Look, I get it. Shows like Diary of a CEO, The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy, and Smartless are topping the charts. It’s easy for marketers to see this and make the leap that video-first, chat-style podcasts are the golden format for success. But here’s the thing: this format might be working for these shows (often hosted by celebrities or influencers, backed by large production teams). But it’s not necessarily the right format for brands. 

Back in 2023, I wrote about some key data from Signal Hill Insights demonstrating that narrative podcasts tend to perform better for brands when it comes to driving brand lift. Since writing that piece, the push for chat-style shows and video-first podcasts has only increased, even when it comes at the expense of potential success for brands (it’s almost like all these people never read my blog… sigh). 

So I felt like it was time to write another post, this time diving into some data around video. I’ll share how I’m interpreting this data, and how I’m using it to provide insights and strategy to our clients. 

The Confusion Around Video and YouTube Metrics

When we talk about “video podcasts,” of course we also inevitably end up talking about YouTube: people often conflate “podcasts on YouTube” with “video podcasts”. There’s a lot of overlap here, sure, but we need to be careful to be very specific about what we’re talking about here. 

One of the biggest headlines in recent podcast history was YouTube surpassing Spotify and Apple Podcasts as the number one platform used for podcast consumption. (According to the latest Edison research, 31% of weekly podcast consumers in the U.S. age 13 and up prefer YouTube, compared to 27% on Spotify and 15% on Apple Podcasts). This is, of course, huge news, and we certainly need to take note! But there’s also important nuance to consider here.

Virtually all other podcast platforms are audio-only or audio-first (I say this acknowledging that Spotify is making moves to be video-forward, but is still primarily an audio platform). Taking this into consideration, let’s look at this data again. This means that, put another way, only 31% of consumption is happening on a video platform. That’s less than a third of consumption happening on a video-first platform, and more than two-thirds of consumption happening audio-only. Is it really the mandate for video podcasts that we’ve made it out to be? 

Now we also have to take into consideration the conflation between YouTube and video watching. Consuming podcasts on YouTube does not necessarily mean people are sitting and watching entire full-length video episodes. In fact, only roughly a third of YouTube podcast consumers report actively watching the video while listening. The other two-thirds report minimizing the screen or consuming audio-only podcasts on YouTube. (Full-length podcast episodes can easily be distributed on YouTube with simple static images or animated audiograms, which is how the majority of podcasts are using YouTube currently.) 

So, when we zoom out and look at this data in total, the number of people actually watching those full-length video episodes shrinks considerably. And that leads us to an important question for brands: Is it really worth the extra resources and the limitations around podcast formats that come with producing full-length video episodes, for such a small percentage of podcast consumers? 

Let’s Get Audience-Specific

So far, most of my insights have been broad, relating to all podcast consumers. But we’re here to talk about brand podcasting. So let’s get into the research around audience-specific consumption. 

It can be really confusing to parse through all of the different research and put it into context to understand what’s relevant for your specific audience. As an example, I’m going to dive into the latest study from Sounds Profitable, The Business Podcast Consumer. Many of our clients are in the B2B space, producing “Business” podcasts aimed at business professionals. So this study definitely holds some relevance! But one piece of data was causing some confusion amongst our team. 

Based on this slide, it would make sense for our clients to start leaning in even harder to YouTube and video. But we need to dig a little deeper to better understand this data. 

This study was conducted on people who consume Business podcasts. That might seem niche, but actually, we’re still talking about a relatively large and diverse group. This category includes shows about entrepreneurship, personal finance, or just general “hustle culture”. Take a look at the Business charts in Apple Podcasts U.S.

Some of these shows are certainly designed to attract a B2B audience, business leaders or executives. But a lot of these shows are actually reaching a totally different audience. If you’re a marketer looking to reach business decision makers, are they really the folks listening to podcasts about budgeting or building side hustles? (Or, let me get specific here– are they really listening to The Diary of a CEO?) Maybe. But probably not. I think it’s safe to assume that the podcast consumption habits of someone looking to level up their side hustle or build a monthly budget would be quite different from the consumption habits of a powerful executive. So while this data is valuable in giving us more insight into a smaller segment of podcast consumers, it’s still not quite niche enough to convince me we should be making a huge pivot in our overall strategy. 

And how do I know it’s not niche enough? Well, in this case, we do actually have more information about the consumption habits of the more niche audience segment that we care about– Signal Hill Insights has studied the consumption habits of Senior Business Executives  specifically. And this data tells us a different story. 

According to this research, Senior Business Executives are much less likely to consume their podcasts on YouTube (only 18% prefer YouTube, compared to 24% for Spotify and 23% for Apple Podcasts). This preference makes a lot of sense when we dig deeper into when this group is often consuming podcasts. Executives are more likely to listen while commuting by car (68% as opposed to just 44% of total podcast consumers), while traveling by plane (29% versus 13%), or while working out (51% versus 31%). 

Senior Business Executives are busy. It makes sense they’d appreciate podcasts for their ability to allow multitasking. But multitasking does not mesh with video-watching.

It should also help us contextualize the data above around consumers of Business podcasts. Perhaps our actual target demographic makes up a smaller percentage of total Business podcast consumers than we think. Or perhaps the rest of the group consuming Business podcasts are even more likely to consume podcasts on YouTube than the average population, and the opposite data from the two groups is averaging out (this wouldn’t totally surprise me– personal finance and hustle culture content is very well-suited to YouTube and video consumption). 

The Bottom Line: Know Your Target Audience

Overall, this serves as an important reminder to make sure you really get to know your target audience when developing your podcast strategy. And it should also remind us to ensure we understand the methodology and context behind the studies we’re consuming before making big changes to our strategies.

It’s important to understand broad trends, but even more important to understand how your specific audience behaves. Video is important, but it should be a strategic decision, not a knee-jerk reaction to trends.

Part of my job is parsing through this data, and understanding what it means for our clients. Sometimes it means we need to pivot our strategy dramatically– but not always. Every client has unique challenges and unique needs, meaning we need to develop unique strategies. Hopefully this helps give some insight into how we’re thinking about video for our clients, as more and more questions on the subject arise.

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