One-in-five hours of ad-supported audio is to podcasts

Americans listen to audio for almost four hours every day, and almost one-in-five hours listening to ad-supported audio is listening to a podcast. The data is released by Nielsen today in the company’s 2024 Quarterly Audio Report, including data from Edison Research. Commercial radio gets a 67% share of ad-supported audio. For those aged 18-34, podcasts are even more popular, taking up almost a third of all time spent listening to ad-supported audio. Positive numbers, but ones that show how much growth is possible.

48% of 18-34s in Australia listen to podcasts every month, according to new data - and podcast listeners are listening to more shows. The 2024 Australian Podcast Report was released today, released by Australian commercial radio industry body Commercial Radio & Audio.

The report, though, needs to be read with caution, since it relies heavily on data from the Triton Digital Podcast Ranker, which only lists participating publishers. One claim in the press release, quoted by Lizzie Young, CRA’s CEO, is that “63% of podcasts are achieving more than 100,000 average monthly downloads in 2024”. That simply isn’t true: based on our analysis, this number comes from the top 200 participating shows in the ranker (where, for example, in December, 139 of the 200 listed shows achieved more than 100,000 downloads - about 70%.) Most podcasts will achieve significantly less than this. Additionally, the report claims that total average monthly listeners in 2024 increased 8.5% year-on-year, but these are numbers for participating publishers, and as the small print notes, “numbers will increase as new publishers join”. The ABC joined in Dec 2023. The CRA wasn’t able to respond to us by press time.
Other Australian data includes the Deadset Studios PodPoll 2024, released in September.

mowPod Charts is a new replacement to Chartable’s chart ranking tool. “Forever-free”, the tool contains historic data, email notifications, and doesn’t require an account.