Thoughts On The infinite Dial 2017 Report - The Podcast Report

How does the smart podcaster respond to The Infinite Dial 2017 numbers? It's the podcast report, episode 122. Show notes, links, conversation and more@thepodcastreport.com 1, 2, 2. What is the Infinite Dial report and why does it matter? You can either head out to edisonresearch.com infinite-dial 2017 to get the report, or you can head out to the podcastreport.com 122 and I've got a link to the article and slides as well. Disclosure the Infinite Dial is put on by Edison Research. One of the major elements of this is Tom Webster from Edison Research. I like Tom Webster. I consider Tom Webster to be a friend, definitely an associate. And the fact of the matter is I'm a fan of the company and, and I'm a fan of what they're doing and some could say that that prejudices my presentation, but hopefully you'll see here that that isn't the case. I think the Infinite Dial is incredibly important to podcasters as we make the transition into this niche space, into the mainstream, and I'm really excited about it. Before we go any further, this episode of the Podcast Report is brought to you by how to Podcast Training. Who else wants a masterclass in podcast training? Find more@howtopodcasttraining.com the Infinite Dial is a fantastic study done with real study methodology done by a company who does this for a living. Look up Edison Research, look up Triton, look up these guys, and you'll find that these are not the random blogger who put up a survey at their website, or someone who asked five of their friends, or even worse, you know, an organization with a specific tech or specific message to sell. This is real research done by real research agencies to get us some real numbers and some real information. And if you open up the slides and you look right to slide number three, you'll see these are real. This is real work. 2,000 people in a national telephone survey, landline, cell phone, English, Spanish, data weighted to 12 plus population figures. This is the type of statistical sampling that gets you real numbers. Now, I'm not a numbers guy. I did have a political science degree and I did take a couple of classes in polling. And I know a bit about this space. The fact matters, these guys are doing it right. I love data. I love raw information. I love gathered information and even information, if you will. But this is data from a good, raw, statistically viable sampling. And this is really, really important. So if you keep going through the slides, one of the things that's really interesting is smartphone ownership. Just a couple slides in. 81% of the total population, 12/plus has a smartphone. This is four out of every five. This is more than four out of every five. And of course, if you take away the sampling, that's obvious. My parents are at a point where a smartphone doesn't make sense. Too many buttons, too many choices, too many ways for things to go wrong. They have dumb phones. They were not part of the sampling on this. But boy, if you look at all the people who obviously don't have a smartphone, we're pretty much left with everybody else has a smartphone. So the receptor to podcasting is in everybody's pocket. Think about this. There is no more. How do I get a podcast? Can I get a podcast? We've got it now. It's amazing. The jump from 76 to 81 was a huge jump. I didn't see that coming. 226 million Americans. And it's funny because so many ask, what's the market for podcasting? Well, it's 226 million Americans who have a smartphone in their pocket. Total population 12 plus. Very, very big. Now, obviously, if you look at the smartphone ownership, which is the next slide broken up, the younger you are, the more likely you are to have one. That makes sense. But even in 25 to 54, it's 89%, it's 90%, it's nine out of every 10, 4.5 out of every five. We have smartphones now. It's no longer a question. That is just a thing. Tablet ownership, not that interested in it. Tablet is a device. There's definitely some consumption on that one. That one doesn't do it for me. But you're more likely than not to have a tablet. I think that's interesting. Internet connected TV, 64% more likely than not. On demand video services. Now here's a funny one. In the beginning days of podcasting, I started a company that did premium podcasting. I wanted to be audible. I wanted to do that. And all six of my customers thoroughly enjoyed it. And Dan, class, to this day, I'm still sorry I had to take it down. But the fact of the matter is, is 58% of the country is willing to pay for content. This idea that we don't pay for content on our devices is ridiculous. Americans are more likely to pay for content than not pay for content. And that's 12 plus. Don't give me this millennial nonsense. On the on demand video service last week, not that big of a Deal. Smart speaker awareness. Not that big of a deal for me. Although we've built, and you've heard about it, we've built an Amazon app, which they call Skill. For the podcast report, you can say, alexa, enable the podcast report. I hear other organizations are coming out with it. I think this is going to be an interesting place. Let's jump to the online radio slides. Fascinating. 61% of the population, 12 plus goes to monthly online radio. 170 million. Now, Paul, online radio isn't podcasting, correct? Absolutely. But online radio are people who go to their device, their computer, their tablet, their smart speaker to get Internet audio that they couldn't normally get over the regular radio waves. More likely than not to go to the Internet, they have a smartphone. We have the audience. We're at this amazing convergence of what's going on right now that just sets us up for nothing but success. 12 to 24, 87% monthly online radio, 87%. Again, almost everyone. And even in 25 to 54, 70%, the population has the device to listen to podcasts and has the tendency and the traction to listen to podcasts weekly. If you go to the next slide, 12 + 53%, 148 million. The numbers are crazy. So if you keep going down the slides, I don't want to hit all of these. Here's an interesting one. Online radio listening in the car. Now, 93% of these people owned a cell phone. 40% of them have figured out how to connect their device to the car. Now, we've been saying since day one that the podcast population is the millions of Americans. They actually have some numbers on this that drive by themselves to and from work, you know, and all you have to do is be better than drive time. Well, the numbers from the infinite dial 2017 is 40% have figured out how to get this connected in their car. And yes, not everybody has Bluetooth. Yes, not everybody has a smart system, not everybody has auto, Google Play or AirPlay or whatever the car devices are, but they're listening in the cars. Now, when you look at audio brands, I don't want to go too deep into this, but I'll tell you this, the audio brand that's winning by far, if you look everywhere, is Pandora. Now, Pandora has a couple of interesting advantages to it. Pandora is definitely a known entity, definitely first mover advantage, definitely some interesting things. But if you look at Pandora, and I think this is really interesting, Pandora is you tell Pandora what you like and Pandora makes the content for you. Hey, Pandora, I like 80s and then Pandora picks whether or not I get to listen to the police, or whether I get to listen to Huey Lewis in the news, or whether I get to listen to Michael Jackson. It does that based on my likes. We've been trying to figure out how to do this for podcasting for a long time. Stitcher has tried to figure out how to do this. We're not there yet, but, man, if you look at the success of Pandora, followed by Spotify, these are the ones who are giving us the content we want based on what it is that we're doing. We're in an interesting place now. Pandora has gone down. If you look at the audio brand most used, often it's gone from 54 to 40% over the last couple of years. And if you look at the others, the others have increased. It's expanding out. But I want you to think about, is your podcast ready for a database that says what it's about, that feeds to people, where they give it the thumbs up and the up thumbs, thumbs down. This is why I start every episode of the podcast report with exactly what the episode is about and a very short audio blip. We call them the transition tone here because we want to get directly to the content. I think this is important. I think we're seeing that the world wants it. The music discovery section of the report is absolutely intriguing, and it made me think a little bit about my kids, but it's nothing that I want to necessarily deal with in this and how it deals with our audience. I do think it is interesting that YouTube usage is, of course, highest 12 to 24, 25 to 54. It goes down. But still, the people on YouTube are tremendous. But let's get to the podcasting section. You can scroll to it. It's got the microphone on it, and it's a good piece of clip art. Good job, guys. Okay, podcast Familiarity. In 2017, 60% of the population, 12+ is familiar with podcasts. Done. Last year, Tom said, we broke into the mainstream. We've done 5% over the mainstream. The world knows what a podcast is. And if we go back, the world is carrying the device that lets them get the podcast. And if we go back, data is getting cheaper and cheaper. And this is an early episode of the podcast report. Most of us getting unlimited data free now. So we know what a podcast is. We have the device that gets it to us, and we were able to get it for free. Why aren't we going to do that? Well, we are. Okay, those who are listening to podcast, 40%, $112 million, up 4% over last year. Monthly podcast listing 67 million, up 3% from last year. Absolutely fantastic. And of course, if you go to the younger set, the set more likely, and for many of you, it is your demographic. 12 to 24, 27% are monthly listing. And for 25 to 54, my demographic of buyers, it jumped from 24% to 31%. The age group that buys the stuff that at least I'm selling has jumped tremendously in monthly listing. You take weekly podcast listing 15%, the number of podcasts listened to. It is fascinating to me that 11 or more, 8%, 6% to 10%, 13%, 4% or 5%, 20%. Those three alone really active listeners is about 50% of it. If we add the three or more, it's a significant chunk. If you look at the average podcast listener listened to five podcasts last week. This is not a random dabbling of hey, I wonder if there's anything on my smartphone. These are people who like this. Now head to the slide. The device used most often to listen to podcasts 2015 computer 42% smartphone, tablet, portable device 55% don't know. He doesn't have a number there. It's jumped from 2015 55% to the portable device to 2017 65% the podcasters who are building websites for people on the web and spending all their time with people in front of a computer. It's only 33% less than one out of every three people who consume your podcast. Don't do it on the website. Are you mobile ready? Now it's interesting. Podcast listing Locations 80% at home 47% Car and truck at work 29 Walking around 28 Gym 20% Public transportation 19% these numbers flick over. People can pick multiple ones. But boy at home portable device speaks to the smart speaker, speaks to the tab that speaks to the phone, speaks to home WI fi for people who are worried about data costs. Very, very interesting. He charted that up. Some interesting stuff. Method of listening to the podcast now, this is huge. I have spoken to, we have discussed, you have interacted with me about the methods of listening to podcasts. And no, you haven't talked to me about the methods of listening to podcasts. You've talked to me about. Well, if they download it, I don't know how far they've gone. Well, here's the thing that's interesting. 77% of the people who click on a podcast listen immediately. 47 listen later. Only 27% subscribe now. I still speak to subscribing as powerful. And subscribing is powerful, and those are your power audience. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast report yet, please do so. ThePodcastReport.com iTunes if you want to subscribe on iTunes. ThePodcastReport.com Stitcher if you want to go there, Google if you want to go there. Tunein if you want to go there, I don't care. But the average listener clicks and plays. So this idea that we don't know who's playing, well, we do know, and it's statistically viable. And we've got a better chance of them listening to our podcast that they downloaded them and got them looking at our website or reading our book or seeing our ad or hearing our ad or oh, my goodness, fantastic stuff. Percent of all podcasts downloaded and listened to, 52% say this is the people who have downloaded podcasts to listen to at a later time. 52% say they go to the end. Fantastic number of podcasts subscribe to see 1 20% 2% 16% 3% 12% 4% to 5% 19% 6% to 10% 20% 11% or more 9% don't know 4% if you look at that, it's an average of six podcasts subscribed to. This is the audience base we want. This is the audience base that we like. Now, there's a whole section of in car media, and this is interesting because this is part of the infinite dial radio, obviously, a lot of it in the car. If you look at the different places that people look, AM, FM radio, 82%. So three out of every five, podcast 19%. One out of every five. This is important, this is key. They're still going to AM FM radio because we got to be better right now, I joke that all we have to do is be better at the drive time. Well, there's a lot of podcasts that simply aren't. Part of it is people trained in storytelling and people trained in production and people trained in being regular and people trained in understanding their audience. And so we have a base capable of listening to podcasts. We have a base who wants to listen to something when they're driving. We have a desire for content, we're just not meeting it. That calls to quality. I think this is really, really important. If we keep scrolling through what's interesting, AM FM radio has dropped 3% in the last couple of years. CDs has dropped 2%. Online radio has gone up 1%. Satellite radio has gone up 3%, which is a surprise. We're in the car, we're listening to content. It's what we're doing. All right, so that's the podcast part of this. Let's talk to social media usage, because this does play to podcasting. It plays to podcasting as a distribution vehicle. In last week's episode, I spoke with you about, we had Rob Walsh from Libsyn and we chatted about destinations and we chatted about social media and we chatted about all these options. Let's look to social media usage. 226 million people in social. That's a lot more than in podcasts. Now, of course, there's the great debate. If you put your podcast on Twitter, is it a podcast or is it a social media audio post? Here's the thing, don't care. 81%, four out of every five Americans use social media. You put your content there and you let them know that they can subscribe on the device and get these things automatically. This is where it starts to get interesting. 95% of America knows about Facebook. 90 knows about Twitter. 88% knows about Instagram. 70% or 82% knows about Snapchat, and it goes down from there. Brand awareness doesn't really excite me. Brand usage is fascinating. 67% of the entire population, 12 +, uses Facebook. Only 34% use Instagram. Only 29% use Snapchat. Now, yes, demographically, and we'll chat about that in a second. That's very different based on the age groups. But you better have a Facebook strategy for your podcast. That's where they are. Absolutely fascinating. I do think it's interesting that Snapchat's higher than Twitter and Instagram's higher than Snapchat. And I think there are those who have some misplaced focus and attention, but that's usage. And of course, if you look at Snapchat, Snapchat has grown from 14 to 29% over the last three years. But here's the thing. Facebook has grown from 58 to 67% over the last years. More people on Facebook than Snapchat. If you look 12 to 24, Snapchat 79, Facebook, 76. So in 12 to 24, Snapchat wins. But here's the thing is your podcast for the 12 to 24 group. And don't give me this, well, I'm building the audience. If they're not listening now, you're not building that audience. And if you have a 12 to 24 podcast, you're probably not listening to this. Show. To be honest, however, you are listening to this show because you want to know how to make sense of this. And this report, again, is fantastic. Your audience is ready, your audience desires. And this is where you, your audience is. Facebook most used went up from 61 to 62. It's not going anywhere, even in social media. Brand used most often 12 to 24. Facebook from 32 in 2016 to 39 in 2017. Now Snapchat, yes, from 26 to 31. What it is, is those two are the big ones. They're getting bigger. All the rest are kind of going away again. In the 12 to 24 demographic, we tend to be so focused and we seem to be so alert to what is going on tomorrow, what is going on with the kids. We don't tend to look at our podcast. If you look at these numbers and again, thepodcastreport.com 1, 2, 2 or edisonresearch.com infinite dial 2017. Either one of these will work. You'll get the numbers. Look at these and use them. It's really important in the podcast space, especially as we go into this next phase. We are mainstream. This is no longer the hot new thing. This is the thing. And it's taken us a decade to get here, longer than I would have liked, but we're at a really good place. Realize this study was not financed by someone else. Realize that this study was financed by Edison and Triton, but it wasn't financed by somebody who's trying to sell us a specific microphone or a specific podcatcher or someone who's trying to prove their point by buying research. Obviously, they paid for this. Obviously, Tom needs to be able to afford his biscuit habit. If you don't know Tom's biscuit habit, you need to follow that boy on Instagram. But the fact of the matter is, it wasn't financed by someone else to prove a purpose. Wasn't financed to prove a thing. It's raw numbers that we can utilize. I think even more important, this report isn't about feelings. So many podcasters go, well, I really feel that, or I don't like that, or the people I talk to. Blank, that's great, but your show is a niche and it's funny. The more tech oriented the podcast, the more I'm nerd. And I could speak nerd with the best of you. I could geek out with those who have that kind of podcast. But the mainstream isn't worried about feelings. The mainstream isn't worried about what you think the mainstream is. In fact, the, the mainstream and we've been given this connection to it and now we know what to do about it and it's absolutely fantastic. We are now in the real world of podcasting. We need to act like it. The tools we have, Infinite Dial study tells us where we need to go. The smartphones are in our audience's hands. The industry is moving to unlimited bandwidth. We've got the stats in this report to know what they like, what they don't like. We can do this. We will do this. I predict what's going to happen and I think this is key. You can do two things with this numbers. You can go, oh, it's just some Boston educated higher up who likes bar graphs and gets paid to do that kind of thing. Or you can say, wow, the study has been done, the research is here and I can use these numbers to build a better podcast. If you want to build a better podcast, if you want to do real business with your podcast. And by the way, you wouldn't be 23 minutes into this podcast and not wanting to be there. You now have what you need to do more than you've ever done before. You don't need to wait for whatever Apple's bringing us. You don't need to wait for the next stat. You don't need to go to the next event. You don't need another month in your private membership site of encouragement. You have what you need to blow up your podcast and here's what's great. Your audience is ready to receive it. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Edison. Thank you, Triton. Thank you for this report. I know we're going to have the podcast specific version coming out later, but the fact of the matter is this is important, how it all comes together. You've done a great study. My podcast is better for it and hopefully now your podcast is better for it. Thank you so much. We will chat next week. Bye.