The ability for consumers to pay for ad-free content is certainly not new, HBO being one legacy example. Now, with paid streaming services such as Spotify doing to the audio landscape what Netflix has done to movies and TV, the available options for advertisers to reach consumers of on-demand content are becoming more scarce.
In The Canadian Podcast Listener 2019 , one of the insights we uncovered was that podcasts can help fill that gap. The consumers who are opting-out of advertising on digital, on-demand platforms are more likely to be podcast listeners than those accessible through traditional media.
That creates a unique opportunity for engagement. The most important similarity between podcasts and other paid audio and video streaming services is that users freely pick and choose the content they want, when they want it. They’re not making a compromise choice of the best show on TV at that moment or flipping around to find the best song on the radio. They’re diving headlong into content that means the most to them personally. In the case of podcasts, they’re choosing from more than a million podcasts. Between paid music streaming, audiobooks, paid streaming video and podcasts, only podcasts are available to advertisers looking to reach consumers when they are so deeply engaged.
The Canadian Podcast Listener Study is co-published by Signal Hill Insights and Ulster Media, with support from The Podcast Exchange (TPX). Results are based on online surveys using a market representative sample of more than 4,500 Canadian adults from Maru Voice Canada. A free summary report of top-line findings from this year’s study is available here.
