Westwood One Webinar, Report Look At 'State Of American Podcasting'

Last, Bouvard, McDonald, Weiss-Berman

WESTWOOD ONE/CUMULUS CMO PIERRE BOUVARD hosted a "State of American Podcasting” webinar WEDNESDAY, offering insight on the growth of on-demand audio content.

Among the highlights of the event, "WTF WITH MARC MARON" Executive Producer-Co-Creator BRENDAN MCDONALD noted that in an audience survey, listeners were found to be "much more receptive to entertainment-based products in the sense of saying that would be the first thing they would be likely to patronize… We know our listeners are engaged on that level. Our survey respondents tell us 49% of them listen to every episode -- 104 a year, twice a week -- and they’re long, they’re not 15 minute episodes, they’re an hour to an hour and 15 minutes… Even if they’re not listening to every minute of every one, they’re showing a very high level of engagement. They are the super-users, the lovers of audio."

AUDIOBOOM VP STUART LAST said that the medium reaches Millennials and that he sees the demographic shift "at a global level, not just the U.S… the U.S. podcast industry is much more mature than the rest of the world; it’s led by the radio industry. There is great opportunity here to bring the media age down… this is the chance for people to connect with younger audiences in a way that audience is consuming content."
 
And BUZZFEED Director of Audio JENNA WEISS-BERMAN said that the goal is to reach listeners in their cars and that "if someone can figure out how to make podcasts more easily accessible in the car... If the technology improves there and there’s some way I can just press “play” on my podcast app or if it’s somehow built into cars, I think you’ll see that numbers rise pretty dramatically."
 
WESTWOOD ONE also released some tidbits from its pending "State of American Podcasting Report,” aggregating information from several studies, including that 65% of podcast listeners recalled an ad after listening to a show one day earlier, and that 41% of advertisers have discussed Podcasting and 15% are currently advertising in podcasts, while almost 20% of marketers and agencies say they "definitely would consider" advertising in Podcasting in the next six months, 1 in 10 said they “definitely would advertise” in Podcasting in the next six months, and 50% of both agencies and marketers said they “might advertise” in Podcasting in the next 6 months. 

Read more about the report by clicking here.

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