Spotify's Biggest Problem with Video Podcasts

Well, welcome to Podcast Tips. It's great to have you here with me tonight. It's great to be here and talk about this very interesting topic tonight that I have on the screen in front of you, State of Video Podcasting. There was a really terrific presentation today that was done live with the two gentlemen that you see on the screen in front of you about the state of video podcasting, and they offered a lot of insights and ways to look at this upstart of video and podcasting, which I've talked about many times on this series. But let me give a little bit of credit. So we have Steve Goldstein, who is with AmpliMedia and is also a professor at NYU and is the founder of AmpliMedia. Spent many years working in the radio industry, but has spent the last 10 years of his career working in trying to help people understand podcasting and trying to work with the radio industry to bring them into the podcasting world. So he's a veteran. I've known Steve for a long time. We have lunch all the time. We're both kind of neighbors in Connecticut. So I really appreciate his insights. And so, and then Jay, and Jay and Nachalus, who is the Vice President and Consultant at Coleman Insights. So this is the kind of media research and strategist arm that works with brands to help them have audience insights. So that's who is involved in this survey. And to give us a glimpse on what's really happening in this area in the podcasting space and how we're kind of expanding our scope driven by what the audiences want. So this survey was sponsored by ESPN, which is also another, uh, Connecticut-based company. So they're just right up the road from me where I live here in Bristol, Connecticut. But, uh, thank you so much for all the folks that are involved in putting this survey together. I'm going to be playing a a kind of like a clip summary of the video. It's about a 27-minute full-length video that was presented today, and I'm going to show you about a 6-minute, 6-7-minute clip of some of the highlights from it so you can actually get some insights out of this and, and quick takeaways. And as you can see at the bottom in the ticker that I have here, there's a link here that will give you the full PDF deck of what was presented today. So you can go and grab that and have it for yourself. But what I wanted to do tonight was just to kind of recap that and kind of give you some of my insights on what we saw in that, that particular survey today. I think it's significant, and I think it will be a a major milestone in the podcasting space right now, and it really will open people's eyes to what's going on that frankly, I've been feeling it myself. You know, it's not been confirmed by research like we have here with this survey, but it's the way I've been feeling and the way I've been consuming podcasts for like the last year or so. And that's why I really got heavily involved into doing this show, you know, initially with StreamYard and actually in really kind of keeping the ball moving and keeping this show going has been kind of really driven based on what I'm seeing in the market and my own personal consumption too. I spend a lot of time watching podcasts on YouTube, and that's what we're going to learn more about here tonight. So let me go ahead and jump right into this this clip summary, and we can just kind of run through the highlights, and then I'll probably pause it a little bit and give you some commentary about what we're seeing in this survey and what the implications are. So let me go ahead and pull that up to the stage, and hopefully this will go—

Attention and the change in the industry has been mighty rapid. I teach the business of podcasting to Gen Z students, which gives me, I think, a really good fine-tuned sense of how crazy and how fast all of this is changing.

Is all of this buzz warranted? And you're gonna see in many different ways today that the buzz is certainly warranted about video podcasting. It's a YouTube world, we're just living in it. And then finally, we're gonna wrap it up in a nice tidy little bow and we're going to share with you our 7 key findings from today's State of Video Podcasting report.

The top takeaway is again how the speed of change has affected the podcast industry. So we asked, can a podcast be audio only or video? And the answer was 75% say, yeah, it's both. That was in the previous study, and now it's up to 85%. So virtually everybody is saying a podcast can be audio and video.

Yeah, so what you're seeing there is a growth in people's perception that a video, no matter where it's consumed, if it's consumed on YouTube or in a true video podcasting experience, will be seen as a podcast. And so this is a a shift in perception that's more kind of relatively recent, since I've mentioned on the show many times that video podcasting and kind of the industry is kind of not mentioning this much here through this kind of transition because we're so focused on what's happening right now and what people are perceiving right now. But Video podcasting was a huge area in the podcasting space since like 2005. And so it blew up and then it kind of went away when, when YouTube launched and Apple kind of took out of their navigational elements of their Apple Podcasts app the ability to toggle between audio and video in the video podcast app. And that really took the eye off of the ball of video. But video has always been a part of podcasting. And that's the point that isn't really being talked about very much, is that in some ways, this is a return to the roots of what podcasting was in its original concept, in its original start. In the early years of this podcast medium, we kind of got pulled away from video because of YouTube and started to really focus in more on audio. So that's— I just share that with you to give you some context into what's happening now, that, you know, the industry is looking at this as this is some like novel revolution, but it really isn't. It's actually kind of like a Back to the Future moment. Where things are coming into clear focus because of other kind of cultural and media changes that have happened in the ecosystem of media. So I'll continue playing this presentation, and it's only like 6 minutes long, so I'll have lots of time at the end to take your questions and also to give you a little bit more thoughts from me as well, but I want to hear from you too on what you think And I'll be looking at the comments towards the end, but let me resume the presentation here.

And/or video. And 41% are mostly audio. So even Gen Z is pretty happy with audio, or many of them are. So quite remarkable how fast all of this has changed. But look at the purple 56% in the second column over, and you see that The car is now growing. You can see that audio is more mobile, pardon the pun, as, you know, people doing errands, walking, whatever it might be.

60% of all podcast consumers were using YouTube for podcasts a year and a half ago. Now that number is up to 70%, a pretty extraordinary number.

YouTube is the only one that's grown in any notable Yeah, so that growth number going from 60% to 70% is a significant number. I think if you really want to back up and you want to look at it in the prior slide to this was talking about Gen Z really adopting video podcasts, but also continuing to be engaged on the audio side. So that's kind of like I think that's the big takeaway from this. It's not that everything is shifting to one side or the other. What's happening is people are consuming increasingly, they want a complete spectrum of media offerings from us, and that includes audio and video. So, you know, still what, 41% of Gen Z still want to consume mostly audio. This is not a zero-sum game saying that video is a threat to audio and then audio is a threat to video. That's not the way to look at this. Really, the way to look at this is that it's a more complete consumption behavior. And that's why video and audio podcasts were consumed fairly balancedly in the early days of podcasting. It's just that for some reason, we took the eye off the ball. Of trying to make this kind of like an audio and video medium. But let me continue the presentation here.

Away in the last year and a half, you have 30% of podcast consumers that are not using it. And of those, 36% don't even know that YouTube offers it.

Yes. So we still have a lot of growth upside, at least on the YouTube side. So That's another takeaway from the Share of Ear presentation as well, that there is a certain amount of upside growth here and that the growth of video is not like lapping the audio consumption. What it's doing is it's just adding to, it's not taking away. So it may be, this may be one way of looking at it, it may be taking away from some of the faster growth that audio maybe could have had as people start to shift to consume more of podcasts in a video form. So that could be kind of separating the market. But the other part of this too is that people are trying to consume both. So some parts of their lives they want to watch your show. It's usually at home and we'll see, you know, I'll talk about that a little bit later in the video. And then other parts of their lives, Maybe they're out doing errands or they're out for a walk and they wanna just listen. So it's about having choice and that's kind of what's going on here. And so this next slide is which service or app or destination do you currently use most to consume podcasts? And the other thing to keep in mind too with all this data is that this is not data that gives you a clear picture on the amount of consumption that's happening of podcasts in these platforms. This is just how many people prefer to use, or they have used, a certain platform and how important that platform is to their consumption. But that doesn't tell us how much content they're actually consuming on each of these platforms, and that will, that will offer a completely different kind of picture of what's happening. And I'll share a little bit more about that later in the, in the show tonight. So let's go ahead and continue here.

Yet not surprisingly, 1 and 2 are Spotify and Apple because they're audio-first platforms. But look at YouTube on the right. Even among audio-only consumers, they have doubled in the platform that they use most often over and over.

Yeah, so that's an interesting takeaway that the audio consumption has doubled on— I think mainly what we're talking about here is YouTube Music in the last year, just because, well, for one thing, there's more RSS feeds being imported into YouTube Music currently right now that are audio-based experiences. So it would be a natural thought that there would be significant growth over there because a lot of that content wasn't in YouTube Music much longer than a year ago. So, you know, that's very much expected kind of upside. So, Let's go ahead and resume here. How do you discover new podcasts? So let's, let's talk about that. And that's also a good kind of snapshot on what's happening.

Over again, we see friends and family comes up at number 1, and for the first time we see social media poster conversation pop at number 1. YouTube is number 1 for podcast.

So let me talk a little bit about what we just heard about, um, For most of the life of podcasting, all the survey results were coming back telling us that there was most of the podcast discovery, how people figured out which podcasts that they wanted to listen to or what that methodology of discovery was, mainly came from word of mouth sharing. Now, what the research is showing now that a lot of that is coming from social media, which is in some ways a similar type of a scenario. It's, it's a person sharing it with another person via— it just happens to be via social media. And social media, as you will see in this next slide, includes YouTube. So keep that in mind. And also Shorts. So when you think of YouTube Shorts, you, you think of the Instagram Shorts, you think of TikTok Shorts. That is considered social media. So when you think about this in a holistic view, what they're saying is, is that a lot of discovery is happening in these social media platforms via short vertical videos, would be the key takeaway. And also through kind of algorithmic Discovery in YouTube. So I will continue this and they will spell that out a little bit more for you.

Discovery, not hugely surprising, but keeping it within the ecosystem, there's YouTube Shorts at number 2. Even though TikTok gets a lot of the, the buzz around short-form platforms, notice how Reels actually is a little bit higher than TikTok at 34%.

So that's a clue, right? That the strategy that is coming out of this is that regardless if you're just doing audio, I think it is increasingly making sense to create vertical video that is maybe, doesn't have to be the actual episode itself, though it could be. So let's say you're doing video. And you use like Opus Clip or whatever, and you create those vertical video experiences, those shorts of sorts. But if you're not doing video, I think that the smart thing to do is to get your iPhone out or your Android device and just record a vertical video talking about a topic that's related to your podcast and just sharing that up there and saying what your podcast is and putting it in the metadata and using it as a kind of like a highlight reel of sorts for the podcast itself and using these platforms as a way to build awareness with new people and to pick really impactful topics to spend 60 seconds or 2 minutes or 3 minutes where some of the platforms can support up to 3 minutes now of, vertical shorts, but a lot of them are still in that 30 to 60-second range, which is actually a good length to actually just talk very specifically about a particular topic. But I think that's the takeaway that I would take from that data. And so we will continue as they move into focusing on YouTube. So let's jump into that.

There were 400 million hours of video podcasts consumed on smart TVs, and that was a head-scratcher. Just about 30% are saying no, they can't find their favorite.

So what you were just looking at on that slide was showing that 79% of the consumption on YouTube is happening through smartphones, but 49% is happening on widescreen smart TVs, and about the same percentage is doing it on computers too. So it's— that chart didn't have to equal 100%. It's people could select multiple consumption, um, devices of sorts. So, you know, there's probably a lot of people that are consuming videos on their smartphone as well as consuming a certain percentage of the content in their smart TVs that have the YouTube app. And then also on their desktop computers or their tablets are another place where people consume at a much lower level. But nonetheless, there's a lot fewer tablets out there than there are desktop computers. TVs and smartphones. So that's what that tells you. And then the next slide here is, we all— are all your favorite podcasts available on YouTube? So let's play that and see what they have to say about that.

Favorite podcast on YouTube. Podcast listeners seem to index very high for premium YouTube, which changes the way they engage, engage with ads, the way that you, the podcaster, uh, would be, uh, compensated and so forth.

Yeah, I would say, uh, the problem that, that the advertising industry has is that as they become increasingly a nuisance to the consumer of podcasts, they're, they're shifting their time spent over to ad-free subscription-based solutions. And that's certainly the case at YouTube as well. I'm a premium subscriber to YouTube, so I don't see any ads over there when I consume my podcast. So as we move down this path, and this also applies to audio podcasts for like programmatic and otherwise, is that as the ad loads go up, even though there's a lot of good reason to have ad loads go up because people need to make revenue. But that basically drives people into having more of an interest around just paying a subscription to have no ads. And so that's what we could be getting into, this whole dynamic of the industry shifting over to paid subscription or ad-free access. And that's that could be a bigger trend that we're seeing here. What we just saw on the screen was only 33%, so that's a big chunk, but it's not everybody, right? So not everybody is, is picking up on this paid subscription model. Um, still a big chunk, 66%, are still, you know, getting forced to deal with the ads. So let's continue.

Um, 61% say they are subscribing to podcasts. So that, of course, is something we really want them to do, and that's up 10 points from last time around.

So that was a different area. So in YouTube, when you like to follow a YouTube program or series, you, you click the subscribe button, right? That used to be a term in the podcasting space at like Apple Podcasts and other, other platforms in the early, early years. So that whole concept of subscribing really is, is something that went away in the podcasting space, and that because now we all follow each other, right? But that still exists in the YouTube ecosystem, and that's not a paid model. That just means that I, I want to follow that content creator or that channel. So it puts a marker in their history or the channels that they like to follow that is a little bit of a signal to YouTube that content from that channel is something that the user would like to potentially consume. So that is something that is— I think the things that I've been learning about YouTube is that That whole subscribe model isn't really as effective as it used to be around driving views. What YouTube is more interested now in driving views is around the content, the episode level, and they will feature, promote to audiences that they think that they have an understanding of what they want, and they will drive attention to the episode level. That whole subscribe function is only, it's kind of a de-emphasized signal to the algorithm. So you may see content in your wall or in the algorithm experience that you see that would drive, would be derived from that subscription, but it's becoming less and less a priority for YouTube to drive consumption of content just based on that subscription because they don't— they've seen in the data that there may not be a strong mapping between what the user actually clicks on to watch versus what they subscribe to. So that is part of the advancement of the algorithm that is kind of minimizing that subscription kind of element, and that's not a paid subscription for access to YouTube, that's a That's a subscription to a particular channel. So just wanted to draw that distinction here. So let's play this next segment, the Spotify video opportunities. So this is, this is an interesting one and it really cuts to the chase of what the controversies are right now around video on Spotify. So let's dive into that.

YouTube crushes Spotify in all of these attributes. And if you looked at this graph in our last study, you would notice it looks almost identical. So at least in these measurements of satisfaction, Spotify is not making inroads in a face-to-face battle against YouTube.

Yeah, so there's, there's basically this issue that Spotify has a huge hill to climb. Spotify is seen as primarily, and you'll see it later in the in the video here that Spotify is seen primarily as an audio platform. And so their move towards video, as you'll see in this next slide where they ask the question, are you aware that Spotify offers video podcasts? So, and that number is decent, but is anybody really, I mean, what's the consumption that's going on over there that that nobody's really answering that question quite yet. So let's, let's continue and they will dig into this element of video on Spotify.

83% of Spotify consumers are listening to audio podcasts, um, and then smaller numbers playing video podcasts in the background or minimizing, and only 25% say that they're actively watching a video podcast.

So that is a, that's a big drop between audio and video, and that, you know, confirms what I was just saying about the perception, the user perception of what Spotify is. Spotify is a streaming music platform and an audio podcasting consumption platform. Their move to video really, in my view, needs to be rock solid and be able to compete directly with YouTube around attracting creators, offering monetization that's compelling, that competes with, with YouTube before they're going to get the creators over there to do this. And they need to not mess with the current pass-through RSS for audio that's in their platform, because the problem in the controversy that they have right now is that if you have a RSS-based video or audio podcast in Spotify right now that's being monetized through like automatic advertising or, or ad insertion. When you upload a video to add video to your offering, they basically take the audio out of the video and overwrite the audio that comes out of your RSS feed, which means that there are creators that have done this not realizing that if they do that, they would lose all their monetization in their audio show because Spotify is not replacing that monetization when they do this. So that's created a lot of resistance to people uploading videos to be a companion to their audio experience that are up there. So that's, that's kind of an underlying issue that's driving a lot of concern in the podcasting space. And Brian, Berletta from Sounds Profitable mentioned this last week in a, in a big extensive article. I know Todd Cochran and I on my New Media Show have been talking about this issue with Spotify for probably a couple months now. Um, so, so, but let's, let's dive into what do creators think. So let's go ahead and continue.

If you want to be discovered, you need to be on YouTube, because people go to YouTube or to Google and they type in, how do I get feedback? What, like, you know, I'm starting a new job as a manager. What should I do my first day? Like, that's where they put stuff and YouTube results show up.

And we heard a lot of that. We also asked about what motivated people to start video podcasting, and the answer was pretty clear. Growing the audience.

If you're of a certain age, you'll appreciate the title of this podcast: F-Stop Collaborate and Listen, uh, photography podcast.

YouTube's pretty finicky, so like one episode you might get 100 views, and then another episode you might get 10,000.

Your next video could be the biggest one of all time.

Yeah, that, that gets back to what I was talking about earlier around YouTube is shifting towards episode-level kind of promotion and exposure, right? So you have to, as a creator on YouTube, and this is somewhat applicable to audio podcasting as well, you have to really think about the quality of each of the episodes that you make. You know, is it going to be engaging? Is it going to be something that the audience is going to get value out of? These are all kind of questions that audio podcasters need to think about too, but it's a different dynamic in YouTube than it is in, let's say, Apple Podcasts or even Spotify today, is that your content is evaluated based on a different set of criteria. It's evaluated on YouTube as time spent listening, what's the engagement percentage of your thumbnail artwork when you promote your show, Is it compelling? Is it driving home a message and an offering that people are interested in and they'll actually click to start playing your episode? And then once they click to start playing your episode, how long do they actually watch? Right? These are metrics that audio podcasting kind of maybe a little bit has where Apple Podcast Connect has this kind of graph that you can see of each of your episodes that shows when people start listening and and how fast do they drop off from, you know, clicking pause or leaving the show after a couple minutes, or what's the fall-off that happens. And YouTube has all that too, but what's different is that that is used as a method of how that episode is being promoted by YouTube. If the algorithm sees that When a person clicks on that, because there's a high percentage of people that see the thumbnail and then click on the thumbnail, and then when they open the video to start playing after clicking the thumbnail, how long do they continue to watch? Right? So they can roll up all this data into an evaluation that feeds the algorithm to tell the algorithm, well, we need to keep promoting this show because it's got high engagement. It keeps people watching, which is good for advertising. So if you think about the advertising layer on this is that YouTube makes more money the longer people watch and the more people watch longer. So these are not metrics that exist in the audio podcasting space today in a real-time kind of process that has a determination layer on how much platform promotion that piece of content gets. YouTube or podcasting just doesn't have that level of sophistication yet, and I think what we're seeing with YouTube is kind of creating a lot of podcast platform industry envy to some degree. But in some ways, be careful what you wish for, because this also creates a very challenging situation for the creator too. But let's, let's continue.

83% said yes, they are posting clips.

So clips is the big thing, and importantly, it is not just a Gen Z thing. It's an everybody thing, and that's how fast it has moved into the video world.

Yeah, I think that that's a key takeaway there too, is that the research that I've seen from the The Share of Ear as well as this. And you're not seeing all of the slides in my clips here. I didn't want to play the whole presentation tonight because I wanted people to go and watch the full presentation. All I want to do is talk about the highlights out of this. And the research that I'm showing is that video is just not a Gen Z thing. The fastest growth demographic is the 55+. They've seen the highest growth in audio consumption as well as video consumption. So there's the kind of other age, the younger age demo is actually pretty much flat over the last year on audio consumption. It's not gone, you know, it's not going down because of video, but any kind of growth in all of the younger demo is mostly driven by video. So, but that doesn't mean that video is as large or as significant as the audio side on the consumption side. And so I think that's the next element of this that we, that the research or the actual data out there from hosting platforms need to coalesce to kind of address this issue because I still think that the biggest podcast consumption platform today, now that could be challenged by YouTube, is Apple Podcasts. Historically, Apple Podcasts has had the most content that's been consumed off of their platform of all the podcast listening platforms. So that just means that an individual podcast user consumes more episodes on Apple than they do on Spotify. Now Spotify may have more users, but those users are split in their interests between probably music, podcasts, and audiobooks. And now Spotify is trying to split people's interests between audio and video. So you have a lot of choice on the Spotify platform, which creates an environment where you don't have as much focused consumption on audio podcasting. So that's kind of the way to kind of think about that. So I'll continue. I think we're getting towards the end here, so I'll just continue on here.

For quite some time, you could say that audio was overperforming in the home and underperforming on the go in the car. And now we're actually seeing audio move forward and up in the car and in other active ways where video's domain is very much in the passive domain, including at home. Spotify, at least for now, at least at this point in time, they've been aggressive in video here for a short period of time, but consumers for the moment are still very much using Spotify as an audio-first platform.

Yes, and that's a key takeaway from this. Spotify wants to be involved in video. But they're not there yet. They have a lot of work to do to make their platform competitive with YouTube. And they, they may never get to the point where they're directly competitive with YouTube because YouTube's going to keep getting better too. And Spotify is a long ways behind. So we'll have to see. You know, Spotify's strength is what it's built its company on, and that's audio. And that will likely continue to be the case. There's gonna have to be some remarkable thing that happens to Spotify for them to catch up to YouTube and directly compete with the dominance that YouTube has in the market today around video. So, you know, take that as a key takeaway from this presentation. Well, I will continue here.

It is clearly video-based. It is clearly on Instagram and TikTok, and it's clearly on YouTube. YouTube. And the social skills required are entirely different than they were just a couple years ago. Social media beats out friends and family as the place where most people discover podcasts.

Yeah, so that's the end of the presentation. And let me go Full screen again. And so I gave you kind of like the, the highlight reel of, of what that presentation was today. And that happened at 2 PM Eastern this afternoon, and I tuned in and watched it, and I captured it so I could do a little bit of a highlight reel here. And I appreciate, um, Jay and, and Steve for doing that presentation today, and I just wanted to give some perspective on it so people understood another level to this. And feel free to put some comments and questions in here if you see the same things in your own consumption, because really what this is all about, in my view, is this is a consumption view. This is not necessarily as much a creator perspective, but this is, this is really telling us where people are consuming this and how they're consuming it and what's driving them to find podcasts. And I think that's a key takeaway here. How the industry of podcasting and content creation reacts to that is a big question, right? And there are some challenges. You know, I think as people think about video, you know, there's some challenges that people are feeling around adoption of video podcasting, around incorporating it into what they do. There's a lot of creators out there, if we're talking specifically about podcasting, that have invested a lot in just creating audio. And I think that's fantastic. And one of the top— or there's a bunch of top challenges that audio podcasters face trying to move towards video. I think that there is going to be an interest in people wanting to take their full podcast and just publish the full episode as a, as a video file on, on YouTube. And it's a, it's a very transitional stage that we're in right now, is that video podcasts exist via RSS right now, today, in Apple Podcasts. This podcast that you're watching tonight is put out as a video podcast on Apple Podcasts. It's just labeled— there's two separate RSS feeds, so you can watch this show, all, um, 63 episodes, via RSS as a video experience. I published that out on the Blueberry podcasting platform. They were one of the three earliest podcasting platforms that basically enabled audio and video podcasting in the early era of podcasting when there was so much video content being put out in podcasting. So the top challenges are really for audio creators moving into creating more video is editing, production, and having the proper video skills. And, and, you know, there's two ways of looking at it. You can go all in with really advanced cameras and H, you know, 4K cameras and studio lights and all this stuff. Or you can just do it via your iPhone or Android, uh, just, you know, turn that camera on your phone on and, and record a vertical. And if you want to start recording, um, your, your podcasts on like a video capture platform like a StreamYard or Riverside or any of these um, video recording, live streaming platforms. As you can see, I use StreamYard here and can stream to all the platforms live. And then I take this episode and I put it out as an audio and video podcast, and I also create Shorts. So I'm actually posting Shorts from this episode, uh, and all— in many of the, the other ones that I've done— into all these Shorts platforms too. I mainly do it to YouTube Shorts but occasionally I'll post it over to some of the other ones too. And I, I need to do that better. And I think, you know, using a platform like an Opus Clips is actually a really great idea. I, I haven't really started using Opus Clips, but I've had the intention of using Opus Clips for a long time. So if you've made a comment, I will get to the comments here in just a couple minutes. So keep them coming. And I see them gathering in the comment area, so I will pull those in. So, so I think it's really a decision that each creator, podcaster, or whatever you want to call them, has to make is how far down this video rabbit hole do they want to go and do they feel comfortable going down. There's no obligation that you have to do video. I just want to be clear about that. There's a lot of genres and actually Stephen Goldstein talks about this in the longer version of his video, is that not everybody's gonna wanna do video and not every genre of content is suitable for a video experience without really expensive and very much challenging production. Especially if you're doing like a storytelling show or a true crime show, then you're getting into the area of, you know, like a 20/20 on television where you have extensive video editing that you have to do, and then you're piecing together clips, video clips, and it's a very challenging production. So certain genres of content are just not going to lend themselves easily to being able to do this, but any creator can pull out their iPhone or their Android device and record, you know, a, like a preview or a section from their audio podcast and get that out as a promotion for what you're doing in your audio podcast. It's almost like a preview trailer, but you need to make sure that that vertical video that you're doing has some value packed into it, has a message in it that will resonate. I mean, I see a lot of variability in the success of shorts depending on what the content is, what is resonating with people at that time. I get some that are like pulling in a couple thousand plays. I get a few other ones that maybe pull in 100 or something like that. So it really depends. So oftentimes it's almost like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and you should go back and review that to see what topics, what type of content that you're putting into your Shorts area that is resonating with people, and maybe that you see a bump in the, um, the listenership of your podcast after you've started doing that. So trying to overcome some of these technical challenges can be helped by these AI tools, like I mentioned to you, Opus Clip, and there's a bunch of other ones too that are out there too, you know, The clip process is built into StreamYard. I know it's built into Riverside. You can buy it in a standalone app. There's Kuso. There's a bunch of them out there that I've been playing around with. It's also in the Descript tool too. So increasingly these platforms are integrating all these kind of specialized AI tools that will enable you to make this process more efficient. And make it quicker so you don't get bogged down too much in having this overload of work that is increasingly a concern of mine around these very one single-use kind of AI platforms that podcasters are getting pulled into where they're paying a whole monthly subscription and it's only for one part of what they're doing, which is terrific. But it does add multiple work layers to the process of getting a podcast out. So, but the key takeaway from the research that we just saw is that Shorts are important discovery, uh, and YouTube is an important discovery, and, and TikTok and these other ones are important around how people are discovering new content. We all want to be discovered, right? As we're all podcasters, we want to find our audience. We want to reach people, and sometimes the best way to do that is through these Shorts because it's short versions of what your show is all about. And it helps also build your personal brand, you know, and your reputation out there. People really like to see people's faces. They like to, to see them in action. It builds a little bit of loyalty and trust to be able to see someone. So that is, um, that's really the, the important thing that I wanted to share tonight. And so we can kind of, uh, evolve. Let me go back through and look at my notes to make sure I've covered everything, but I think I have. And the, the research, and as you can see on the ticker, um, there is And I'll put this in the show notes. It's probably not in the show notes yet, but the colemaninsights.com/the-state-of-video-podcasting is the place to go, or just go to colemaninsights.com and you should be able to click on a link there to get to the PDF for the full presentation deck. And then also, I'm sure they're going to post the, the video, like the full length of the video of what was presented earlier today that you can watch as well. So, so let's hop in and get going on some of the, the questions here. So I'm going to pull that up here on the screen as we kind of get to the end of the show here. And it looks like we've had a, a few people connecting here. It says Reena Friedman Watts writes, I consume audio more than— and she finishes it here— than video. Yeah, and there's going to be users that are consumers of this that have that behavior. And I think that's the takeaway from this, is that it's not one or the other necessarily, it's both. But there are people out there that will only primarily consume the audio side. And then there's other people out there will like to consume the video. So that's the key way of looking at this is that video is an option. It's not a requirement, just like what you're seeing with Rena here. She's a video or an audio consumer. And I think that's fantastic. And that's likely I don't know that we have a definitive answer to this. That's likely the majority of the podcast consumption is going to be on the audio side. So, but we are seeing video pick up in its interest. So, and what people are watching on their big screen televisions in their living room as people move away from cable television, they cut the cable as they have been saying for many years, people will shift over to consuming OTT apps. Netflix is getting a benefit from this move as well, and then a lot of other smart television apps that are out there are gaining in growth of audience. So this is a bigger trend than just podcasting. This is a trend around how people are getting content. It's actually coming out of digital, um, over-the-top, kind of outside of cable news channels or cable channels, period. Broadcast is in a state of decline right now. It's not, um, it still has a big chunk of viewers. It's just, um, the shift is in full swing. And it looks like Harold Gilcrest writes, uh, subscribing on YouTube still serves a purpose for viewers as it allows them to see channel updates listed in chronological order under the subscriptions tab. Yeah, right, there are some functional assistance measures, but what I'm continuing to hear is that that is not a, a such a significant driver of the algorithm of what content is presented on your wall that you, when you log into YouTube, that you get, um, to see when you first got it, get into YouTube. And that people will scroll that, that promotional wall to see what the latest and greatest shows are. And the algorithm is feeding that. It's not necessarily coming out of the subscriptions, though it could have an input there. So, okay, so Harold writes in reversed chronological order. Yes, that would, that would make sense. So, and then Harold also writes here, um, uh, subscribing on YouTube serves a purpose for viewers, okay, and it allows them to see channel updates listed in— okay, so that's a That's the same comment. So let me— Harold Gilchrist writes in here, I predict that with the help of AI, we're moving beyond traditional video and audio podcasts. Think omnimodal podcasts where transcripts, mind maps, and other formats offer just a few of the many ways to engage with the content. Yeah, I think, you know, that's an interesting idea that AI could transform how the content is created, how people find it, what the mapping is to interests. I think that some of this stuff is already happening on YouTube. If you think about the algorithm, the algorithm that YouTube is using today is probably in a lot of ways already doing that, Harold, just based on the behavior that I see that that algorithm has is that they may already be using the Gemini AI as a foundation for doing this algorithmic analyzation of the consumption behavior around episodes to drive audience to it. So there's like this mapping of understanding of the audience and what their interests are and then mapping it to content based on their analysis of the transcripts and the user behavior that it maps to different types of users. So that is likely being done through like an AI agent of some sort that has been trained in how to evaluate episode-level content to present it to users to drive the most consumption. So, and, and because that honestly, that drives revenue. So that's what all this maps to, is that YouTube is trying to make the most money it can and, and wants to be the best advertising platform in the world, um, to get all that revenue that was going into cable television They want it to go into YouTube. So I, I think, you know, if you keep that in the back of your mind about what the goals are here, I think you have a pretty good idea of what the direction is of where all this is going. So I believe that's all the questions. So if you have any other questions that you wanted to throw into the comment field or comments about what I've talked about tonight please put them in the comment field and I will see them pop up in my display here that I can pull up on the screen and talk about it. But let me— yeah, I think the big thing is 77% of podcast consumers are engaging in both audio and video. So let that sink in, and that will tell you where the audience is. We all may want to see podcasting as an audio-only medium, but the data is showing is that people want audio and video, not just audio and not just video, though there are percentages that do just want audio and do actually just want video. There are lots of YouTube creators that are primarily video creators only. And it's like a, you know, it's like a side thought for them to take their audio show and pull the audio out of it and put it out as an audio podcast. The same thing happens on the audio side of audio podcasting. There's a few creators that think Well, I can— when I record this audio, I'll just turn on a camera and record the video while I'm doing the audio and put that out. Right. So the same thing is going on both sides of this. The question gets back for me that we don't really have a glimpse on yet is what's the actual consumption, the real data around consumption in this evolving paradigm? Of audio and video, especially in regards to this perception of what a podcast is. So, um, looks like Harold Gilchrist, uh, posted another comment in here. Uh, it says, glad to finally see someone publish the data, as it has been obvious to me for many, many years, not just recently. Yeah, I've been seeing it for the last over the last year myself. I mean, even, even before the presidential election, going back, uh, you know, at least 18 months, that's, that's when I started doing this, this partnership that I had with StreamYard to do this show on the StreamYard channels. Um, that was, that was almost 2 years ago now, and that was when I was seeing this convergence happen increasingly with YouTube. And this perception of what a podcast is on, on YouTube. It clearly was moving that direction. But, well, thank you so much for being with me here tonight. I, I hope what I shared with all of you was, was helpful and that, um, it, it sheds a little clearer light on what the research is showing and where the industry is going. And, and all of us just need to really start thinking about the implications of what YouTube is presenting to all of us around algorithmic discovery and metrics and how that's gonna put a lot of pressure on the audio podcasting side to evolve and improve. And that gets back to the conversation about the Podcasting 2.0 initiative. Do we need to get more involved in video through RSS? That's driving this conversation about YouTube is driving a lot of additional conversations around how we can keep RSS relevant in this new landscape of podcasting and what the consumers of this medium are wanting and desiring from us content creators. So I hope you all have a wonderful evening. Thank you so much, and be back. Please come back and watch next week's show here on Podcast Tips. And I'm going to throw up on the screen, so I have a YouTube channel here as well, uh, youtube.com/@robgreenlee. And then I can also be found on X as well, @robgreenlee as well. And I can also be emailed rob.greenlee@gmail.com. Great to, to have a message from you. And then I also have my own network now, it's called Adore Network, and that's where this show is available too. So if you just wanted to watch any of the podcast versions of this show, either in audio or video, just go to adorenetwork.com, and that gives you access to the, the video version and the audio version right there. You can watch it on your computer or on your, your phone or wherever you happen to be. And then I also do a show with Todd Cochran called The New Media Show every Wednesday evening at 8 PM Eastern. And, and we talk about the podcast industry at the higher level. But like I said, thank you so much for being here with me tonight. And oh, looks like I got another comment come in. Uh, it says, um, Harold Gilchrist writes, thank you, have a great evening, and thank you to everyone. And I hope all of you have a terrific evening. And so Good night, and I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Bye.