Audio ad opportunity Niche targeting unlocks attention

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20,000 foot view: Podcast advertising is one of the key income sources for both audio platforms and creators alike. Ad agencies and platforms must go ever deeper with targeting capabilities by learning more about the other entertainment habits of audio consumers. Social media offers an opportunity to not only learn about audio listeners, but to also provide a space to capitalise on grassroots promotion techniques to promote audio content
Key insights
- Ad relevance is particularly important to podcast listeners, as they are least likely to skip relevant ads compared to audiobook listeners and average consumers of podcast listeners skip audio ads on podcasts compared to for audiobook listeners, despite the latter paying the highest attention to audio ads
- Listeners of niche podcast genres, like history are more engaged with relevant ads compared to those who listen to mainstream genres
- Drama and true crime listeners pay more attention to audio ads than online ads and respectively), but of true crime listeners skip podcast ads, the highest of all genre segments
- The most attentive listeners are typically also the most likely to skip audio ads, and vice versa. For example, listeners of comedy and news have low audio ad attention but they are less likely to skip audio ads and respectively)
- Spotify weekly active users (WAU) rank lower in audio ad attention than Apple and Amazon Music Free WAUs, and a third skip podcast ads
- Around a third of podcast listeners and audiobook listeners engage on social media compared to of all consumers
- Audio listeners over-index by five percentage points in posting on social media
- Audio listeners are more than twice as likely to use online communities, like Discord and Reddit, compared to all consumers
- Niche audiences may bring more effective advertising opportunities as opposed to mainstream listeners
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon, Apple, Audible, Call Her Daddy Clubhouse, Discord, Disney+, Facebook, Facebook Live, Google, HBO, Julia Fox, Lemonada Media, Netflix, Patreon, Reddit, Spotify, Spotify Greenroom, TikTok, Twitter, Twitter Spaces, Tumblr, YouTube