Podcast Predictions: Looking Ahead to 2018 - The Podcast Report

Podcast consumption's not broken. It's just getting better. Now the smart speakers are helping, but that's all part of the podcast thing. Podcast isn't broken, and it's very, very cool. You are listening to the Podcast Report with Paul Colligan. Here's Paul. It's always fun to close up the year with a podcast prediction show. This is Paul Culligan from the podcast. We'll look at last year's predictions, we'll look ahead, we'll look at what happened. But of course, as always, I would love to hear what you think, but before we do that, the tip of the week. I'm always surprised at people who contact me. 200, 300. I've even had someone contact me a thousand episodes in and go, yeah, well, how do I monetize this thing now? Fact of the matter is, in podcasting, it's always going to be easier to see if your podcast monetization plan works than try to make a plan fit into it. After it's been done, before you launch your show, or before you launch season two or season three or whatever's next, figure out a monetization plan, go to that plan, and then test to see if that plan is working. It's better to change an existing plan than it is to figure out one halfway through. Be smart, do it right, and you'll have a monetization plan that works for you. It's podcast predictions time. Looking ahead to 2018 did pretty well with last year's predictions, and gosh darn it, I think I'm going to do better with next year's predictions. A lot happening, a lot going on. Let's chat. First, last year's predictions. Number one, no new podcast consumption models in 2017 because podcast doesn't need fixing. Yep, that didn't happen. Nothing new happened. Now Anchor popped up and Anchor tried to take over podcasting. That lasted for about three days. Then Anchor became a really not so decent podcast platform. It was pretty and it was cute, and a lot of people who heading for the shiny thing went with the shiny thing for a couple of weeks and then pretty much everybody's gone back to the normal situation. Podcast consumption's not broken. It's just getting better. Now. The smart speakers are helping, but that's all part of the podcast thing. No new consumption paradigms in 2017. You know what? I don't think we're going to see any new consumption paradigms in 2018 either. Podcast isn't broken and it's very, very cool. Okay, I said also Last year that at least one number one show would have no ad insertions. There are other models. Podcasting isn't just about throwing an ad in there. And it's funny because as I was doing my research for this, I looked at the number one podcast on iTunes. The number one podcast, and it's Duolingo, Spanish podcast. Duolingo has the software. Now they've got the podcast. It makes sense. People doing podcasts about their products instead of doing ads for someone else is the monetization model. That is so cool. So many of my clients do that. Some of the most powerful and most certainly most profitable podcasts do that. It's neat to see. It's not always that easy to prove that you were right. But there we go. Duolingo. Good job. Everybody else think about ad insertions. It's not the only model out there. The last prediction I made for 2017 was that there would be a new a new tool set from itunes but nothing from Google. Well, look at this. Apple has to to keep their lead. Google just doesn't care. That was my prediction last year and boy did we see that. Bam. Stats from itunes. Fabulous stuff. A lot of people have chatted about it and we will chat about it soon. I will give you some insight in what we're doing with our clients, but the fact of the matter is Apple introduced it. Nobody saw it coming. I actually gave out an audible yelp when they announced it at the conference this year. I was watching the stream. I wasn't in the room or anything, don't worry about that. But it's good to go. Google crickets stays Crickets. I don't know what they're doing with podcasting. It was interesting in podcast movement this year when I spoke to these smart speakers. Guy came up to me, grilled me a lot about what my take was on Google, what I knew about Google Now. I signed an NDA for a non disclosure agreement with Google over a decade ago that expired seven years later. They were chatting about podcasting back then. That's all I know. But anyway, this guy asked me a lot of questions. I and what was interesting at the end, I said, why are you so curious? He said, I'm from Google. Which I thought was fun. I said, give me your card. He said, nope, but I'll take your card. Haven't heard since. Google is just crickets in this space now they got video. They're doing that well. And gosh darn it, their smart speaker is still technology wise, it's better than the Amazon Alexa but there we go. I got that one as well. So I got my three predictions from last year. Very happy with those. If you think I am overthinking myself or over congratulating myself, I would love to hear thepodcastreport.com 134 or any of the regular social media places to chat about that. But let's take the predictions for next year like last year. I have three and I think they're going to be. Well, I don't think I know they're going to come true. I don't know, let's admit it. I think we have a good chance. I know that we have a good chance. I feel that we have a good chance. I of these coming true in 2018 and they are important. Number one, minimal if any embracing of the new itunes tags from the other players now. From the other players, I mean the other platforms, I mean the googles, the stitchers, the spreakers of the world. I don't see them embracing the tags now. I don't think that's a good idea. I think they should embrace the tags. I think the tags make podcasting a lot more powerful. But I don't think they're going to embrace hoping that it goes away. This will delay growth in this a little bit. This will retard growth in this a little bit. But eventually they're going to have to deal with Apple. Apple is coming back for this one and I think it's pretty big. So prediction number one, minimal if any embracing of the new itunes tags from the other players. Number two, I think we're going to see something else unexpected from Apple. The attention, the focus from Apple that went into building the new mothership, the new office that's gone away. The watch is doing well. IPhone X is doing well. We're going to get some attention. You can just see inside of Apple that they are dreaming up some stuff and they've got a new focus, they've got a new attention to itunes and it's really cool to watch. These stats are pretty fantastic again, we'll hit that in the future. I expect. One more thing that we didn't see coming from them. I don't predict anybody else doing anything that big. I don't see stitcher changing. I don't see spreaker changing. I don't see Google changing. I don't see tunein changing that much. I think everybody's kind of stuck in the format. I think itunes will introduce something else and then I think the players then will have to decide do what we want to play in that world. Do we want to try to go with our own? I don't think, yeah, Apple's at a really good place right now. They cemented it and they went from there. The last thing that I'm going to predict, and this isn't necessarily going to be the longest episode, but it's a fun way to start out the year. I think we're going to see in 2018 our first video podcast hit. Now, in the early days of video podcasting, we actually probably saw some in the normal hit sense of the word, tiki bar, TV rocket, boom, these types. And kids, if you haven't been in podcasting for over 5, 6 years, you can look these up in Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, we'll put some links to these in the show notes@the podcastreport.com 134but there has never really been, or there has not been in the last five years or so a real certified hit. And there certainly hasn't been anything the size of, you know, the serials or the NPR's of the world. I think we'll see this year a video podcasting hit. And when I went to VidSummit this year, the presentation was on moving your video podcast, moving your YouTube show to a video podcast. A lot of interest might come from the YouTube space, it might come from a larger media space, it might come from some interesting places. I think you'll see video integrating into the screens a lot easier. I think the Amazon Alexa, I don't want to say her name out loud or else she'll start talking to us during the middle of this podcast. I think the show version of that product has made video podcasting interesting. But I think this year we'll see our first video podcast hit. So again, the three for the year, minimal, if any. Embracing the new itunes tags from the other players, something else unequivocally expected from Apple. The first video podcast hit. Those are my predictions for 2018. We're closing up for the year. Thanks for being a listener. Appreciate you. 2018 is going to be huge and you're going to be part of it. Bye. Short, sweet, simple, but I like it that way. These are the big predictions. We'd love to hear what you think. ThePodcastReport.com Twitter the PodcastReport.com Facebook of course. ThePodcastReport.com 134 for this episode would be the perfect way to discuss the predictions. Do you have any of your own I want to hear soon. 2018 is going to be a fantastic year. 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