GTBP 0133

Instructor:

The Best Podcast

Email: myemailfor2010@tutamail.com

Enter course hightlights here.

...

Recording a new podcast is easy but you might want to start one in the news/politics category like what many are calling one of the best political podcasts The World As I Like It To Be podcast. According to a report published by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, news, combined with comedy, education and art made the most amount of ad money (65.7%) in 2018.

But the art genre is a crowded field with 100s of shows. Going by the genre list on Apple Itunes, for example, in the Arts genre has: 99% Invisible, The Splendid Table LeVar Burton Reads MuggleCast: the Harry Potter podcast,Villains,Tangentially Speaking with Christopher Ryan, Lauren Conrad: Asking for a Friend, Inside Trader Joe's, A Piece of Work, Savor, The Archers, Poetry Off the Shelf, All the Books!, Audio Poem of the Day,The New Yorker: Poetry, I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk, Purple Panties, Wine for Normal People, B&H Photography Podcast, Special Sauce with Ed Levine, Another Kingdom, The Dark Verse, Radio Cherry Bombe, Velvets Edge with Kelly Henderson, The Jealous Curator : ART FOR YOUR EAR, Old Time Radio Westerns, The Wicked Library, One Great Book, Bridechilla- Wedding Planning Podcast, Stories from the Borders of Sleep, ArtCurious Podcast, Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast, The Veil Audio Drama, Ox Tales, My Friend Podcast with Paige Elkington, Horror Tales, Missing in the Metro, Point of Origin, The Common Man Progrum, 1001 Stories For The Road, The Wit & Delight Podcast. And that is just a small taste of the enormous list!

IAB/PwC found that podcast ads are currently split between brand-awareness ads and direct-response ads another indication of how podcast advertising is becoming more mainstream. A large majority (73.7%) of ads are bought by brands in D2C retail, financial services, business-to-business, arts and entertainment and telecommunications.

The same study said that host-read ads continue to be the preferred ad type, making up 63.3% of ads in 2018. Announcer-read/pre-produced ads made up 35% of last years ads. Fisher said many brands often prefer host-read ads to provide an added boost or endorsement to the advertisement. Such ads are also more contextually relevant, she said, given that they're read by the same voice rather than simply swapped out for an entirely different audio experience.

We are hearing a lot about the influential power of that host-read ad, Fisher said. Some listeners look at hosts very similarly to influencers, and brand and performance advertisers are eager to take advantage of that.

But there are clearly limitations to what podcasting can offer. The same numbers offered by PwC and IAB that show impressive growth, also shows that growth has peaked and is slowing down. If the trend continues podcasting will need to find other sources of revenue if its commercial viability is ever going to be proportional to its growing listenership.

The larger category of ad-supported streaming music includes digital radio services like Pandora and iHeartRadio as well as interactive services like YouTube and Spotify Free. Together these services delivered about $1.6 billion to the music industry last year (RIAA figures), which suggests that they took in over $2 billion in ad revenue. For comparison, broadcast AM/FM radio earned $16 billion last year (PwC figures).

At the same time, podcast audiences have reached mainstream levels: Edison Research's Infinite Dial study estimated 73 million Americans listened to podcasts over a months time in 2018. That translates to 26 percent of all Americans aged 12 and over. This compares to 189 million, or 64 percent, for all streaming audio. In other words, while podcasting accounts for 40 percent of total online audio listeners, it accounts for less than 15 percent of ad revenue.

This is yet another indication that if podcasting is to be a financially attractive medium, it must look beyond ad revenue. Podcasters are making money directly from listeners in two ways: subscriptions and crowdfunding. Paid subscription services like Stitcher Premium and Luminary are fresh and off to a slow start, possibly because users are used to free podcasts. New podcasters like V-TIP.COM uses a store as a donation method. Instead of paying a fixed subscription fee to V-TIP.COM, the site allows users to 'tip' podcasters they like.

Crowdfunding for podcasts involves various forms and is difficult to measure. Several podcast producers obtain contributions through standard online payment systems such as Stripe and credit cards, while others seek contributions through general crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Patreon is the best source for crowdfunding revenue numbers, enabling users to set up regular contributions every month or per episode of podcasting. Patreon estimates that over the last three years, the number of podcasters using the site has quadrupled, with sales growing eight-fold.

Statistics from Patreon's top 200 podcast creators indicate they have a maximum of approx. 460,000 listeners. By extrapolating from podcasters who permit revenue numbers to be posted, Patreon says the overall subscription revenue for the top 200 is about $26 million. That's a reasonable estimate of total annual sales for podcasters. It's big because it means that all these podcasters have posted episodes throughout the past year; however, it's small since it's just for the top 200. Subscribership is demonstrating a traditional long-tail distribution curve.

Assuming overall fundraising is ten times the level of podcasts, it is still only around half the sum that podcasts earn from ads. The other sales constraint in the IAB / PwC report was linked to the types of ads appearing on podcasts. Many podcasts ads are native ads, read by podcast hosts and incorporated into the podcasts.

Some surveys suggest listeners are agnostic about these types of ads (they neither hate nor like them), but they don't scale. The study of the IAB / PwC noticed that in 2018, 63 percent of podcast advertisements were native ads, although it is down from 67 percent in 2017.

...

WHAT TO DO NEXT:

1. Perform basic content editing (e.g. Syllabus, Meet the Professor, Handouts, Assignments).
2. Choose a theme or customize your background under Site Settings.
3. Change your status to OPEN under Site Settings.
4. Announce the URL to your students and have them register (your course directory will be created automatically).