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iHeart’s early commitment to podcasting seems to be paying off. CEO Bob Pittman says podcasting revenue for the company grew 80% in the first quarter of 2020 and it’s expected to grow 100% in Q2. He also said podcast revenue is growing at a faster clip than listener growth.
Pittman says iHeart is seeing 3X the revenue growth compared to the usage growth and the usage growth is very strong, up 35% in the quarter. “We’ve got such a large broadcast audience that allows us to promote our podcasts the way others can’t. We’ve run $100 million worth of advertising, which costs us nothing because it’s advertising we did not sell. It gives us a machine to continue to crank out these podcasts.”
Pittman says iHeart has also developed strong relationships with clients and agencies and they’re looking for new ways to help their advertisers reach consumers. “What they find with podcasting is that there’s this tremendous engagement, people listen to entire shows, they talk about them, and we’re getting premium CPM’s. We’re getting premium pricing and not seeing a whole lot of resistance to that.”
CFO Rich Bressler says he expects the ad dollars coming into podcasting to continue to increase. He quoted recent projections of $1 Billion in 2021. “We’ve been making significant money. And as more mainstream advertisers come into podcasting the company’s podcasting revenue will increase even more.”
Comments:
Looking forward to it trickling down to smaller local podcasts in the future.
#### [Timothy Self](http://www.thebistanderpodcast.com "mr.timself@gmail.com") -