Mumbrella360: Podcasts provide a captive, active audience for brands

Leading podcast production house Deadset Studios and market research agency Insightfully today unveiled the findings of PodPoll 2023: Australia’s podcast insights survey at marketing conference Mumbrella360.

Deadset Studios’ Kellie Riordan and Insightfully’s Leanne White revealed a few of the most significant insights from the listening behaviours of thousands of Australians.

Podcast consumption is now a more regular habit. Forty per cent of regular (monthly) podcast listeners have now made it a daily listening habit. Gen Y and Gen Z are the heaviest consumers of podcasts, providing a great opportunity for marketers to target these hard-to-reach demographics with audio content tailored specifically to their needs and wants, given the opt-in nature of podcasts. Those eager for new skills, activists, and purchasers are all people tuning into podcasts.

PodPoll also found an unmet need for content, with 33% of Gen Z and 26% of Millennials who listen infrequently saying it’s because they struggle to find podcasts they’re interested in. PodPoll shows there’s a huge opportunity to create engaging content for these hungry audiences.

The most popular genres in podcasting are crime (35%), comedy (34%) and health and wellbeing (32%). There’s also hunger for new content in science and environment, food and beverage, fashion and beauty categories.

Podcasting has a large audience, but also a committed one, with long periods of time spent listening. PodPoll found 56% of regular listeners listen for at least three hours a week, with 77% of them consuming between 2 and 9 episodes.

“This proves the sticky nature of the medium and demonstrates a committed audience willing to spend a lot of time with you,” said director of Deadset Studios Kellie Riordan. “Marketers who want a deeper engagement with customers should be choosing podcasts to tell their brand stories. Investing in compelling, tailored audio content that targets a niche is a clever way for brands to expand their reach.

“This is especially so if it’s the traditional hard-to-find Gen Z and Gen Y segments as these are some of the most avid podcast consumers,” she added.

PodPoll also found its heaviest users likely to share and influence others, proving that listeners are highly engaged in the medium.

While podcasting as a medium lends itself to intimacy — the use of spoken word, and earbuds lends it an air of privacy — co-listening is also growing trend, with a third of listeners enjoying podcasts with others. Middle aged men and parents dominating this co-listening segment.

Purchasers and activists are most likely to enjoy branded podcasts. In fact, podcasting reveals itself to be very effective for marketers with 61% of listeners recalling hearing a branded podcast and 80% recalling a podcast ad or brand mention. Even more significant is that 18% saying they have been converted to purchasing from a podcast ad.

Podcasts are also the ideal medium for multi-tasking, with respondents noting they often choose podcasts because they can listen while doing something else, such as driving or relaxing.

“Podcasts seem to encourage action,” Insightfully Managing Director Leanne White said. “They are the perfect medium to spread a message or convert people to a product or cause.” Podcasts are also bigger in terms of monthly consumption than printed newspapers, magazines, and audiobooks.

Kellie Riordan and Leanne White presented ‘Are Ears Worth As Much as Eyes? New Australian Data Reveals Why You Should Power Up Your Podcast Play’ at Mumbrella360 in July 2023.

A version of this article was originally published on Mumbrella.