Podcasting Goes Mainstream
Mar 4th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, Corporate Podcasts, iPods & Portable Media Players, Making Money with Podcasts, Podcasting, Podcasting Research, Podcasting Statistics 
Podcasting is going mainstream, at least according to eMarketer:
Podcasting has evolved from an odd, funky blogging experiment into a broad medium with mainstream trappings. Today, the vast majority of the top-rated podcasts come from recognizable media entities that are using podcasts to expand their existing radio, TV, cable or satellite audiences.
They peg the podcast audience at 9% of Internet users now, and are predicting the audience to nearly double, to 17%, within five years.
Podcasting & eCommerce
eMarketer also notes a relationship between podcasting and online shopping:
US online buyers who purchase mostly online showed an even greater propensity to listen to podcasts.
50% of mostly online buyers in a PriceGrabber.com survey said they listened to podcasts—a far greater number than comparable percentages of Internet users or consumers as a whole.
eMarketer’s research suggests that podcasting has evolved from a niche channel to a mainstream one.
The podcast audience also deserves special attention from online marketers, because it appears that the podcast audience is more likely to shop online than Internet users or consumers as a whole.
What do you think? Is podcasting now mainstream?
I still feel like the number of people who listen to podcasts is pretty low, although I’ve heard a lot more people express at least moderate interest in doing so in the past few months. I wonder if the recession will lead more people to look for inexpensive entertainment options, and in this case, podcasting fits the bill.
Not sure if podcasting is really mainstream yet or not – it’s still too complicated for a lot of people.
Podcasting subscription is confusing in iTunes, yet they do it better than just about anybody.
If this gets easier, it could really move things forward.
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Podcasting is moving mainstream but it’s not the listeners who are driving it, it’s the publishers.
I work for a well-known FMCG, extremely cautious and conservative when it comes to digital and we’ve just completed our third podcast aimed at health professionals. Why? Becuase they are easy to produce, they give us a human voice and they are easy to consume.
The more the established organisations produce the more people will listen and that’s what will tip it into the mainstream.
Libsyn counted unique IP addresses for a month in 2006. Their total was 46.24 million. Even accounting for individuals downloading at home and corporate LAN, reassignment of dynamic IP addresses, and multiple users on the same LAN, we estimate that there are about 25 million unique podcast users in *2006*. Growth since then is significant, certainly over 30 million. Also, there were about 2 BILLION episodes downloade in 2007, probably about 2.6 billion in 2008. All these data point to significantly higher figures than in this page.
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