Edison Research has unleashed the 2024 edition of its Latino Podcast Listener Report, the output of 2,502 interviews with US Hispanic/Latino adults 18 and older. The bilingual fieldwork was conducted in November; these are fresh findings.
This annual effort has been underway since 2020, so we see five-year trending throughout the pages of this report. (RAIN’s historical coverage is gathered HERE.) This year’s sponsors are Latina Media Network, Libsyn, LWC Studios, SiriusXM, and Uforia Podcasts.
Takeaways
In the promotion of this release, Edison bulleted the key findings up front:
· Female listenership is up: Women now account for half of the U.S. Monthly Latino Listening population, making the composition of Latino podcast listeners 50% women and 50% men for the first time.
- Social media is a dominant source for podcast discovery: 47% of U.S. Latino monthly podcast listeners age 18+ first discovered podcasting by seeing it on social media, compared with 30% in 2020.
- YouTube gains share as the service used most often to listen to podcasts: 40% of U.S. Latino monthly podcast listeners age 18+ say they use YouTube the most to listen to podcasts – a 12-point increase from 2020. Thirty percent search on YouTube most often to find out about podcasts.
- Latino podcast listeners’ preference for video podcasts is up: Since 2021, U.S. Latino monthly podcast listeners age 18+ have increased their consumption of video that they actively watch while listening by 23% (2021: 70% vs. 2024: 86%), surpassing audio only podcasts at 72%.
- Gen Z and Millennial U.S. Latino listeners are more likely to listen or watch podcasts with other people: 43% of U.S. monthly Latino podcast listeners age 18+ have listened to or watched podcasts with others. Listeners aged 18–24 are 47% likely to share their podcast listening experience with others, those aged 25–34 are 46%, and those aged 35–44 are the most likely to listen to or watch podcasts with others at nearly half (49%).
- Latinos are spending most of their days with podcasts for entertainment: 78% of U.S. monthly Latino podcast listeners age 18+ “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” that they listen to podcasts when they want to be entertained – an 8-point increase since 2020.
We observe that as the U.S. Latino population has increased, that population’s podcast involvement has deepened significantly in three key metrics:
Basics
After these basics, the 42-page report does a detailed deep dive. Among its points:
Hispanic monthly listening is up from last year, but not as much (or as high) as the total population.
Same with weekly listening — up, but not like the general population.
Weekly time spent listening to podcasts is steady from last year (5:01 to 5:00)
Edison establishes a ten-year comparison which illustrates solid uptake in audience development, but not a rapid one:
Demographics & Topics
A demographic section tells us that men and women listen to podcasts in equal proportion — a rebalancing from what was a male-dominated category in earlier editions of this report. And the age groups have rebalanced slightly over five years — the 55+ cohort has grown from 11% to 14%, while the youngest slice (18-34) has shrunk from 50% to 47%.
When questioned about how they discovered podcasting, this year’s respondents shifted tellingly from 2020, insofar associal media plays a part. Illustrated below,that discovery method jumped over 50%:
The survey asked about podcast topics. Very interestingly (we think), TrueCrime was not in the top five topics in 2020, but was #3 in 2024.
About The Ads
Edison devoted three slides to perceptions of podcast advertising. Two of them are about the feeling of ads, and one is about ad categories. Below we reproduce the “more likely” slide which, to advertisers, is the main point of this entire exercise:
In this coverage we have skimmed this deep and important annual survey report, and recommend downloading the deck. It’s free: HERE.