The podcast industry has seen impressive expansion in recent years. Those who have been longtime users of the on-demand programs prefer to listen to their favorite shows, a new Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights study shows.
In a survey of more than 600 weekly podcast listeners, 39% of what were called “podcast pioneers” — those who have been listening to podcasts for four years or longer — prefer audio-only versions compared to 29% who say they’d rather see video versions that you can play in the background or minimize. An additional 32% say video editions of podcasts that they can actively watch are their preference.
Those numbers change slightly when podcast users who began consuming content in the last 12 months were surveyed. 30% say they prefer audio-only episodes. That figure lags behind “video you play in background/minimize”, which garnered 37% of support. 34% said their top choice was video you actively watch while listening.
“YouTube is definitely the discovered platform, but it’s not a walled garden,” said Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard of the findings. “People will start and discover a podcast on YouTube and then migrate and consume that podcast on other platforms. That’s what makes podcasting unique in that it is a media that folks can use either listening or watching, or some combination of the two.”
While many new users prefer video alternatives, for advertisers, the results varied. 47% of respondents said they keep their eyes on the screen “all or most of the time” when commercials play during a video podcast. 24% said they “occasionally” look at the screen during ads, while another 11% said they do not watch commercials of any kind during video shows.
