In a webcast presentation yesterday, Edison Research revealed all the podcast-related survey data from The Infinite Dial 2015. The result is a more comprehensive view of who is listening to podcasts, in what numbers, and the audience attributes.
Some of the newly released information adds detail to audience characteristics already generally known. For example, podcast listeners are more affluent than the general population (36% have a household income greater than $75,000), and more educated beyond high school.
The gender split is exactly even. Looking at the age composition, Edison found that listening spreads across age groups pretty evenly, though teenagers under-index for podcast consumption.
Edison has told us before that podcast listeners are super-consumers with a voracious appetite for on-demand talk programs. Weekly podcast users listen to an average of six shows per week, according to the survey responses reviewed yesterday.
Podcasting is a mobile content category — that was made clear in Edison’s presentation. Listeners over-index for mobile device ownership, against the general U.S. population. At the same time, smartphone ownership was found to correlate with podcast consumption. Nearly a quarter of smartphone owners (22%) listened to a podcast in the last month, compared to only 5% of people who don’t own a smartphone.
Interestingly for brands seeking to reach on-demand audio listeners, podcast users over-index on social media participation, and are more likely than non-podcast listeners to follow brands on social platforms.
The podcast audience takes its online audio listening into the car. Most podcast consumers (58%) have listened to Internet radio in the car by connecting a phone to the dashboard, against only 38% of the general U.S. population (12+) which has done so.