Audience engagement and passion: The case for getting into podcasting

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Slate set up its network of podcasts over ten years ago, riding on the first wave in popularity for the medium – around that time in 2005, “podcast” was voted word of the year.

Andy Bowers, chief content officer of Panoply, Slate Network, explored the rise, fall and the second rise of podcasting in a talk at the Digital Innovators' Summit in Berlin today (21 March).

“Every year it gets a little easier to listen to podcasts. But every time it gets easier people are willing to try,” he said.

Podcasts were mobile before we even had the smartphone – listeners would download them and listen on the go, on their iPods.

But it was a complicated process, and the success of the first podcasts was challenged by the growing popularity of easier-to-use platforms such as YouTube to broadcast online.

With the advent of the iPhone and, much later, its native podcasting app – which Bowers points out conveniently can’t be deleted - the format has become more and more accessible.

And when people find their way to podcasting, they continue listening. Bowers compared it to video on demand. “Once you got used to [it], why do you want to go back to someone else’s schedule?”

As publishers turned their attention to podcasting again in 2014, partly prompted by the meteoric success of Serial, Slate had to decide how to adapt and evolve the network of podcasts it had been developing for almost ten years.

57 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly! 🎧😱🙌 #DISummit Again seeing the "serial effect"... pic.twitter.com/vKHqfLFGuo

— Dan Calderwood (@dancalders) March 21, 2016

Instead of choosing to compete with the newcomers, the publisher established Panoply to share and monetise its podcasting expertise.

Bowers gave delegates some insights into what advantages podcasting can bring to the table.

'Helping the show'

Slate’s podcast audience is very passionate. “It’s very sticky, some people have been listening to our shows for the full 10 years.”

And as the organisation started producing live shows, hundreds of people came along to watch the hosts - not many digital products can generate this type of excitement, he added.

This engagement also means advertising in podcasts is a somewhat different beast.

Bowers outlined three models podcasters have been using to fund their shows: advertising, donations from listeners, and creating podcasts on behalf of brands.

Advertising at Slate mostly consists of pre-roll and mid-roll placements, with custom promotional codes created for brands for each show in order to track success.

Mid-roll adverts also tend to be read by the host, a familiar voice for the listener. But the engagement goes even further – while ad-blocking is becoming a growing concern for digital media, with readers trying to avoid irrelevant or distracting ads, the podcast audience has a different attitude.

Listeners take it upon themselves to take snaps of the products they have bought and share them with their social networks to support the podcast.

“They know that buying stuff through our promo codes helps our show. That’s not something you see with a lot of other kinds of advertising,” he said.

*Update: This piece was updated to clarify "podcast" was voted word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005.*

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