Podcasts today, a summary of the latest research

Over the past 2-3 years, a wealth of research has been published about the growth of podcasts. We’ve distilled some of that down into this summary.

If for any reason podcasts are not front of mind among your marketing or senior management colleagues, any one of these statistics should convince them otherwise:

The global podcasting audience is large, and is growing

Over one-third (39%) of Internet users consume one podcast a month, according to the recently released Q3 Digital Global Statshot.

That’s even higher than the figures from Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report, which has regular podcast listeners in the US at 32%. However, the Digital Global Statshot looks at Internet users aged 16-64 (and not the total adult population).

And that number is growing. Podcasting has been around since 2004, but most listeners have only tuned in fairly recently, with Edison’s research showing that 75% of monthly podcast listeners have been listening for three years or less.

Regular podcast listeners are more likely to be higher earners

Edison Research’s report on the podcast consumer, shows that in the US, 41% of regular podcast listeners have a household income of US $75,000+, while 29% earn more than $100,000.

This compares to 29% and 19% for the US population as a whole.

Meanwhile, Edison’s research also shows that 30% of regular listeners have a postgraduate degree, and 84% have some kind of college education.

The frequent fliers of today - and tomorrow - consume podcasts

When considering a medium as an airline marketer, you want to hit that sweet spot in terms of age.

You don’t want a platform that skews too young (one reason why few airlines are on Snapchat and almost none on TikTok), but you also want evidence that the frequent fliers of tomorrow, as well as today, are present. That way any investment you make has longevity.

Podcasts do exactly that. Even though the age range of listeners is broad, growth is coming particularly from younger age groups.

To take the UK as one example, media regulator OFCOM found that the steepest growth for podcasts came from 18-24 year olds.

Podcasts are a global phenomenon

Though most published podcast statistics look at the US and UK, the top growth markets for podcasts largely involve non English speaking markets and China, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina andChile.