If you are looking to get a sense of where podcasting is today, and if you are old enough to have been around, think back to the late '90s and the internet, then still in its infancy.
Businesses were rushing to go online, building websites like crazy. They didn’t know where this new medium was headed—no one did—but they were quick to tell you that when it all got figured out, they wanted to be in the game, at the starting line, in position to pivot to whatever direction the world wide web was heading.
So they built and built and built.
People now talk about podcasting the same way. It’s the hot thing in audio. There are now some 525,000 active shows and over 18.5 million episodes. Listenership is climbing; almost half of Americans 12 or older have listened to a podcast. So is advertising. Ad spending is forecast to grow from $326 million in 2018 to $534 million in 2020.
All manner of businesses are incorporating podcasts into their marketing strategies.
But there’s a lot that’s still unknown. How will podcasting evolve as a creative force? How will podcasting evolve as a vehicle for advertising? Which media will suffer, if any, as the audience for podcasts grows?
There’s also tons of hype and misinformation about podcasts, just as there was two decades ago about the internet.
So to help you put the state of podcasting in perspective, you’ll find below reliable, up-to-date numbers on just who is listening to podcasts. It's an affluent, educated crowd, the sort advertisers are keen to reach, which explains why ad spending is surging.
