Ross Adams is CEO of Acast — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Sam Sethi: Acast has come out with a new report. What’s this one about?
Ross Adams: This is another big piece of research for us, looking at one of our USPs which is international and approaching the space on a global basis. We are different from many of the players out there, but for us it’s about providing a global perspective on the podcast industry, especially for international podcasts.
SS: You’ve split this report into both emerging and established markets. Let’s define what you call the emerging market, and what you call the established market.
RA: We selected the countries based on where we see podcasting continuing to grow in popularity with new content being created and large audiences consuming that content. If we look at the emerging markets, we’ve got India, Brazil, Singapore, Italy, Japan, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Spain, and the established side is Canada, the US, Sweden, Australia and the UK. We divided those into emerging and established categories based on ad spend and market maturity for each of the regions.
SS: So overall, the report which you did on 13 countries is, as you say, has said that the amount of time people will spend with podcasting is going to increase. Is that just something that we’re now seeing, the popularity of podcasting coming back? Or is there another reason why people are spending more time with podcasts?
RA: I think it never went away. Podcasting is in another growth curve, in my opinion. I think because podcasting exists across platform to different channels, from video to audio, I think there’s more and more audiences that are discovering podcasting continually. I think if you look at the US as a market and you have hundreds of just over 100 million uniques listening to podcasting on a monthly basis, the market is 350 million plus in population size. So a lot more have got to discover it. So we’re still in that growth curve. We discovered more than 50% of podcast listeners from emerging markets and almost 40% in established markets plan to spend or increase their time spent with the medium in the next six months, which is a really good signal for podcasting.
SS: Is TV and radio the loser? And we only have finite attention as humans. So if we’re spending more with podcasting, w must be spending less somewhere else with the mediums. So is it radio or is it TV that’s losing out?
RA: I think it’s a blend here - TV, radio, press as well. The good thing about an audio-led medium is that you can listen anywhere you want: not just in the commute, but if you’re working out or walking the dog, etcetera, etcetera. I think that is an advantage for this medium.
SS: The report talks about engagement and oddly, the emerging markets are more engaged with podcasting than the existing or traditional markets. Is that because we’ve got more distractions in these markets where we are here in the UK, US? Or what is it that you think might cause the emerging markets to be more engaged?
RA: I think if you look at the maturity of content in certain markets, it’s a busier market. There’s more to engage with, as you said, and therefore there’s only finite time to consume that. And also this medium is becoming fairly prevalent in these emerging markets. So as a newer medium, people want to spend naturally a bit more time with that as they’re starting to discover it. But I do think you’re right there in the fact that existing established markets do have a lot of content being produced in a multitude of mediums and therefore it’s the busier markets, the time spent will naturally be slightly less.
SS: And one of the things that jumped out from the report is the level of trust that people have with the podcast as they listen to. Is that one of the reasons why your highlighting a higher purchasing rate from podcasting than from other mediums?
RA: I think the core of what podcasting is, is an audio format, and the relationship you have with the host is incredibly close versus any other medium. And I think that carries across onto social platforms. The engagement, cross-platform, and how you’re engaging with that influencer, that creator, creates a very close relationship which has an advantage over the other mediums.
SS: Thank you Ross, so much for this report. Great insights. I’m look forward to the next one.
RA: Appreciate it. Thank you.