Deloitte Study Sees Steep Growth In Podcast Marketing Opportunity 

Both the global, and local, podcasting market is poised for growth this year, with revenues set to top $1 billion for the first time globally.

Podcasting is poised to be one of the fastest-growing media channels in 2020, according to new research from Deloitte.

As per Deloitte’s, “Technology, Media, And Telecommunications Predictions 2020” report, it forecasts that the global podcasting business could grow to more than $3.3 billion by 2025.

While Australian podcasting revenue is set to outpace the 30% growth rate predicted globally, reaching $47 million in 2020 (62% growth).

Podcasting is still a relatively small player in the overall media landscape but multiplying. For comparison, the radio ad market is worth $42 billion globally, and circa $1 billion locally.

Therefore, one could suppose that the main takeaway from Deloitte’s study is that Podcasting will increasingly be seen as distinct from radio, rather than a radio bolt on.

The Rise & Rise Of Podcasting In Recent Years

Over 1.6 million Australians, and 320,000 Kiwis, now download audio or video podcasts in an average four weeks. Representing growth of 70% and 82% respectively since 2016, according to Roy Morgan.

By way of comparison a year ago Roy Morgan reported that around 2.2 million Australians visited leading streaming music site Spotify in an average four weeks, 1.3 million visited second-placed SoundCloud and just over 520,000 visited third placed Triple M.

According to Deloitte, the most in-demand genres for Australian consumers are current affairs (36%), comedy (28%) and true crime (25%).

“The growth appears to be driven from both the demand and supply sides… a love for mobile devices, our ever-busier lives and our insatiable appetite for entertainment and educational content are creating a strong pull.

Weekly podcast listeners consume on average four series and six episodes per week, with heavier users consuming more than 11 series and episodes per week.”

News publishers are using podcasting to go deeper with specific topics, e.g. The Economist’s “Checks and Balance” podcast, which is a new weekly podcast on American politics.

Meanwhile, independent content creators are focusing on high growth, non-news categories, taking advantage of the low production cost and complexity to enter the market, such as:

1. The CMO Show, by Sydney PR & Content Marketing agency Filtered Media
2. The Property Couch, by Empower Wealth Management frontmen, Bryce Holdaway & Ben Kingsley
3. No Bullshit Leadership, by Martin Moore of Your CEO Mentor

There are obviously, bigger, flashier names than above doing the rounds within the podcasting space, but all of these are local small businesses. Doing a great job, in their niche, engaging decent sized audiences (relatively speaking), on very modest budgets.

Podcasting, Content Marketing, SEO & Social Media

Podcasting’s recent growth is impressive, considering its accessibility is still somewhat limited. In particular for new cold audiences that are unfamiliar.

However, in coming years, accessibility will improve, spurring a growth in uptake which exceeds even that forecasted.

For example, Google began, for the first time, indexing podcasts in search engine results in 2019.

Zack Reneau-Wedeen, founder and head of product for Google Podcasts:

“Rolling out this week you’ll be able to search for and play podcasts directly in Google Search across Android, iOS, and desktop browsers, a step toward making audio a first-class citizen across Google.”

For marketers who have been investing in podcasting for some time, or are planning to, it is wise to appropriately mark-up podcast content for Google indexation purposes.

Structured data is increasingly important for organisations wanting to improve search engine visibility. In an SEO context, "structured data" usually refers to implementing some type of markup on a webpage, providing additional detail around the page's content.

Here’s a handy guide from Yoast, for those unfamiliar.

Within a podcast setting, there is Podcast structured data that you can use to help Google with discovering and understanding your podcast.

Doing so will enable Google to better rank podcasted content within Google Search results and Google Podcasts, along with individual episode descriptions and an embedded player for each.

At present, podcasting it not supported natively within most social channels, bar Twitter.

In 2018, Twitter made early forays in the space, launching live audio-only broadcasts. But the feature hasn’t as yet caught, probably because most users do not realise “it’s a thing”.

If SMK were betting folk, we’d wager that social platforms will sit back for anther year or two.

Leave Spotify, and a few others, to develop the podcast space, investing in content, wooing media buyers and clients, before swooping in and grabbing the cream. Much like they’re beginning to do with influencer marketing.

Hence, for those pushing podcasts as part of a content marketing play, it might be a good idea to not neglect SEO over social in 2020, for free online exposure and audience building.