Podcasting is bigger than you think (Edison Research)

share of ear podcasts

Podcast listening is a big deal — that’s the key message from Edison Research as it continues to divulge new aspects of its “Share of Ear” study, released to subscribers in May. (See these new metrics revealed by Edison president Larry Rosin at RAIN Summit Indy.)

In the original Share of Ear study, which sought to quantify how much American adults and teens listen to all audio sources, podcasting was represented as claiming 1.7% of total listening time. That might seem inconsequential in the large picture, but Edison has now dug out the hidden metrics behind that number with a five-minute webinar video called “Why Podcasting Is Bigger Than You Think.”

Tom Webster of Edison narrates the slide presentation, carving into the 1.7% figure. Podcast listening is concentrated in a “daily reach” number which is 5% of Americans, or about 13-million individuals. That’s a fairly substantial number, and it turns out those people are voracious consumers.

Edison removed the 95% of people who never tune into podcasts, and found that podcast consumers spend nearly as much time listening to podcasts (25.9%) as to AM/FM radio (27.5%). The smaller sample size yields a bigger margin of error, Webster warns, but even accounting for that, the intense consumption of podcasts — among those who do listen at all — is remarkable.

Webster calls podcast lovers “super listeners” who soak in more audio during the day than average — nearly two hours more than average.

Here is the video:

Brad Hill