Acast has just published some research carried out by Nielsen in the UK based on podcast listening, called The Podcast Listener Landscape. The research dives into the role of podcasting in UK media, how people engage with podcasts and what listeners attitudes are towards podcasts.

The full report is available on request from Acast.

According to their press release via Podnews, 42% of people in the UK have listened to a podcast in the last week.

That’s an exceptionally big number. The research is based on a national sample of 1,003 adults who are nationally representative and were interviewed between the 16th and 23rd August 2024. The research was boosted by a further 993 regular monthly podcast listeners, although these individuals were used to fill out some of the other questions and give bigger samples to other elements of the research.

But 42% is a big number (as they like to say on More or Less), so it’s worth comparing it with what other surveys recently have concluded about podcast listening. I would note that the 42% figure is derived from the base sample of 1,003 respondents, and not the boost sample of monthly podcast listeners.

The first thing to note is that different surveys use different methodologies, and will therefore give different results. You only have to look at the deluge of various election polls we’ve had this year across different elections to see that. The wording of your question will affect the response, as will the demographics of the respondents you ask, and the methodology you use to ask your questions. And all these surveys do use different methodologies. But nevertheless, this survey seems to be an outlier.

Here’s a chart showing all the most recent equivalent figures from other research published this year by Edison Research, Ofcom and RAJAR. The dates in parentheses are the dates the fieldwork for each survey was carried out.

Yes – again, these are different methodologies, with slightly different bases, and they were all carried out at different times in 2024. Each one will also have a margin of error dependent on a range of factors, not least their respective sample sizes.

But the three previous surveys this year are within a 7% range: 23% at the low end and 30% at the high end.

42% is very much an outlier compared to these other figures.

But there is other interesting research in here that’s worth examining. 43% of podcast listeners say they listen for more than 1 hour a day to podcasts, and 43% of podcast listeners say that their podcast consumption has increased in the last six months.

Acast/Nielsen also asked about the additive value of podcasting compared with radio and streaming music services. According to their research, 16% of the UK population listen to podcast but not to any radio, while 11% listen to podcasts but no streaming music services (such as Spotify).

I would note here that RAJAR reports 88% weekly reach (Q2 2024 RAJAR), which leaves only 12% of the population not listening to the radio. So 16% is maybe a little high? And if someone listens to a BBC podcast that is also broadcast on the radio (e.g. Desert Island Discs) does that count as a non-radio listener?

But it’s certainly useful to demonstrate that podcasts can reach those who are hard to reach in other forms of audio.

The research also looks at when people started listening to podcasts, with 35% saying they’d started in the last 12 months. 36% of podcast listeners say that they listen to 4 or more podcast titles in a typical week and 39% are subscribed to 4 or more podcast titles. It seems that males in particular are the highest consumers of podcasts with 22% of male monthly podcast users listening to 6 or more titles a week, compared with 15% of women.

The research asked about the content creators themselves that were being listened to, and I think here things get quite interesting. The biggest group, with 44%, was YouTubes/Social Media Influencers. This was followed by Comedians (39%), Radio/TV personalities (33%) and Sports celebrities/teams (31%).

My suspicion is that this reflects the influx of YouTubers and other social media creators into the podcasting space. A significant proportion of new titles these days come with at the very least a video component, if not full episodes simultaneously available on YouTube. And YouTubers themselves have leant heavily into podcasting as a supplemental part of their business. Let’s face it, the YouTube algorithm can change overnight, and having backup business plans is a sensible for any “content creator” who’s significantly reliant on a single platform for their income.

I did laugh at “Random People” being at 30% in this measure, while Brands/Companies are at the bottom of the list at 15%. The corporate podcast is in my view the easiest thing to do badly and is not like creating another piece of advertising creative which is passively consumed. On the other hand, choosing to listen to a podcast is an active choice, so you’d better make sure your brand’s podcast is really good!

Another interesting change is the streaming v downloading question. 71% say they normally stream episodes directly, against 26% who say they download episodes. This is a shift further towards streaming from the last time this survey was conducted in 2022. I suspect that this is simply down to consumers having larger and faster mobile data plans and more wireless connectivity (even parts of some London Underground lines have full connectivity these days). And the default behaviour on Spotify is to stream rather than download, with downloading in advance is really just being something to think about if, say, your commute has areas of patchy connectivity, you’re using pricey roaming data or you’re going on a flight without or with very limited WiFi.

Video is becoming a critical part of podcasting, and the research explores that in some detail. 72% of monthly podcast listeners say that they have recently listened to and watched podcasts, with 37% saying they prefer podcasts that include video. The research looks at the overlap between video and audio podcasts, finding that most listeners have at least some exposure to both. Only 4% of monthly podcast listeners have only watched podcasts, while a larger 24% have only listened to podcasts. That leaves the chunky aforementioned 72% both listening and watching podcasts (obviously the volume of listening to watching is something else).

There are obviously good reasons that some like to watch podcasts: they have more visual engagement , they find the experience more entertaining, they can watch facial reactions, and some titles have visual elements like graphics. On the other hand, many are listening when it’s not convenient or possible to watch, whilst other prefer to concentrate on what’s being said, or their podcasts do not offer video.

There is much more detail in the full report, which is available from Acast.

Disclaimer: In my day job, I have worked with Acast, but I was not involved with or aware of this research.