As the podcasting industry continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, we asked many of the smartest people in the industry where they think things are headed in 2017. Here’s your exclusive peek into the near-future of podcasting from the best in the biz…

Bryan Moffett — COO, National Public Media

The explosion of spoken-word content will accelerate, from new podcasts to new content efforts aimed at devices like Alexa and Google Home. I suspect there will be a good bit of pruning done in 2017 by publishers and producers as audiences splinter between so many offerings.

Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home will create more listening opportunities by reducing the friction between us and the content we want to hear, and being present in more places.

Podcast advertising will keep up its hectic growth and brand marketers will find familiar value in delivering the right messages to the right audiences in an intimate format. Dynamic insertion will become the norm, without causing an apocalypse or losing that special “podcast sound” for publishers who put the proper care into their production.

Matt Turck — Chief Revenue Officer, Panoply

Podcast listener audience will continue to grow at a rapid pace as it moves more mainstream from an early adopter audience; thus, attracting more traditional advertisers to test and take advantage of the medium. Technology will help spur this on, especially with ease of use in car technology and growth on the Android platform. That said, Apple will continue to dominate the space.

Traditional advertisers will experiment with custom podcasts, allowing them to intimately connect with their users and prospects. Performance based advertisers will continue as lead advertisers with their history and knowledge of what works. The top shows have sold out or will sell out quickly, but fortunately with audience and show growth, there should be adequate inventory for all advertisers to take advantage of pods. Combined we will see ad revenue, minimally, double.

Finally, the technology leaders will emerge from the pack, providing more data and analytics, as well as more sophisticated and efficient ways to invest in the space. 2017 is going to be a humdinger of a year…strap in.

Matt Lieber — Co-founder / President, Gimlet Media

2017 is the year voice interaction begins its march toward becoming ubiquitously available in every digital service. Internet connected speakers and microphones will become available all around us at all times- in our kitchens, our cars, our wireless earbuds.

This will open new distribution channels for podcasts, but more interesting will be the new interactive formats that are made possible. Choose your own adventure. Play along quiz shows. Voice dating apps!

Yes, we’ll see growth in listening to podcasts through our smartphone screens. But with the deployment of platforms like Alexa and Google Home, talking to our devices will begin to be a default mode of navigating and understanding the wider world around us.

Leslie Merklinger, Arif Noorani and Lindsay Michael — Podcasting and New Programs, CBC Radio

• The podcasting tent gets bigger…much bigger. Following the model of decentralized tv (think of the range from HBO to online indie video series), you’ll have everything from big-budget, highly-produced offerings to smaller, hyper-local/niche offerings that tap into specific audiences. More traditional broadcasters, newspapers and media companies will continue getting in the game…as will on-the-ground creative types led by passion and will. As will celebrities (and other high-profile folks) who want to extend their brand.
• With success comes competition. Podcasters may not continue to play well with others. Tensions will emerge around discovery and marketing (getting noticed). As the field gets crowded by podcasts with deep pockets (who can buy the Facebook ads, spend money on podcast cross-promotion, lure the name talents), the challenge will grow for quality podcasts who have less resources to get noticed. Will the result be increased audiences for all as more people turn to podcasts… or will dominant players overshadow others? (Nick Quah examines the discovery challenge in his insightful HotPod newsletter.)
• More formats. As creators/broadcasters are looking to grow their podcast offering — and generate international hits — we may see repeatable, audience-friendly formats begin to emerge into the once freewheeling and casual space, joining the more experimental and host-driven content. The result? Like TV, more genres will emerge — talk shows, reality/social experiment formats (Sleepover was modelled on that idea), game shows, entertainment programs, investigative series, etc.
• More and bigger advertisers. As more and more have moved away from traditional TV, we will start to see bigger brands turn their attention (and ad dollars) towards reaching target audiences through podcasts. Metrics must improve to maximize this however — rich data on audience is a must for advertisers here.
• We stop calling them podcasts. As content moves across platforms in an increasingly nimble way, terms like ‘radio’ and ‘podcast’ shift to describe modes of delivery and AUDIO emerges as the term to describe the content itself. We become increasingly comfortable with the concept that an idea is at the centre of all programming, and the creative process evolves into translating and expressing that idea on various platforms (radio, podcasting, video, etc).

Steve Henn — Co-Founder, 60dB

Terrestrial Radio is still enormous — 93% of Americans tune in each week. In comparison “podcasts” are tiny. But over the next five years I’m betting digital listening is going to explode.

Today computing is at the very beginning of the next big change — voice. Amazon’s Echo, Google Home, and Siri are simple, imperfect computers you can talk to. They’re often frustrating, but they’re getting better fast. Millions of us finally have computers in our homes and pockets that work pretty well when our eyes and hands aren’t otherwise busy. These new platforms are going to compete for the time in your life when you can’t look at a screen. They are going to be there when your eyes and hands ARE busy.

And the first killer apps in this space will look a lot like an intelligent, thoughtful radio — a radio station tuned to your interests, a station that knows who you are and listens.

What does this mean for makers and producers — all my friends and colleagues who do great work? I think that there are going to be new ways to tell stories and build audiences. Not every killer show will need to be 20 minutes long.

Sarah van Mosel — Chief Podcast Sales and Strategy Officer, Market Enginuity

• Branded Breaks Through. More and more brands want to tell their own story in their own words, not as an advertisement, but as engaging content. They’ll need to find an audience for this content, so you’ll see more and more audio in social and more cross promotion of branded content in existing podcasts with significant audiences.
• Quality Counts. With countless shows launching every day in podcastland, discovery will become even more challenging. Quality content will stand out and rise to the top and the 80/20 rule will no doubt apply. As mainstream brands continue to make their way into the podcast space, brand safe, high-quality content will eat up the lion’s share of the ad revenue.
• Diminished Direct Response. This category of advertiser has nurtured the podcast community for the past several years, but challenges will continue to emerge as dynamic ad insertion becomes the norm and the tried and true ways of measuring effectiveness become obsolete. Direct response advertisers will have to battle with brand advertisers for inventory on in-demand shows driving up CPMs for branded content and host-read ads while dynamically inserted, produced ads will see diminishing CPMs in the coming year.
• Programmatic Comes To Podcast-land. As early as Q1 2017, we’ll start to see some of the larger podcast networks follow in NPR’s footsteps and make their inventory available to the larger programmatic trading desks. The key to not “breaking” the podcast user experience is to be sure the creative community is developing ad creative with podcasts in mind.

Alex Loomis — CMO & VP of Content Development, Otto Radio

The biggest issue facing podcasters in 2017 AD will be the same one faced by storytellers in 2017 BC — finding an audience.

To be sure, there are plenty of of high-tech, highfalutin problems facing podcasting like monetization, standardization, and corporatization, but the biggest challenge is still finding listeners who love what you have to say. Let’s call this primary issue “discoverability.”

If you don’t believe “discoverability” is the #1 problem facing podcasting today, let’s have a look at some other numbers:

• # of podcasts launched in 2016 > 75,000
• # of active podcasts in the world = 185,000
• # of podcasts subscriptions in iTunes = 1,000,000,000,000+

The vast majority of podcasts are “discovered” on iTunes. But as one anonymous podcaster said to me,

“Finding a podcast on iTunes is like walking into a library that has dumped all of their books into a pile on the floor.”

Great for the established brands and sponsored recommendations.

Terrible for listeners — terrible for podcasters — terrible for “discoverability.”

Truth is we’ve reached a saturation point. The top 25 podcasts on iTunes are producing more minutes of content each day than there is time to listen to them. Which means if we cling to the subscription model, you can’t listen to something without not listening to something else.

Podcasters should be stealing ear-time from radio, not from each other. Podcasting represents the richest audio storytelling ever created, but the industry won’t grow beyond this saturation point until listeners can “discover” new shows about the things they love as easily as turning on a radio.

“Discoverability” and the platforms that enable it — there’s a winning trend for podcasting in 2017.

Mike Jensen — VP Business Development, Midroll / Stitcher

We have seen tremendous growth in great story telling via podcasts the past 2 years, with podcast listening now having a mainstream listening audience.

In 2017, I see further expansion of high-quality production podcasts and more choices in the form of “snackable” content in 60 mins or less episode formats in multiple genres of listening. In essence, on-demand audio or podcasts provide mainstream listeners a new “AM”, but with many additional choices.

I see continued rapid growth of brand marketers purchasing both in-show sponsorships, and in select cases powering great audio content they desire to align in the form of brand sponsored podcasts.

Roddy Swearngin — EVP of Content, Art19

Podcasting is entering its teen years so expect some growing pains. Maybe a little voice cracking. So much has happened over the past few years in the industry it’s hard to imagine that we could still be on the precipice of major shifts, but we are.

This year will bring more technologies to the space. API listening and measurement will complement the basic download data that RSS has provided since podcasting’s inception. Combined with dynamic ad insertion, geo-targeting, and ad trafficking tools, even more advertisers will find podcasting. More money will lead to more high quality content and traditional media companies entering the space. There will be big swings and big misses leading to competition, acquisitions, and cancellations, more maturing.

Apps for beginning podcasters, a multitude of social sharing options, and social products like Facebook Live Audio will get more people creating and consuming audio content. And while I don’t see them transforming the industry just yet, Connected Cars and Home Automation products like Alexa will continue to chip away at the percentage of unfound ears.

All in all, it’s amazing to be able to look back at where we came from, where we are and still be excited about where we are going. Lots of fun to be had.

And, as passionate podcasters ourselves, here are our Pacific Content podcasting predictions for 2017:

• Podcast Quality. Quality will increasingly become a differentiator for listeners, forcing all podcast producers to up their games and make incredibly compelling shows.Increased competition also means podcast producers will be forced to take more risks and double-down on their creativity to be successful. There will also be more experimentation with show formats this year, including a lot more short-form content designed for algorithmic playlisting on platforms like 60dB and Otto Radio.
• Distribution Evolves. There will be a great deal of experimentation with Facebook Live Audio when it becomes public, as podcast producers attempt to be early adopters in the next potential gold-rush consumption platform for audio. Audible Channels will have a breakout hit show in 2017 as they seek to become the Netflix of audio. Amazon’s Echo or Google Home will feature the launch of interactive podcasts. And finally, Apple will shift more listening to streaming (instead of downloads) and as a result, provide significantly deeper analytics to podcast producers.
• Branded Podcast & Advertising. Bigger and more diverse brands will enter podcasting this year, both as advertisers and as original content creators. In 2017, a branded podcast will become a hit show with audience numbers and engagement comparable to any top original series supported by advertising.

2017 is going to be a big, defining year for the industry of podcasting and we’re excited to be a part of the evolution.

What did we miss? Any big podcast predictions you think should be added to the list?

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