The Podcast Marketing Academy, a membership and consulting group for podcast creators wishing to accelerate audience growth, has released Podcast Marketing Trends, a survey results document.
This very interesting resource is the result of a survey. Over 500 podcasters and industry professionals participated in what the Academy calls “a sadistically long and detailed survey.” Most (82%) were podcast creators; other participants filled various roles in podcast ventures.
The result quantifies information about business modeling, benchmarks of success, and trends. Here, we cover a few highlights, but reviewing the report is recommended. It is HERE.
We learn that within this population of respondents, the median number of episode downloads is 421. Median number of downloads across a shows’ entire portfolio is 1,425 per month. (January is the top download month.)
Related to those numbers, the study computes the median month-over-month (MoM) growth rate — it is 1.62%. Or, taking a broader time frame, the median annual growth rate is 21%.
These numbers, and others in the presentation, depend on a baseline of downloads per episode. So, a show with 10,000-plus episodic downloads enjoys a 27% annual growth rate, while less popular shows also grow more slowly, as seen below:
Production cost and budgeting are addressed. And, another type of budgeting: Time. Unsurprisingly, longer production times (12.1-hour average) are associated with growth rates above 100%. Less popular shows take somewhat less time to produce — but at all levels it appears that podcast episodes take about 10 hours to produce and promote.
There are interesting takeaways throughout the report. Unlike the bullet points commonly found in other studies, these tell data stories. We are reproducing one below — and again we suggest looking at the entire revealing report HERE.
