Bridge Ratings examines time spent listening to podcasts

Bridge Ratings released new data from its research about how long people stay tuned in to podcasts. In this survey, Bridge worked with more than 3,000 consumers who had listened to at least five different podcasts in the past 30 days. Participants tracked their podcast listening for a week, monitoring how long they spent with any particular show.

An average of 26% of the respondents stopped listening to a show within the first 30 minutes, and 19% stopped at between 30 and 45 minutes. Participants gave a range of reasons for tuning out, from topic to host to technical quality. The average time spent listening across all participants was 33 minutes. Sports and recreation shows had the best average time at 47 minutes, followed closely by the games and hobbies topic at 45 minutes.

Bridge also added a metric for repeated listens. Business and technology shows had the most repeats. Listeners said complicated topics requiring extra listens was the top reason for taking additional passes at an episode. Post-referencing and instructional content were the second and third reasons for repeats, respectively.