Podcasting Biz Under Covid-19 – Who’s Listening?
As a longtime podcast listener with zero commuting (read: listening-only) time for the last three months, I got to wondering how well the industry’s content producers, networks and ad execs have been coping with the coronavirus quarantine. According to a swath of key industry players I spoke with, it looks like podcasting took a body blow like many others but has retained its long-built momentum. What are the factors underlying that resilience and will it continue?
As Hernan Lopez, the CEO of Wondery, one of the premier podcast networks, told me, “If we survived the last 3 months, there isn’t much else the future has in store that would worry me.” Wondery is the platform for a host of well-known podcasts such as Dr. Death and Dirty John, but this theme of resilience came up across the board in my discussions.
Despite the shift in podcasting habitats for commuters, research has historically shown that more podcast listening takes place in the home than other mobile environments. This has only continued under the current pandemic, according to Bart Roselli, VP of Strategy for Veritone One, a leading podcast agency that on behalf of its clients purchases one out of every four podcast ads in the U.S.
The reduction in commuting time at the onset of the coronavirus wasn’t entirely without its impact. Wondery’s Lopez noted the drop-off in audiences was approximately 20% in just 3 weeks from March to April. Unsurprisingly, sports content consumption (what sports?) fell dramatically, while news listening spiked.
After that initial drop, the latest statistics from Podtrac, the “Nielsen” of podcast audience measurement, show that resilience everyone told me about. Just before Memorial Day weekly podcast downloads approached the all-time industry highs of March; all but two of the top 20 podcast publishers saw growth in downloads from April to May; and the top 10 publishers saw unique live streams and downloads increase by 7% from April to May 2020 and by 52% over May 2019.
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