Acast’s Henrik Isaksson shares what’s different about Australia’s podcasting landscape.
Podcasting was front and centre at this year’s APAC AdWeek conference. It wasn’t just a side conversation, but the focal topic in a number of keynotes and panel presentations.
It’s exciting to see the medium grow and be recognized within Australia. And if we look at the numbers, publishers and advertisers jumping on board, 2019 is set to be Australia’s biggest podcasting year to date.
So, what’s changed in the past few years? And what’s the opportunity for brands?
Here are our thoughts on the growth and excitement behind Australian podcasting:
1) The unreachable can now be reached
Over a quarter of all Australians now listen to podcasts regularly – and 20% of these weren’t listening six months ago.
The audience opportunity is huge, but also highly engaged and hard to reach on traditional media channels.
Our most recent Podcast Intelligence Report (conducted by independent research firm, IPSOS) revealed one in four podcast listeners have used an online ad blocker in the past three months. But when it comes to podcasting, the same report revealed two thirds (61%) of our audience had taken action after hearing a commercial message delivered via their preferred podcast. But more interestingly the research also showed that podcast listeners also are much more likely to pay for their music streaming provider.
Countless reports show podcasting continues to over-index when it comes to listeners engagement. Australian advertisers are taking notice, helping fuel local industry growth.
2) Fewer ads = more opportunity
TV advertising has been around since the 1940s – longer than most of us have been alive for. Beyond that, it’s crazy to think that today’s biggest self-serve online ad platform is almost twenty years old.
In today’s terms, that translates to greater ad saturation on traditional and online channels – simply due to the number of advertisers familiar with each medium.
Podcasting is different. Our research shows that while consumers are bombarded with 15 ads an hour online and 15 minutes of ads an hour over TV, podcasters are targeted with only four minutes of advertising per hour on Acast. Our podcasters continue to share positive feedback from their listeners on the ads, as long as they are personalized and relevant to the podcast itself. Long gone are the days of baked-in ads in podcasting where you would hear the same ad over and over again which has been solved by dynamic ad insertion.
3) Local and global scale
Reach and engagement metrics will only grow with the investment in great podcast content.
Here’s where Australia is forging forward.
We’ve always been famous for true crime – and Aussie audiences will continue to get this from Aussie creators – but what’s exciting is the emergence of new podcasting content relevant to different audiences and brands.
Until recently, network content was only made available on that network. Now media players such as Nova, Network 10, SevenWest, Pacific, NBCUniversal have a truly agnostic way of delivering audio content through networks like Acast.
Hear Henrik give his unique perspective on the audio space, which we explored in the AW360 Live podcast recorded at Advertising Week APAC, in Sydney, Australia.
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