To examine how growing audience and advertiser engagement is impacting podcasting in Australia, Mediaweek assembled three sector leaders. The special guests on our panel were SCA head of commercial partnerships and podcasts Kim Norman, Nova Entertainment digital commercial director Kane Reiken and Commercial Radio Australia’s head of digital Jaime Chaux.
The podcast we recorded with them covered the brands that are investing in audio and what they are looking for, the most popular podcast genres, podcast measurement and the questions surrounding Podcast Ranker. Our three guests also shared their predictions about where the sector is headed.
Some highlights from the podcast are below.
Time spent on podcasting and podcast strategy
Norman: “One hundred percent of my time is dedicated to the commercialisation of podcasting. I am working on the commercial partnerships with our podcasters as well.”
Reiken: “I sometimes say 110% when you factor in all the extension pieces like talent, the publishers, the independents – really creating an ecosystem for our clients.”
Chaux: “Podcasting wasn’t even on the radar at Commercial Radio Australia for me when I started. What has put it on the radar is that broadcasters are spending an increasing amount of investment in new content and selling it. It therefore makes sense from an industry point of view to try and raise that profile to help that return on investment. It has become about half of my time at the moment.”
Interest from advertisers
Norman: “The interest is growing, but would I say it is growing as fast as the audience? I would say ‘No.’ The reason investment is not growing as quickly includes the impact Covid has had on everyone’s marketing budgets. We have seen some other mediums come back quite strongly including TV which is taking more share than it has ever done before, even though their audiences are not growing.
“We are also seeing out of home coming back quite strongly. At the start of Covid some marketers were cancelling some more traditional media like out of home and they were investing those funds in things like audio. Marketers thought podcasting was one medium people were still engaging with. But budgets have been reset and we are having to fight more for share than we have ever done.”
Reiken: “We are seeing a lot of interest and podcasting has the pleasure of being a product that everyone listens to. Subsequently there is an amazing groundswell of support behind podcasting. We are now seeing adoption by the marketplace. We have known forever that podcasting would be a thing and now we are seeing that proof. I agree with Kim that we are not seeing ad growth like audience movement, but we are seeing a lot more brands and agencies leaning into podcasting. Some are getting it faster than others. It’s great to see and we are all about driving education for the marketplace.
“In comparison to other mediums the level of audience doesn’t equal the level of investment. There is a big gap in podcasting and some brands are being smart about unlocking that audience. There is an opportunity available for the brave brands that want to jump in.”
Podcast Ranker
Jaime Chaux shared some Commercial Radio Australia insights about the birth of Podcast Ranker. He also noted what the chart disproves some theories about chart manipulation.
“Unlike the radio ratings, which is a walled garden of the radio licence holders, podcasting is a much bigger church. Podcast Ranker is designed to reflect all participating publishers who want to get on board. Like the radio ratings, it is compiled by an independent third party – Trident Digital.”
Chaux noted you don’t have to have multiple episodes every week to “trick” the ranker. He also revealed one of Australia’s biggest podcast publishers will soon be adding their titles to the ranker.