This post is part of a series of guest posts sharing reflections on the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report.
This post is from Elissa Craig, Head of Marketing at Headliner, a tool to help you turn your podcast into stunning short and long-form video content, whether you’re starting with an audio-first show, or full-length video recordings.
Well, the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report is here.
And while it’s chock full of interesting and insightful data, what stood out to me most was this fascinating yet challenging reality:
That despite podcast listenership reportedly being at an all-time high, growth is down.
As podcasters, we’re confronted with this disconnect every time we log into our hosting analytics dashboards.
Compared to the 2023 report, this year’s Podcast Marketing Trends Report shows the typical show’s downloads being down by 21%.
Of course, part of this can be explained by Apple’s iOS 17 updates over the past year that have reduced downloads across the board.
But for me, the download decline raises another question.
A question about how we, as podcasters do, can, and will define and track podcast growth going forward.
Because whether we want to confront it or not, the reality is increasingly this:
“Podcasting” as a medium is more fluid today than ever before. And the lines are only going to get blurrier.
While those in the industry often define podcasts by their RSS feed, listeners could care less.
In fact, it’s safe to assume 99% of podcast listeners have no idea what an RSS feed even is.
To them, a podcast could be any content—audio or otherwise—featuring someone telling a story, conducting an interview… or where mics and headphones are visibly present on screen (even if they’re not plugged in.
In short, a “podcast” is whatever audiences—not creators or the industry—define it as.
While many podcast purists might (perhaps rightly) rail against this broader interpretation, it is, in fact, an exciting opportunity for the medium’s growth, allowing podcasters to reach new audiences who might never have considered listening to a traditional audio-only podcast.
It also presents challenges, however, specifically in regard to how we as creators measure growth.
In a world where the idea of podcasting is growing beyond an RSS feed, so too must the metrics we use to measure it.
Because for an increasing number of shows, RSS-reported downloads no longer capture anywhere near the whole story of the reach, consumption, or engagement a show has with its audience.
For example, the report found that 49% of respondents observed reduced podcast listenership—an increase of +53% from last year.
On the surface, this statistic feels discouraging. But digging a little deeper, and a more nuanced story emerges.
What podcast hosting data cannot accurately capture is the surge in video podcast consumption, especially on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and even Spotify, which now supports video clips.
Of course, not every show has seen a surge in video consumption. But many have.
As Jeremy has shared about Season 1 of Podcast Marketing Trends Explained, the show received nearly as many views on YouTube as it did via RSS.
On the one hand, YouTube likely cannibalized some of the audience that would have otherwise engaged with the show in its audio-only form, thus reducing the RSS download count from what it would otherwise be.
It’s also likely, however, that the show’s availability on YouTube in video form brought in new audience members who would have never otherwise come across the show, thus growing the overall audience of the show.
Fewer downloads but a bigger audience, in other words.
And isn’t that—the actual number of human beings engaging with our work—the thing we’re really after?
Whether we like it or not, video is already a dominant force in the way audiences consume podcasts.
YouTube is now the most popular platform for podcast consumption, and podcasters who leverage video—whether through full-length episodes, short clips, or audiograms—are reaching new, untapped audiences.
According to the PMT report, the platforms where many podcasters are seeing positive growth rates, are those with strong video components like YouTube (+84% YoY growth), Instagram (+27% YoY growth), and TikTok (+14% YoY growth).
The reason may be that video excels in a number of key areas where podcasting has always struggled including:
- Capturing attention in crowded feeds
- Engaging audiences in two-way dialogue
- Discovery among new listeners
Which means podcasters who aren’t yet engaging with video platforms might be missing out on a growing segment of their potential audience.
For better or for worse, the hard reality of marketing is that we as creators have to go to where our audiences are.
And increasingly, those audiences are on video-based platforms, consuming video content.
That’s not to say those audiences won’t also consume audio-first content, many of them will, and perhaps already do.
It’s also not to say that every show needs to (or should) go all-in on a video-first show.
But it does mean that the way we get in front of audiences, connect with them, and—importantly—measure that reach and engagement needs to change.
Yes, it might require us to expand our creative and marketing toolkit, skill set, and mentality around how we create and promote our shows.
Yes, it may be harder to track total engagement across a multitude of platforms.
But when we do, we might just find that a decline in downloads is actually a misleading metric—one that masks larger growth and connection across our broader creative ecosystem.
Above all, podcasting has always been about the connection between a host and their audience.
And regardless of the role it plays in our content and marketing strategies, video is just one more way to make more new and meaningful connections.
