One of the biggest concerns among podcasters during the pandemic was that listening would decrease. With people mostly stuck at home, the built-in moments of listening would all but disappear. No more card rides to work, no train rides to the party, no soccer trips in the van. With fewer moments of general idleness where multitasking is ideal, when would listeners find time to listen? Would they listen at all?
For a while, the answer was no. People still listened to podcasts but spent less time on that activity. Numbers show that listening habits as of April 22, 2020 declined to 20% in the US. However, what’s interesting about that number is that it seems to only have happened in the US. In Italy, listening went up 29% and in Spain it was up 25%. Globally, listens increased 42%. Given that the pandemic is a global event where many countries have been quarantining in some capacity, it’s interesting that the change in everyday lifestyle seems to have uniquely effected the US’s podcasting habits.
This decline makes podcast advertising dollars harder to come by. The dip in monthly downloads means that advertising dollars, often captured in CPMs, have decreased. Fewer listeners, fewer dollars. This makes it particularly difficult for independent podcasters who are likely more dependent on advertising dollars to survive than their larger media counterparts who can afford a quarter of less than ideal earnings.
But there’s another part of COVID that makes podcast advertising dollars difficult to get. COVID has negatively affected just about every industry. Even tech, which is less reliant on travel and physical infrastructure, has been hurt and tech is a frequent advertiser of podcasts. With these businesses hurting, their budgets are smaller, with their marketing budgets being the first to get cut. Podcasting is one of the hardest mediums to get data and analytics from. The data that’s provided is a bit flimsy and often doesn’t get more granular that general geography and downloads per episode. That means ROI is tough to calculate. Usually, podcast advertising is sold as brand building opportunities, not as a way to translate an ad to a direct sale. As such, if you only have a limited budget to spend on marketing, you’ll probably pick something that has a more explicit ROI, something you can track and know clearly whether or not it’s working. Brand building is likely a nice-to-have, which means podcast advertising is one of the first to go.
But the good news is that both businesses and listens are increasing. As the world and the economy slowly starts to recover, we’re expecting podcast advertising revenue to increase by 14.7% in the US. That’s still a lot less than the 48% growth we saw in 2019, but it’s not a decline. Listening and advertising still have a chance, even in the middle of all the chaos the pandemic has brought to the industry.
https://blog.voxnest.com/coronavirus-impact-on-podcast-listening/
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