Apple and Spotify recently opened the door to helping podcasters set up paid subscriptions on their platforms. Meanwhile, though it went largely under the radar on this side of the ocean, Bauer Media in the UK rolled out a paid subscription package for radio, offering super fans of its Scala Radio, Jazz FM, Planet Rock […]
What Kind of Audio Will Listeners Pay to Subscribe to? Read More »
Part of the podcast explosion of the past few years has been the rise of branded podcasts. Done right, branded podcasts can be incredibly powerful. Not only do podcasts reach young, affluent consumers who favour ad-free content, but no other form of content marketing can deliver the deep engagement of podcasting and keep the audience
3 Lessons We’ve Learned from Top-Testing Branded Podcasts Read More »
One of the biggest challenges facing podcasting is discovery. It cuts both ways. Where can podcast listeners go to find their next great obsession? And, if you’re a podcaster, how do you get your podcast discovered among the 2 million or so podcasts crowding the playing field? We put our microscope on this a few
One in Two Million: How Listeners Discover New Podcasts Read More »
How Customization Adds Value to a Brand Lift Study In civil engineering surveys, benchmarks (like the one above) provide a reference point from which other measurements can be taken. These are often quite literally set in stone because their value derives from being a static, unchanging point of comparison. Market research surveys
Survey Benchmarks are Only the Beginning Read More »
Over the past few decades, audio has been used mainly as a tactical tool to drive immediate sales. And for some very good reasons. Radio serves as the last mile in reaching drivers in their cars or trucks who are about to make a purchase. Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer brands have had great success with host-read ads
Hear That? It’s the Sound of Audio Building Brands Read More »
As we look towards 2021 with a big sigh of relief, it feels like a good time to look back at 2020. As traumatic as 2020 has been, it was also a year of change for audio. Stay-at-home orders disrupted our lives and shook up the habits around the soundtrack that accompanies our lives. Commute
8 Things We Learned from Our Audio Research in 2020 Read More »
Every year when we dig into the findings from the latest Canadian Podcast Listener study we see some fascinating changes in how people are listening to podcasts. This year, in our 4th annual study, we couldn’t help noticing how different the most popular podcasts are from what we saw in our first study back in 2017. As
Podcasts for the People: the Growing Variety of Podcast Content Read More »
There are hundreds of thousands of active podcasts. That’s a whole lot of podcasts. And they come in all shapes and sizes. So why is it that there are so many podcasts, but only two basic types of podcast ads: the host-read ad and the announcer-read ad? With so many podcasters striving to put their
Do Podcast Ads All Have to Sound So Much Alike? Read More »
It all started with streaming. Then podcasts. Now Spotify is setting its sights on radio. In case you missed it, on October 14 the streaming giant took another big step in their master plan to dominate all things audio. Using Anchor, the podcast-creation app they picked up in early 2019, creators can now mix talk
Spotify’s Latest Move: Not Your Father’s Radio Read More »
It’s the curse of being a researcher. Our clients often ask us what’s going to happen in the future. But the truth is that researchers have a limited perspective: we see things through more of a rear-view mirror than a crystal ball. At best, we can look at what just happened, review findings from other
Polishing the Crystal Ball for the Future of Audio Read More »