Podcasts Drive Sales And Branding: Study
- by Ray Schultz , August 23, 2023
An impressive 48% of listeners have purchased at least one product advertised in a podcast in the past year. And 76% can recall at least one advertised product, according to The Power of Podcasts, a study from Voices, conducted by Momentive.
In addition, 73% have listened to a podcast in the past 12 months. They listen for entertainment (62%), to stay up to date (54%) and to pass the time (48%).
Listeners devote the following number of hours per week to podcasts:
- 1-3 hours—47.80%
- 4-6 hours—23/65%
- 7-9 hours—13%
- 13-15 hours—3.21%
- 16+ hours—3.63%
Of those surveyed, 51.44% listen to one to three different podcasts per month, 29.65% take in four to six, 12.57 seven to nine and 6.25% 10+.
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The content they prefer varies by gender and age.
The study found that 72% of sports/fitness listeners are male and that 66% of true crime fans are female. And 44% of those over age 60 like news and political podcasts.
However, comedy is the most popular podcast form, with 42% saying they are listeners.
Listeners also like engaging personalities—37% will return if they enjoy the host.
In addition, 62% of listeners follow their favorite host or shows on social media. Another 31% say they have discovered podcasts via social media.
Podcast fans also have advertising preferences: 34.63% prefer ads read by the podcast host and 21.37% those that are advertiser-produced ads. And 44% have no preference.
Momentive surveyed 1,183 U.S. consumers from July 12-14, 2023.
Ray, while it''s perfectly valid to point out the growth of podcast listening, just because a survey asks respondents if they think that they have bought at least one product they heard about in a podcast in the past year that this is evidence that podcasts "drive" sales. Any medium would look good on the same basis---perhaps a lot better.
Actually, I believe that podcasts are a very effective advertising tool---especially when the host endorses a product or service---for an extra fee, of course. This is because the audience---well, most of it---tends to bond with the host and this gives the ad message more credibility. There is better research on this subject from Nielsen, I believe, and others---but not in this study.