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Podcasts are not new by any means, but their popularity is surging.
Almost 20% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 49 listen to podcasts at least once a month, according to a new report from comScore and audio network Wondery. This data tracks with an earlier report from Edison Research, which discovered that 21% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the last month, up from 17% in 2015.
The increase in digital media consumption on mobile, as well as the increasing number of podcasts available, has made it far more attractive to both listeners and advertisers. Serial became a huge part of mainstream culture at the end of 2014, as the podcast had 75 million episode downloads after the first season debuted.
That popularity has led to the appearance of podcasts in the greater digital media ecosystem, as many large digital publishers have released their iwn podcasts in the last two years.
Advertisers have taken notice of this rise in popularity and have started funneling their money into this space. U.S. advertisers will spend an estimated $35 million on podcast ads in 2016, up 2% from 2015, according to ZenithOptimedia data cited by the Wall Street Journal.
That number could surge if podcasts can assuage advertisers' concerns, which include a lack of user analytics and tracking capabilities. But those who have advertised on podcasts have seen success thus far, as nearly two-thirds of all podcast listeners have shown purchase intent (product research, visiting brand websites, etc.) after listening to an ad on podcasts, according to the comScore study.
Dollars are increasingly flowing from traditional ads to digital, as strong growth in mobile, video, and social spending continue to change the face of the US media market.
Over the next five years, marketers will especially embrace mobile. Mobile will drive up spending on video, search, display, and social, and propel the migration of ad dollars away from traditional media, including newspapers and magazines.
BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report that forecasts spending trends for the major digital ad formats — including search, display, and video — and mobile vs. desktop. It also examines trajectories for social ad spending and programmatic ad buying, which cut across digital formats. Finally, the report looks at how spending on traditional media formats will grow or contract over the next five years, as digital, and particularly mobile, rises.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
- Mobile will be the fastest-growing advertising channel and buoy spending on each of the digital formats. US mobile ad revenue will rise by a 26.5% CAGR through of 2020.
- Digital video ad spending is rising faster than search and display. US digital video ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of 21.9% through 2020.
- Mobile search will overtake desktop search ad revenue by 2019. Mobile search ad spend will rise by a 25.2% CAGR, while desktop search ad revenue will decline during the same period.
- Mobile display ads, including banners, rich media, and sponsorships, will overtake desktop display-related spending even earlier, in 2017.
- Social media ads, which cut across display and video, are seeing fast adoption. US social media ad revenue, which includes video and display ads, will grow by a CAGR of 14.9% through 2020.
- The rapid embrace of programmatic ad-buying tools is fueling a dramatic uptick in the share of digital ad spending coming through programmatic channels. Programmatic transactions will be a majority of total US digital ad spend this year.
- Unlike digital, traditional ad revenue will remain flat overall through 2020. Total traditional ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of just 0.4% between 2015 and 2020.
In full, the report:
- Forecasts ad revenue for emerging digital ad channels and formats like mobile, video, social and programmatic over the next five years
- Explores why ad revenue is flowing from desktop to mobile
- Examines the stagnation of traditional advertising channels like TV, magazines, and newspapers
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