Podcasting expert and radioinfo columnist, James Cridland addressed OzPod in Melbourne today, for the session ‘Who is Our Audience’.
 
The following is a summary of his presentation
 
Taking figures from the ABC Corporate Tracking Research, with a representative sample of online Adult Australians, James says that “91% of Australian adults aged 18-75, have heard of podcasting. This is a new high – and other research conducted here supports that the vast majority of Australians have heard of podcasting.This is a great result.”
 
But how many Australians are actually consuming podcasts?
 
62% of Australians have ever listened to a podcast. That figure is up from last year.
 
And a third of all Australians are consuming podcasts every month. That figure is up from 29% last year.
 
James looked at all kinds of research, and says what’s good is that they all have signs of growth. Different research from NOVA Entertainment and Ipsos says that 20% of podcast consumers are new and weren’t listening six months ago indicating a possible change in the audience, a change that has been noticed in other countries like Canada.
 
Podcasting is still a small percentage of the overall audio consumption in Australia, and the trend is similar in the USA, Canada and the UK.
 
What growth there is comes from more women (see the story on radioinfo) and 35-54 year olds that are now listening. Those are the fastest-growing segments this year from this ABC survey with figures in the USA showing similar growth in 35-54s.
 
Podcast consumption happens alone, it isn’t a shared audio experience with headphones and not Smart Speakers as the preferred connection.
 
Smartphones are the preferred device and Apple is the #1 app with a 64.3% share, and while that’s slowly going down, Spotify is a long way off in second spot with 7.2%
 
So what about the opportunities for growth? Well, there is good news. Australians are happy trying new things. The ABC Podcast Survey says that 29% of respondents listened to a new podcast series in the last week. And two-thirds just want great content, wherever it comes from.
 
Cross-promotion of podcasts is therefore an important part of podcasting’s growth.

Being in a podcast network is a good plan, since it unlocks cross-promotional opportunities.
 
But overall – make great stuff. Because great content makes for great podcasts