While most radio companies, outside the biggest in the industry, struggle to find a revenue generating podcast strategy, the number of consumers listening to podcasts continues to grow.
Monthly listening is up, weekly listening is up and the average podcast listener tunes into about 5 shows per week. The latest Infinite Dial stats show that about eighty million Americans – 28% of the U.S. 12+ population – are now weekly podcast listeners, a 17% increase over 2020. And, 57% of the country have now listened to some kind of podcast.
The overall monthly podcast listening audience is now more diverse than ever: 57% of monthly podcast listeners are white, 16% Latino, 13% African American, 4% Asian, and 10% of some other background.
With podcasting on the rise the big question that remains for most radio stations around the country is how to make money at it. Unless you have a large enough network of shows, like the bigger radio companies, to be able to sell millions of downloads to advertisers and ad agencies, it takes a minimum of 25,000 downloads per show for an advertiser to even look at a show. Stations are struggling to figure out how to justify the time to create unique content that will capture the ears of thousands of listeners so they can monetize it at the local level.
