Bridge Ratings: Charting podcast consumption trends over time

Bridge Ratings has published new data for its Podcast Report that explores changes in listeners’ podcast consumption volume over time. The company looked at one survey from August 2016 and one from July 2017 and explored the frequency of changes in podcast consumption among respondents.

Bridge sorts its participants into four groups based on consumption volume:

  • Heavy Users of Podcasts – 5 or more podcasts per week
  • Occasional Users – 3-5 podcasts listened to per week
  • Light Users – 1-2 podcasts per week
  • Grazers – very light podcast sampling, 1-3 per month

Among the heavy users in August, 88% of still defined themselves as such in July 2017. On the other hand, only 29% of occasional listeners did not change their listening volume. 35% increased to heavy users and 28% shifted to light users.

Light podcast consumers mostly increased their consumption between the surveys. Only 20% stayed light users, and 12% shifted to grazers. The rest all increased to either occasional or heavy users. Grazers also mostly trended to more listening, with 45% upgrading to light users and 38% becoming occasional users. Transitions to heavy use and those who did not change had the same amount at 17%.

The surveys also asked about reactions to advertising across the different groups. Advertising recall was 67% among grazers and rose as consumption did to 84% among heavy users. Relatability of ads didn’t show quite the same direct correlation, but grazers were the lowest at 62% and heavy users were the highest at 80%.

Anna Washenko