More downloads, more growth — and much more in new podcast marketing report

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. It is a fascinating, data-rich review of how podcast creators and other professionals in the field market and grow their shows. Click for excerpts and the download link. Continue Reading

Spotify opens audiobooks to its biggest market. (U.S.) Also, more books. And research.

Five weeks after launching its audiobook category, Spotify has opened it to Premium U.S. subscribers. The original plan limited the audiobook experience to U.K. and Australian listeners. Now these three territories are granted 15 hours a month for book listening. Spotify did some audiobook listening research, too. Continue Reading

Spoken word audio report (NPR / Edison Research): Record high consumption; podcast share growing; AM/FM unbeatable in the car

The fifth annual iteration of The Spoken Word Audio Report has been released by Edison Research and NPR. While the research continues to measure basic trend lines of listening to spoken word content, such as reach and time-of-day metrics, this year the two companies bring a special emphasis on listening locations. This post takes a fairly deep dive and provides a download link. Continue Reading

Acast expands self-serve features with advertiser/podcaster campaign planning

Global podcast company Acast, which lately seems intent to remove all middle-layer interference in the advertiser/podcast planning relationship, has brought those two parties closer with an expansion of the company’s self-serve platform. A new collaboration feature saves time in the planning and booking stages, and also make it easier to distribute a marketing budget across multiple podcasts. Continue Reading