This excerpt from a 2023 article on the state of audio in Australia.
Podcasts have taken centre stage in the audio sector, with the 2022 Infinite Dial study finding that average time spent listening to podcasts surged to seven hours and six minutes per week, up from five hours in 2021.
Insights from the Australian Podcast Ranker, released by CRA and Triton Digital, show that Australians downloaded 755 million podcasts in 2022; total downloads among participating publishers increased by 39% over the year before.
CRA and IAB Australia figures show podcasting attracted $82.5 million in ad spend in Australia in 2022, while the IAB Audio State of the Nation report found that podcast advertising will continue to grow strongly in 2023 with 78% of media agencies intending to increase investment.
Ennals said that Australia is already one of the leading podcast markets in the world, with 40% of people listening to a podcast every month and the average listener each week downloading 4.3 podcasts and listening to 2.5 hours of content in 2022.
“We know media agencies want more information on podcast audiences and podcast advertising effectiveness and this year we are putting more metrics around podcasting working with both Triton and GFK,” said Ennals.
Hutchison said that podcasts provide excellent contextual targeting opportunities, but he believes the format needs to be experimented with creatively to understand how to drive memorability.
“The current host read model underwhelms – listeners know hosts are reading a script and being paid to do so and a couple of days later the host will be promoting another brand or product and possibly even a competitor,” said Hutchison.
Butt (pictured below right) said that shows that speak to a specific audience enjoy the most success, as more brands will promote their podcasts in media and create content off the back of it.
“We’re in a big audio ad growth phase – ‘wherever you get your podcasts’. Programmatic ad creative needs to evolve and with a creative attitude, global companies should be speaking in local voices if not already,” said Butt.
“In podcasting — we’ll hear more brand theme songs, jingles, audio logos. Radio ads will follow and while I don’t predict we will hear many ads that are short soap operas or audio sketches, we can live in hope.
“With plenty of people producing in-house podcasts who aren’t seeing much value, a trend in 2023 will be to make podcasts work better for the business, but expect to seek external help to deliver a podcast that links to a strategy.
“We’re seeing lots of companies who tried podcasts once and it didn’t work or they made something very expensive and it didn’t work. We’re seeing podcasts fail to generate huge audiences because there’s no promotion, or the audience isn’t interested or the returns on investment have unrealistic goals. We’d like to see them giving it patience and thinking long term.”
Nguyen said that while the nature of audio means that there will always be an opportunity for short-term activation, audio is now very much a strategic upfront consideration for AlchemyOne’s clients, whether it’s looking at establishing distinctive audio brand assets or working to deliver deep integration with content producers and partners.
“In particular, audio-only series and podcasts are no longer niche pieces of content that emerging content creators are testing out but a valid and established environment that is a core component of any big brand’s integrated marketing mix,” said Nguyen.
Author: Jason Pollock
https://www.adnews.com.au/news/long-read-the-outlook-for-radio-and-the-acceleration-of-audio