podcasts for
- More than five years – 11% of
- Three years to less than 5 years – 14%
- One year to less than three years – 30%
- Six months to one year – 21%
- Less than six months – 24%
Percent of the weekly podcast listeners listening to podcasts for
- More than five years – 12%
- Three years to less than 5 years – 15%
- One year to less than three years – 30%
- Six months to one year – 21%
- Less than six months – 22%
Podcasts audience revenue
Podcast listeners in America are actually rich and educated with having annual income as follows:
- 12% of monthly podcast listeners are having an annual household income of $75K-$100K
- 17% of monthly podcast listeners are having an annual household income of $100K-$150K
- 12% of monthly podcast listeners are having an annual household income of $150K or more
- 10% of U.S. Population 12+ are having an annual household income of $75K-$100K
- 11% of U.S. Population 12+ are having an annual household income of $75K-$100K
- 8% of U.S. Population 12+ are having an annual household income of $75K-$100K
Podcast downloading stats:
The survey analyzed monthly podcast listeners who will not listen to podcasts instantly after listening to them.
- 42% of these listeners will listen to podcasts within 24 hours of downloading
- 31% of them listen within 48 hours of downloading
- 19% of the people listen within a week
- Only 3% of them listen three weeks or so
Most popular podcast genres
- Music is the most popular music genre having fans of 61.1 million US households.
- Next to that is TV & movies with 60.5 million households.
- The third most popular is the comedy with 59.9 million
- Technology has over 58.9 million and stands out as the fourth most popular podcast genre
- The fifth is the kids & family with 58.7 million households
Out of these music has the most avid fans with 37.1 million households, followed by TV & movies with 36.8 million households.
The comedy genre has around 29.8 million and Technology has 27.2 million avid fans.
The last popular genre is the kids and family with 25 million household Avid fans.
Podcast advertising statistics
Podcasting report by IAB and PwC revealed that U.S. marketers have spent $479 million for advertising on podcasts. This is a really good development and 53% up from 2017. In 2017, their share was just $314 million.
This will continue to increase and as per the estimates, it will reach $650 million by 2020 and $1 billion in 2021.
- Also, in 2018 the dynamically inserted ads revenue has increased from 41.7% to 48.8%.
- 60 seconds of spot length advertisements have contributed 30% while 90-second advertisements have 27% contribution. Greater than 90-second ads have only 1% contribution.
- "News/politics/current events" genre has the highest advertising revenue of 18.4%, next to that is the "comedy" with a revenue of 13.9%. "Business" ranks third in advertising revenue with 12.8%.
Let's look at the advertising revenues by business categories.
Retail (Direct to Consumer) stood out as the top category with a revenue of 22.2%. The second business category is financial services with 20.7% revenue.
Apple [iTunes] podcasts stats:
From 2005 Apple started launching its podcasts on iTunes. Since then it is home to 525,000 active shows, with more than 18.5 million episodes in content over 100 languages.
- As reported by FastCompany, these iTunes podcasts are significantly increasing with a huge fan base.
- In 2014 there were 7 billion podcast downloads.
- In 2016 the downloads raised to 10.5 billion.
- In 2017 there were 13.7 billion episode downloads.
- As of March 2018, Apple Podcasts crossed 50 billion episode downloads
2. In 2018, society & culture genre has attained nearly 25% top 200 Apple podcasts but the news & politics genre saw a rapid decrease.
Conclusion
With the increasing podcast listeners, podcasting is becoming a more popular media on the internet today.
Google has announced that it will index the podcasts to show on SERPs. As a result podcast SEO is trending now.
Podcasts are making a buzz in the U.S. with 70% of people familiar with podcasts. The number still continues to increase.
Hope you found these Podcast statistics helpful.
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