Have you listened to that podcast?
The pandemic years have revived many curiosities, you may have obtained a sourdough starter, planted a veggie patch, or discovered a love for radio theatre … otherwise known as a podcast.
Video may have killed the radio star, but the pandemic created podcast powerhouses with around 9 million Aussies regularly tuning in to shows and the medium enjoying a 15% audience increase during COVID lockdowns. The most popular Australian podcast in 2021 was Casefile True Crime with over 600,000 listeners and nearly 2 million downloads per month, but Aussies love a laugh with Comedy podcasts being the most popular genre.
Worldwide there are more than 850,000 active podcasts with more than 65 million episodes available in over 100 languages. It’s taken 18 years to get to this point so where did podcasts originate from and why should you care?
Well in 2004, 3 years after the iPod was released, former MTV VJ Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer devised a plan that would enable them to download online radio broadcasts from the internet directly to their iPod. Winer had authored an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) aggregator software and Curry coded a program titled iPodder which could extract audio files from an RSS feed so that they could be transferred to an iPod. For the first time ever radio broadcast files could be stored on a portable player and listened to on the go. It wasn’t going to be long before people started creating content specifically for this new software but what to call it? Well on the 12th of February 2004, Journalist Ben Hammersley penned a now infamous article for The Guardian where he mused over what to call this emerging boom in what was essentially amateur radio.
“But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?”
The simple blending of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ stuck and by 2005 it was declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. US President George W. Bush began delivering his weekly address via podcast and in 2007 the Queen of England’s annual Christmas Day speech was made available to download as a podcast.
Podcasts are so varied in nature that there really is no limit to what they can do. Have you noticed all the coverage in the news for the Chris Dawson murder trial? 40 years after Lynette Dawson’s disappearance her husband is now standing trial for murder and it’s all thanks to Hedley Thomas from The Australian. His investigative podcast series ‘The Teacher’s Pet’ brought to light issues with the original investigation and discovered enough new evidence for a formal charge to be brought against Mr Dawson.
Podcasts don’t just solve cold cases or give you a good belly laugh, if you’re a business trying to get your name out there a podcast is one of the most powerful advertising mediums. In 2021, 77% of Australian podcast ads that were read out by a host were deemed successful. 25% of listeners dug deeper about the brand after hearing it and 24% of listeners noticed the brand the next time they were out shopping.
The reason behind this success would be the targeted nature of podcast advertising, since podcasts are niche by nature you’ve already captured an engaged audience before the host has even read out your pitch. If one of your senior execs can be booked as an expert for a podcast even better.
The key from here is being able to track podcasts in the same way that you track broadcast, print or online coverage and that is a resource we can incorporate into your media monitoring service at MyMedia.
If you are new to the media monitoring industry and would like to understand how it works a podcast our Managing Director Paul Chapman did with Media Stable’s Nic Hayes is a great place to start … see there really is a podcast for everything.
