The Last Quarter: Understanding Podcasting’s Last Holdouts

by Tom Webster
A look at who makes up the 25% of U.S. adults who have never consumed a podcast.

Something a little different this week. I'm sharing a brand-new research report — the full thing available as a direct download here — along with a bit of context about how it came to be.

When Sean Astin had to pull out of his keynote slot at our Podcast Movement Evolutions event at SXSW, I was asked to step in. Apparently, the Nazgûl terrified him so much that he slipped on the ring and succumbed to the corruption. I put together a new presentation built around data from our latest Podcast Landscape study that I'd been sitting with for a while, and I delivered it that Sunday morning to a room full of people who expected Rudy and got A RESEARCHER WHO ALSO NEVER GIVES UP. The talk went well enough that I wanted to share the whole thing with you here — and today, I am. The full report is available here. This is its debut.

The question I wanted to answer was simple: who are the people who have never listened to a podcast, and can we still reach them?

In our Podcast Landscape study, with a sample of over 5,000 Americans, weighted to the US Census, 25 percent of adults 18 and older say they have never consumed a podcast in any way, shape, or form. Not an episode, not a clip, not a YouTube video they didn't realize was a podcast. Nothing. I've been spending some time with these people, because I think we've been telling ourselves the wrong story about who they are and what it would take to reach them.

We're never going to get to 100 percent. Cell phones aren't at 100 percent. But 75 percent is a big number, and if we're smart about who's in that remaining quarter, there are people we can absolutely still reach — and some we probably can't, and shouldn't waste energy trying.

Who They Are

The holdouts are older and female. Sixty-one percent are 55-plus — nothing like the US population as a whole, and nothing like the podcast audience. Fifty-eight percent are women. So we're looking at a population that is a significant majority of older women who have not been reached successfully by podcasting, or perhaps are not aware that they have been.

Two things about the age lean. First, many people in the 45–54 age range are already listening. They're going to age into that 55-plus bracket, so the number of podcast listeners in that demo will grow organically. Second, speaking as someone 55-plus: I didn't just forget about podcasting. These people are incredibly reachable, and a large portion of that 61 percent is actually 70-plus.

It's also a pretty white audience, which should make sense given the extensive research on how multicultural podcasting is. A lot of podcasting's growth in the last five to ten years has been driven by Black, Hispanic and Latino, and Asian audiences gravitating toward the medium quickly. Thirteen percent of the holdouts identify as having Hispanic or Latino origins, and among that group, 48 percent say they are most proficient in Spanish, with another 28 percent equally proficient in both. There is a real Spanish-language opportunity here — more local content, led by what the content can do for the listener, made available in their language.

Forty-six percent have a high school diploma or less. Forty-eight percent have a household income below $50,000. Only 8 percent earn $150,000 or more, versus 20 percent nationally. That says nothing about ability to access or consume podcasts. It says everything about the bubbles we live in. The number-one source of podcast discovery is word of mouth, and if you're in an area where nobody else is consuming podcasts, the mouth has no word.

What They're Already Doing

Here's the part that should interest every creator and every media buyer reading this: the last quarter is not sitting in a media desert. They're consuming plenty.

AM/FM broadcast radio remains very strong in this segment. But that does not mean they're not digitally friendly. Nearly 40 percent use free streaming music services — Spotify free, Pandora, and the like. They listen to owned music, paid streaming, streaming AM/FM, and satellite radio. Radio absolutely leads, and it may be a tool to inform people about podcasts or give them another option to get the content they're already enjoying, on demand. That utility message — emphasizing what podcasting can do for you, not all of the weird, wacky, and wonderful stuff that we love about it — is one of the keys to reaching these people.

On the video side, this may be the only graph I've shown in two years where YouTube isn't number one. Premium streaming with ads leads, followed by YouTube, online video, network and cable TV, and free streaming services. But 57 percent do use YouTube. They could engage with podcasts there. Some of them may already be consuming podcasts without knowing it. That message has to be delivered loud and clear: YouTube is one of the best on-ramps we have.

And then there's social media. It's Facebook. If you think Facebook is dead or dying, you are not one of the olds like me, because we use Facebook every single day. An overwhelming majority of this demographic is there. Instagram sits at 36 percent, LinkedIn at 14 percent. The gap between Facebook and everything else is greater in this segment than in any other we've measured.

Year over year, there's clearly a shift toward digital video. TikTok shows the strongest net growth at +34, YouTube at +23, and Instagram at +13. This segment is discovering digital video, which means they may trip over podcasts before they know it. There will be organic growth here. Meanwhile, AM/FM streaming radio is declining at a net -16. Traditional broadcast radio is also slipping at -7. There's an opportunity in that shift: advertise on the radio to get people to discover alternative audio entertainment. Targeted ad buys in small- to medium-sized markets could be tremendously successful at promoting podcasts.

The Three Walls

88% of respondents in the last quarter say they're aware of the term "podcast." Only 12 percent don't know the word — and that's 12 percent of the last quarter, which is just 3 percent of all adults. These people have heard the term. It's part of the parlance of American discourse.

But when asked to define what a podcast is, there's a real lean: a lot of people in the last quarter perceive podcasting to be mostly an audio medium. That perception is radically different from how current podcast consumers see it — overwhelmingly as a mix of both audio and video. That's a correctable perception, especially given the rise of digital video with this demographic.

The barriers cluster into three groups. The first and largest is competition for attention. "I prefer watching television or movies." "Existing entertainment is sufficient." "I prefer reading over listening." All three of these boil down to: I'm happy with what I have. I don't need to go looking for anything else. That's true for a lot of people. They have a habit, and their current media is supplying it.

The second cluster — and this may be the most productive one to focus on — is awareness and education gaps. These are people who say they don't understand the benefits, can't find an interesting podcast, don't know how to listen or watch, or think podcasts cost money. Every one of these notions is correctable with a bit of marketing, especially local and offline marketing.

The third cluster is format resistance. People who say they simply don't like spoken-word audio or don't like video. If the lowest-hanging fruit is the cliché, this is the pineapple at the top of the tree. It's going to be a lot of work to get up there.

Infrastructure barriers are minimal. People who say they don't have broadband or a smartphone are generally at 2-3 percent. The real barriers are misperceptions about what podcasting is today and inertia.

The Bubble Problem

I can't overstate this. What has happened in the United States since World War II is that we have organically self-selected into increasingly homogeneous communities. We live in bubbles. If this segment over-indexes in a given county or town, there simply won't be any word-of-mouth. Friends who listen to podcasts: about a third. Family members: about three in ten. Coworkers: 16 percent. These numbers are, in some cases, less than half of those for the existing podcast audience.

If you're relying on word of mouth, you will not get there. It requires investment. It requires marketing. And when you ask these people how likely they'd be to act on a podcast recommendation, 36 percent say very unlikely. Only 5 percent say very likely.

We gave people a list of potential benefits of podcasting. Only one — listening to discussions on topics of interest — had more people interested than uninterested. But as Steve Jobs often reminded us, people don't like what they don't know. The top reasons that generated interest were discussions on topics of interest, something to listen to in the car or while traveling, learning about new hobbies, and something to listen to while walking or exercising. These are utility and convenience benefits. It's not about great technology. It's not about celebrities — hearing from celebrities was at the bottom of the list at 19 percent. It's about getting content you already enjoy at a more convenient time and place.

Who We Can Actually Reach

So here's where the data lands. There are people in the last quarter we can convert, and there are people we probably can't; the difference between the two isn't demographics — it's the nature of the barrier.

The first group is the potential converts: people who don't understand what a podcast is, don't understand the benefits, don't know how to listen or watch one, or think they cost money. These are education problems, and education problems are solvable. Targeted outreach through Facebook and radio could help enormously.

The second group has latent interest: people who express curiosity about topical conversations and the utility benefits of podcasting. Discovery and word-of-mouth are the barriers. YouTube and better social connections are the answer.

The third group is unlikely to convert: people who don't like audio or video, or who have firmly decided this isn't for them. Probably not the best place to spend your effort.

I'd be making a mistake if I walked away from this data thinking the lesson is simply "market harder." It's more specific than that:

• YouTube is the hidden bridge. 57 percent of these people are already there.

• Lead with topics, not format. They don’t care about the technology and don’t want to.

• Conquer the car. That’s really the last shoe to drop.

• Meet them on Facebook. Because what got you here will not get you there.

• Educate on access. One in five holdouts don’t understand the benefits, and another one in eight doesn’t know how to listen.

That Sunday morning at SXSW, I told the room that this isn't a story about people who've rejected podcasting. It's a story about people who haven't been invited yet — or who were invited in a language they didn't speak, on a platform they don't use, with a pitch about technology when all they wanted was something good to listen to on the way to work. The correctable gap isn't awareness. It's the invitation itself.

The full report is available here. Dig in.

None of this research happens without the support of our full-year sponsors of The Podcast Landscape: American Public Media, BetterHelp, ESPN Podcasts, NPR, and SiriusXM, and our research partners at Signal Hill Insights. Thank you.

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