Podcasting in Canada is growing. This is something we talk about a lot in the industry, but it’s easy to lose perspective on what that growth really looks like when you’re focused on the year-over-year growth of monthly listening.
We started tracking Canadian podcast listening in 2017 with The Canadian Podcast Listener, currently the longest-running and most comprehensive look at the country’s podcast landscape. Since then we’ve seen listening hit a lot of milestones, but by focusing on the monthly, weekly and daily reach percentage of podcasts, it’s easy to lose sight of just how many people those percentages reflect.
And that growth represents a lot of people in Canada, especially during a period when the country is experiencing significant population growth. In the past five years, we’ve seen the incidence of monthly podcast listening in Canada rise from 26% of Canadian adults to 39%. Combine that with the population surge, and there are 5.1 million more monthly podcast listeners in Canada now than there were just before we headed into the COVID-19 pandemic.
For perspective, that’s a group larger than the adult population of Norway!
While podcasts are becoming more mainstream, podcast listeners still represent an attractive target for advertisers; they are younger (Index 165 – 18-34) more affluent (Index 114 – HHI $100k+) and more educated (Index 126 – university educated) than the average Canadian adult, making them a group with high purchasing power now, and a long runway for becoming long-time customers.
In general, we know that podcast listeners are more receptive to the ads on podcasts than on other channels, being less likely to skip podcast ads, and most likely to assign positive attributes to advertising on podcasts.
Those extra five million podcast listeners mean more brands will be (or should be) looking to reach this receptive audience.
That in turn means more advertising dollars to make podcasting a more viable business model for creators. Podcasting has a low financial barrier to entry, but it requires a substantial investment of time, effort and patience to achieve success. With a greater potential to earn a living, new voices should be entering the space and making that investment. Four of the top 10 podcasts in this year’s Canadian Podcast Listener started as indie podcasts, and while not every new podcast will become the next Call Her Daddy or Canadian True Crime, new voices have the potential to bring in new listeners, and further grow the podcasting pie.
Fueled by a combination of population growth and a growing audience that is receptive to podcast advertising, podcasting in Canada is experiencing a positive feedback loop and the promise of greater opportunities ahead. And of course, The Canadian Podcast Listener will be there to help the industry make the most of them.
Learn more about The Canadian Podcast Listener and get a free copy of our summary report, with additional profile info on the podcast audience, consumption data, and more.
