Welcome to our second annual Podcast Predictions post, where many of the podcasting industry’s leaders peer into their crystal balls and tell us what trends, milestones, and shifts lie ahead in 2018. From analytics to consolidation and from new formats to smart speakers, 2018 is shaping up to be another big year in podcasting.

Prediction #1: Podcasts Embrace Hollywood & Major Media

Corey Layton, Content and Marketing Director at Whooshkaa (Corey Layton)

If 2017 was the year that Hollywood was awakened to leverage podcast formats, then 2018 is the year that podcasts will benefit from the intellectual property exchange. Expect to see more blockbuster franchises like Wolverine diving into the podcast pool with a wave of scripted fiction, building hype in the lead-up to a film’s release. Equally we’ll see TV drama subplot storylines released, interlinking with weekly airdates.

Julie Shapiro — Executive Producer at Radiotopia, Co-founder of Third Coast International Audio Festival (@jatomic)

• More TV/film/book deals based on podcast content will be announced.
• More complicated/less advantageous IP relationships for producers ahead.
• We’ll see more investment in scripted fiction and kids’ podcasts.
• More major media outlets will invest in regular podcast ventures.
• More movement of shows — sunsetting, leaving / joining networks, rearranging internally.

Leslie Merklinger, Senior Director, Audio Innovation at CBC Radio & Audio (@lesliemerklinge) + the CBC Original Podcasts team.

• The rise of blockbuster scripted podcasting- and competitive offerings in this arena.
• More partnerships between media orgs- and more carefully converted TV into audio (See Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations podcast)

Hernan Lopez, Founder & CEO of Wondery (@hernanlopez)

More established ‘content brands’ come into the podcasting space — like Oprah did in 2017, or the L.A. Times through a partnership with Wondery. Expect to see multiple kinds of experimentation.

Pacific Content (@pacificcontent)

More lessons from Hollywood. 2017 saw several podcasts making the jump to TV and movie deals. Expect more 2018 podcasts being developed explicitly with this goal in mind. That will also mean more big name casting and more fiction.

Also, after the success of Dirty John in 2017, expect more big Hollywood-style marketing campaigns for big podcast launches. Hernan Lopez and the teams at Wondery and the LA Times set a new bar for how to launch a podcast and you can be sure others in the industry took careful notes.

Prediction #2: New Podcast Genres and Show Formats

Ryan Granner, Director of Digital Audio at ESPN (@ryangranner)

A new content genre/category will emerge and rocket up the charts and spawn a multitude of shows trying to capture lightning in a bottle; much the way morning news briefings blossomed in 2017. Political content is the wild card for 2018 with expansive growth in conservative leaning content, or significant overall audience fatigue, or increased growth because of hotly contested midterm elections all being, not mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive, possibilities.

Julie Shapiro — Executive Producer at Radiotopia, Co-founder of Third Coast International Audio Festival (@jatomic)

• More limited-run series telling a single story over multiple episodes, or exploring a theme or topic over the course of 6–8 episodes. Alongside these one-off series, additional single feeds featuring multiple series (like Showcase, which we launched from Radiotopia earlier this year) will emerge.
• On-going, highly produced storytelling shows will increasingly shift to seasonal presentation.
• We’ll see and hear more diversity across production and hosting, as networks make discernible efforts to broaden the field beyond white males in these roles.
• We’ll hear more hit shows from Australia and the UK.

Chris Peterson, SVP of Podcasting at iHeartRadio (@chris_peterson)

2018 will bring more innovative podcast content as the industry pushes to reach new audiences and expand the medium. We’ll see more creators throw out the playbook and embrace new concepts, such as short content designed with the smart speaker in mind, bringing a “140-” — make that “280-character limit” — into the podcasting world. Offering “snackable” content, readily consumable for any attention span, will entice more listeners to dip their toes into the space offering a great opportunity to move these first-time podcast listeners into the great long-form shows already being created.

Leslie Merklinger, Senior Director, Audio Innovation at CBC Radio & Audio (@lesliemerklinge) + the CBC Original Podcasts team.

We’ll get surprised. Given how nimble the genre is, someone somewhere will surprise with a new format, great talent or approach none of us saw coming — perhaps podcasts that mix fiction and nonfiction.

Hernan Lopez, Founder & CEO of Wondery (@hernanlopez)

We see an expansion of genres like History, where we’re just scratching the surface, and the launch of new ones, like Medical.

Eric Nuzum, SVP of Original Content Development at Audible (@ericnuzum)

Public radio’s dominance in podcasting is starting to wane. Only a few short years ago, the Top 10 shows on any podcast chart were almost exclusively those from public radio or produced by its former employees. Go look today. On most days, you are lucky to find more than a few.

My prediction for 2018 is that this trend will both continue and accelerate.

My confidence comes from two things: the evolution of the World Wide Web twenty years ago, and the market shares in radio today. Internet early adopters looked like those for most new technologies: white, male, and young. As it grew in awareness and popularity, the demographics slowly changed. Today, the demos look a lot like the general population. When someone says “everyone uses the Internet,” by and large, they’re right.

So if podcasting follows suit and starts to resemble the masses, what does that mean? Radio is a great proxy. Public radio is a healthy and robust presence on the broadcast spectrum, and yet, only about 15% of adults listening to radio listen to public radio. As podcasting democratizes, public radio’s market share should start to resemble radio. Not exactly (radio users are older than podcasters), but more similar than now.

I think it’s important to note that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for public radio and its unique editorial style and values. Nor does it speak to the continued quality and importance of public radio content. In fact, while this is all going on, podcasts coming from public radio, or produced by its veterans, or produced in a similar style will still thrive and grow. It’s just that the world around them will get a whole lot bigger. And that’s good for everyone.

Pacific Content (@pacificcontent)

New formats and new audiences. Podcasting is still in its infancy and 2018 will see a great deal of experimentation with different formats, different genres, and shows designed for non-traditional podcast audiences. Podcast companies will be trying to attract people who have never listened to a podcast before with series more aligned to top TV shows and movies than traditional podcast formats. Watch for companies like iHeartRadio, ESPN, and others with large non-podcast audiences to be at the forefront of converting people into podcast listeners.

Prediction #3: Apple Analytics, R.A.D. and Better Measurement

Bryan Moffett, COO National Public Media (NPM) (@BryanMoffett)

2018 will be the year podcasting and on-demand audio make serious moves toward measuring and transacting on listening, rather than downloads.

Ryan Granner, Director of Digital Audio at ESPN (@ryangranner)

Podcast measurement in 2018 will provide some growing pains for the industry, especially those who have played fast and loose with their numbers. With IAB’s updated measurement standards and Apple’s consumption metrics there will be an even stronger push towards verifiable standards in podcast measurement. Hopefully the term “download” and the umpteen different meanings it claims to represent will start to go the way of the Dodo bird. I expect that the Apple metrics will raise many more questions for publishers while it will finally help answer a few of the most pressing ones. Also, I expect podcast organizations to start improving decision making by becoming more influenced by objective data in addition to subjective opinion.

Leslie Merklinger, Senior Director, Audio Innovation at CBC Radio & Audio (@lesliemerklinge) + the CBC Original Podcasts team.

Analytics will finally improve. — The most successful shops will know more about how people listen. With better quantitative ways to measure engagement (like in-episode analytics) and qualitative indicators (the richness of online conversation) we’ll start to get a better sense of listener niches.

Corey Layton, Content and Marketing Director at Whooshkaa (@coreylayton)

Data and technology will flip the industry on its head. Improved analytics will increase advertiser trust as formats are trialed, tightened and torched. Voice-to-text transcription will become the norm (hat tip to Apple/Pop Up Archive), with searches surfacing content based on user interests and moods. In the reverse, text-to-voice synthesised content will seamlessly splice with an increase in human created short form content, as voice activated devices take hold.

Pacific Content (@pacificcontent)

Apple’s freshly launched Analytics and NPR’s Remote Audio Data (R.A.D.) project will impact the industry, on the both the business side and the creative side. Watch for more major brand advertising to come into the market as they will now be able to prove ads have been listened to.

Also watch for the impact of Apple’s new “Average Consumption” metric on show structure and lengths. Podcasters will be able to see where people tune out or skip content during their episodes, which will result in some shows rethinking the openings and the lengths of their shows. (Bold prediction — some podcasts that kick off with 6–8 minutes of ads before getting to the show will be forced to rethink their strategies and some really, really long podcasts will rethink their show length strategy.)

Prediction #4: Year of the Smart Speakers (or Not?)

Leslie Merklinger, Senior Director, Audio Innovation at CBC Radio & Audio (@lesliemerklinge) + the CBC Original Podcasts team.

Smart Speakers on the rise will mean more multiple person listening — rather than mainly solitary listening. That means more family-friendly podcasts and more morning news and current affairs podcasts. Start to see more experimentation with interactive audio (inspired by Apps like HQ and platforms like Alexa and Google home)

Russell Ivanovic, Developer & Co-Founder of Pocket Casts (@rustyshelf)

The Smart Speaker market will remain tiny, and very few people relatively speaking will use them to listen to podcasts. It will still be a growing market though, with more people getting their news and morning briefings through them.

Pacific Content (@pacificcontent)

For many people in 2017, listening to podcasts was still way too fussy and fiddly. In 2018, we’ll see more attempts to make podcast listening easier and more accessible. Smart Speaker vendors and apps like Subcast will try to reduce friction, in an effort to make podcasts “as simple as radio.” In 2018, many people will listen to their first podcast without realizing it’s a podcast.

Prediction #5: Growth In Brand Advertising & Branded Podcasts

Max Willens, Reporter at Digiday (@maxwillens)

As advertising continues to pool into the space, a bifurcation will begin to occur, with blue chip shows focusing on host-read ads and smaller ones availing themselves of programmatic audio, not unlike the stuff people are used to hearing on terrestrial radio.

James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net (@JamesCridland)

Branded podcasting will grow, as brands begin to understand the power of — literally — word of mouth. We’ll probably hear a little less about SquareSpace, mattresses and meal kits in 2018.

The advent of more metrics should ensure that advertisers begin to take podcasting more seriously. There may, however, be an issue of scale, particularly with host-read advertising.

Courtney Holt, Vice President, Head of Spotify Studios and Video (@mootron)

On the commercial side, Pod will go from still a buzzy platform to one that traditional marketers can see as a viable and predictable way to reach a hard to reach and engaged audience. Those brands who have been early have seen such positive impact but as the format scales, so will the commercial framework and partners.

Matt Turck, CRO of Panoply (@Panoply)

Advertising growth will remain strong. Steady growth will come from the direct response advertising that the business was built on, and should grow 25–40%. Custom podcasts will become a part of many communication plans for larger advertisers, but expect the most significant advertising growth to come from brands. Brands will embrace the quality audience scale and the effectiveness of the medium.

However, the tipping point this year is the data that is now available. Apple’s listener data is a large step forward, and now with the ability to truly target against audience through technology such as Megaphone’s data partnership with Nielsen will allow digital buyers to comfortably recommend podcasts as a medium their clients need to tap into and clients will have what they need to say “heck yes.”

Hernan Lopez, Founder & CEO of Wondery (@hernanlopez)

• Dynamic ad insertion evolves into real time targeting. New data vendors come into the space, expanding targeting capabilities.
• Podcast advertising grows to $350-$400m.

Julie Shapiro — Executive Producer at Radiotopia, Co-founder of Third Coast International Audio Festival (@jatomic)

More consulting agencies and production shops will crop up to accommodate the demand for ever-increasing branded podcasts and celebrity shows.

Pacific Content (@pacificcontent)

Bigger and bigger brands will decide to create original podcasts. Those original podcasts will also become bigger and bigger listener favorites than ever before. And some brands who have been podcasting for a while will take the next big step towards becoming media companies by creating their own podcast and media networks, with multiple shows on multiple platforms.

Prediction #6: New Revenue Streams

Julie Shapiro — Executive Producer at Radiotopia (@jatomic)

More live shows, tours, and podcast festivals will pop up all over the place.

James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net (@JamesCridland)

Podcasts will continue to break through: live shows will continue to add new monetisation options.

Russell Ivanovic, Developer & Co-Founder of Pocket Casts (@rustyshelf)

Authors will continue to push for better and easier ways to monetise their content beyond selling adverts on a 1 to 1 basis. I see a lot of companies coming up with solutions to this problem but very few succeeding at actually moving the needle on this front. I feel that someone will solve this problem in a big way, but my guess is that this is coming coming in 2019/2020 time frame.

Prediction #7: Industry Consolidation & Going Mainstream

Courtney Holt, Vice President, Head of Spotify Studios and Video (@mootron)

It has been great to see the evolutions of this format over the past few years both in terms of distribution opportunities, voice, etc where I finally feel we are in the position to see the format go mass. Some would argue that it has happened but there are still many that see Pods as fringe.

Podcast is the new broadcast, structured for an on demand world where unique and diverse voices can be heard. While we have seen a few break through, I expect this to become more of the norm next year and beyond.

2018 will be the year where context really evolves. As more pods go online and demand goes broader, discovery becomes a key factor in growth.

Russell Ivanovic, Developer & Co-Founder of Pocket Casts (@rustyshelf)

I see a lot of consolidation happening in 2018. Existing bigger players will continue to buy smaller ones at an ever increasing pace. New players will enter with large cheque books and acquire small to medium-sized companies in attempt to gain a foothold. Long story short — a lot of money will be spent by people hoping to dominate the podcasting space in the same way Netflix currently dominates the Television market and YouTube dominates user created online video content.

James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net (@JamesCridland)

There’s no doubt that podcasting is in a bubble at the moment, and while I don’t think it’ll burst in 2018, I suspect we’ll begin to see consolidation in the amount of podcast networks and service companies. This will coincide with Apple’s tardy release of their stats packages, which might shine the light of reality on some producers. This isn’t bad — it’s part of an industry growing up and becoming more serious, and we should embrace the benefits that a slight reset will give.

Erik Diehn, CEO of Midroll Media, (@erikd)

2018 will be the year that “podcasting” stops being special…

…and that’s a good thing. In almost every news story or discussion of podcasting to date, there’s been an unspoken treatment of the medium, presenting it as this odd, unicorn-like beast that exists somewhere outside the rest of the media & entertainment world. That’s cut both ways: to its fans, the medium is unique and different from video, print, music and even audiobooks — indeed, truly special — but to less passionate observers, this outsider status provokes questions about every aspect of our fledgling industry: metrics, actual audience size, sustainability, etc.

Some time in the past few months, we started leaving all that behind. The explosive growth of smart speakers and voice control reinforced the idea that spoken word and human voice is a foundational expressive form. The New York Times proved that a daily news podcast done well can draw enormous numbers of listeners. Crooked Media gave lie to the notion that only conservatives can draw large audiences to political spoken word content. Hits like Missing Richard Simmons and S-Town reminded us that podcasts can draw mainstream attention. Our upcoming podcast with Marvel signaled that this can be a medium for mainstream entertainment IP. And all along, more and more major brands have entered the space, realizing the power of podcast advertising and jumping on board in a big way.

For years, we’ve been asking when podcasts will go mainsteam. Well, that moment has arrived. In 2018, the novelty of the medium will slowly fade, replaced by the novelty delivered by even more new shows, more platforms on which to listen, and better ways to find and discover things that you like. Metrics issues will be tackled in a big way, and we will find ourselves part of significant annual buys from major brands.

Podcasts *are* special; they engage and inform and entertain in a unique and intimate way that other media cannot match. We’ll write about the great new shows we’re producing, and we’ll fight about how we deliver them even more efficiently to millions of new listeners. But “podcasting” as a trendy new media story about a quaint, upstart industry? So last year.

Leslie Merklinger, Senior Director, Audio Innovation at CBC Radio & Audio (@lesliemerklinge) + the CBC Original Podcasts team.

Podcasting inches towards mainstream consumption… just breaking the 30% mark. Those who have listened to a podcast in the last month hover in the mid to higher 20% in Canada and the U.S. We’ll break the 30 threshold…but still have have double digits to go.

Prediction #8: Shifting Distribution Strategies and New Competition for Apple

Max Willens, Reporter at Digiday (@maxwillens)

People talked a lot about discoverability in 2017, but there was little progress made on that front. In 2018, platforms are going to put a lot more energy into it to try and chip away at Apple’s dominance. Pandora, for example, is hoping to build a Music Genome-esque recommendation engine for podcasts and spoken word audio. Apple, in turn, made a defensive acquisition to hold its current market share by buying Pop Up Archive, much the way it bought Lala to protect iTunes’ once-dominant market share for digital music.

Hernan Lopez, Founder & CEO of Wondery (@hernanlopez)

We see more experiments with windowing, bonus content, and other ways to monetize podcasts beyond advertising.

Corey Layton, Content and Marketing Director at Whooshkaa (@coreylayton)

Who will have the one cross platform app to rule them all? Expect to see Spotify and Google take a bite out of the Apple.

James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net (@JamesCridland)

Apple might get serious about podcasting — fixing the issues with the new Apple Podcasts app, and making a companion app for Android, the most popular operating system in the world. Their track record with media is woeful, however: Beats 1 is a forgotten vanity project, and many parts of the Apple Podcasts store haven’t been updated in over eighteen months. Recent acquisitions (Shazam, Pop Up Archive) point to a new focus, perhaps.

More Questions Than Answers

And finally, from one of the smartest people in the industry, a list of questions instead of predictions:

Jason Hoch, Head of New Initiatives at How Stuff Works (@starexplorer)

Instead of plowing head-first into a series of impossible to know predictions, I’ve compiled a series of questions hanging out there in Podcast Land that I’d like to see answered in 2018. By any measure, 2017 was a huge year for podcasts, as pretty much any metric you can think about grew in this hot medium.

What Do You Think?

Thanks to all of this year’s prognosticators! Did we miss any big trends for 2018? Do you agree or disagree with any of the big predictions? We would love to hear your thoughts.

Sign up for the Pacific Content Newsletter: audio strategy, analysis, and insight in your inbox. Once a week.