During 10 weeks of quarantine, I have been getting a lot more of my information and entertainment from podcasts.
My interests in news, the arts, and business lead me to programs like Hidden Brain, How I Built This, The Indicator, Fresh Air, Planet Money, SER Historia, Radio Ambulante, El Hilo, Freakonomics Radio, Against the Rules, The Lead, and This American Life.
The voices of the people describing their experiences have tremendous power to carry us beyond the level of mere comprehension. They convey sincerity. They help us share the experiences or other people. They have an intimacy that makes them credible and trustworthy–two traits that we in the media need more of.
But is podcasting a business?
When podcasts are well done, they use sound to bring us into the heart of the story. That’s the consumer perspective. But if you are a publisher of news and information, should you invest your time and resources in a podcast? Is it a potentially profitable business for you?
Ad revenue for podcasts hit an estimated $480 million in 2018, more than 50% over the previous year, and was expected to grow by more than 40% in 2019, according to a study by PwC for the Internet Advertising Bureau (p. 16). The category of podcasts capturing the most ad revenue in 2018 was news, politics, and current events, with 18% of the total.
So, those numbers look promising. The other growth story is audience. According to a report from Reuters Institute, podcast audiences have been growing rapidly in five countries studied–the UK, US, Australia, France, and Sweden.
Some news outlets are making a business of it: Slate is getting half of its revenue from podcasts, and NPR was expecting to earn $55 million from podcasts in 2019, more than from sponsorship income.
“Daily news podcasts are not just delivering reach, they are also bringing deeper engagement. Private data from publishers show that listeners come back several times a week and listen to the majority of each show – completion rates tend to be between 60% and 90%.
But it’s not for everyone, Reuters cautioned: “outside the English-speaking world and in smaller markets, monetisation is far more challenging, with lower consumption and much lower interest from advertisers.”
The following graphic has updated figures from September 2022. Podcast audiences have grown significantly since 2019.
Not the New York Times
A lot of publishers look at the success of the New York Times‘s show The Daily (it is getting 3 million downloads daily, ) and think that maybe they should do it too. But it’s not that easy.
One of the best commentators on this is Nicholas Quah, who writes about the business of podcasting on Niemanlab.org (which is where I got the data about The Daily). In a typical recent post, Quah talked about some of the big players, who is investing in which companies and who is perhaps acquiring whom.
If you follow Quah regularly, you get a sense that publishers and investors have caught a fever. They are all competing to create platforms that will monopolize the production and distribution of content in this novel medium. News products, it turns out, are attractive because of those engagement statistics mentioned. And for news publishers, podcasts are attractive because they appeal to the younger audiences who aren’t reading print or listening to the radio.
The right people and equipment
Podcasting every day, and doing it well requires a lot of people. Reuters reported that The Daily had about 15 people on staff, the Guardian‘s daily podcast had 10, and the Economist 8. NPR’s daily podcast, Up First, requires fewer people since it repackages material already used on its broadcasts.
Update: on the July 2 podcast, The Daily’s host named 39 staff members, more than double the total of a year earlier.
Before traditional print news organizations jump into podcasting, they should recall how many were burned a few years ago when they jumped onto the Facebook video bandwagon.
Producing quality news video and audio requires people, equipment, and facilities that many traditional print organizations don’t have. If you get into podcasting, you might want to do it gradually.