In a highly personal medium, where do people get their podcasts post-COVID? Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights have released their Spring 2023 Podcast Download, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the podcast audience.
With research conducted by MARU/Matchbox, the study surveyed 608 respondents age 18+ who had listened to or watched podcasts for at least one hour in the past week. The surveys were conducted between April 14-27, 2023.
The most significant finding from the report is that podcast consumers have embraced YouTube as their preferred podcast platform, particularly for podcast discovery. Podcast consumers spend nearly as much time on YouTube listening to podcasts without visuals as they do while watching videos. Even so, video podcast consumers tend to pay attention to the screen, with over 60% looking at the screen at least some of the time, even during ads.
More than half of weekly podcast consumers who listen to or watch podcasts on YouTube also consume the same podcasts through other platforms. For those wishing to lure users away from YouTube, the survey showed consumers are willing to switch platforms if their favorite podcasts became exclusively available on another platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
While YouTube and Spotify have both experienced growth among Podcast Newcomers since 2019, users are now trending away from Spotify.
The full Podcast Download – Spring 2023 Report, conducted using a nationally representative sample of weekly podcast consumers, can be downloaded from the Cumulus Podcast Network site.
“Throughout our long-running Podcast Download Report series, we have seen the steady growth of YouTube as a podcast destination and now as a gateway to podcast discovery,” said Cumulus Media EVP of Marketing Suzanne Grimes. “While the dominance of YouTube as a platform is exciting and important…at the end of the day, content trumps the platform, and our strategy is to focus on podcasts that retain the audience regardless of platform.”
“The platform findings in the report are fascinating and challenge some of the conventional wisdom we’ve seen in the industry regarding podcast destinations,” said Signal Hill Insights Chief Insights Officer and Partner Paul Riismandel. “What we’ve seen is that the YouTube preference is utilitarian. Podcasting is still a multi-platform world, consistent with our heterogenous digital media consumption ecosystem. Consumers stick with YouTube for the video, community, comments, and recommendations but platform exclusivity is less important as we see podcast consumers also listening to their YouTube shows elsewhere.”
