11 ms·

We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

61 points by imartin2k 7y ago

bearcobra 7y ago
I remember when the folks at TWiT were still trying to make "netcasts" happen and shared they had hit over $1 million in revenue and it feeling like the medium was going big. Pretty crazy to look at the numbers 10 years later and seeing how much further it's all come.
- BinaryIdiot 7y ago
  I did like their term of "netcast" because podcasts grew way beyond the iPod. But like with many terms nowadays it seems Podcast was the one to catch on as the generic term. Leo Laporte even mentioned that they gave up on "netcast" because it was obvious it would never happen and it was causing a lot of confusion with new listeners.
  - nerfhammer 7y ago
    the mechanical cash register sound effect is still used to represent money in media despite the fact that the kids these days have never seen a mechanical cash register and have no reason to be able recognize that sound from real life.
    - TylerE 7y ago
      I wonder what percentage of the world's population was born after new computers stopped shipping with 3 1/2" drives. Probably at least 25%.
    - will_pseudonym 7y ago
      The one that comes to mind for me is the floppy disk icon for Save.
      - nerfhammer 7y ago
        and it's called "floppy" even though they weren't "floppy" anymore! And we still call "hard drive" that because they weren't floppy even while floppies weren't floppy! And we call it a "drive" after the tape drive motor from reel-to-reel tape storage!
        luckman212 7y ago
        The actual magnetic media encased within the hard plastic 3.5" shell was "floppy".
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      I’m 38 and I doubt I’ve ever seen a “cha-ching” style cash register in active use either. Didn’t those get phased out in like the 60s? Maybe when you say “kids” you’re talking about me though!
      - nerfhammer 7y ago
        I didn't mean "kids these days" to be taken exactly literally. I'm not at all sure in which decade digital cash registers became overwhelmingly common.
mijustin 7y ago
Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has-problems https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted that big chunk of money to last for a while: two and a half years. Meaning, we wanted to burn about 6 million a year. But at this meeting, Jim is telling us that right now in early 2018, it's looking like we're going to burn a lot more than that: 10-11 million a month." He goes on to explain why: "And that's because a lot of the things we assumed would happen, didn't. We assumed audiences would grow, but instead they plateaued. Our launches had not done as well as they had in the past. And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them."
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them. Maybe I'm just thinking about this whole thing in too simplistic a fashion, but if the content is such that you can't make money on a podcast, why exactly are you spending money on producing it?
  - nostromo 7y ago
    Because you can dump the company on Spotify for $200m before running out of runway.
  - atoav 7y ago
    Many of the bigger German podcasters earn finance their podcasts entirely without ads by their listener’s contributions. The podcasts are usually people talking about topics they really enjoy with people they like. Why do people do open source software for free at times?
    - pmuse 7y ago
Gatsky 7y ago
One of the things I like most about Podcasts is that they don't overtake my time. They are just interesting enough without being too involving. Games, TV shows and books seem able to really grip my attention and displace everything else including sleep, but podcasts not so much.
- ShteiLoups 7y ago
  You're right. It's the perfect form of media in terms of consumption addiction. It's completely opt in, and easily opted out of. I wonder what we can learn from that.
- coderheed 7y ago
  I hadn't realized this, but it's so true. Thanks for the insight.
- andrejk 7y ago
  I have noticed this as well. I keep a set of "mildly interesting" podcasts for when I want to occupy mind enough to help me fall asleep, usually on airplanes.
marknadal 7y ago
Here's a great podcast by the creator of Javascript Jabber, Ruby Rogues (and ton of other popular ones) on the Future of Podcasting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaPmW2O5o1c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaPmW2O5o1c (video version) Or audio version: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-adventures-decentralized-distribution-ip/id1467007633?i=1000440692888 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-adventures-...
miguelrochefort 7y ago
Yet the user experience is a mess. Podcasts need to be published on so many different platforms manually. Ratings and reviews appear to be non-existant outside of the Apple ecosystem. You still can't export your subscriptions from some major applications, and good luck exporting your listening history from any. I feel like creating something 10x better is such a low hanging fruit, I'm surprised nobody has done it. Make a player that syncs across devices and platforms, exports/imports to/from other podcast apps/platforms (using scraping if necessary), aggregates and gather reviews, provides a basic recommendation system, allows subscribing to keywords (people, topics), etc. If it supports audio books, YouTube subscriptions (those channels with long talks and conversations and lectures that aren't strongly visual), and saved bookmarks/Pocket/Evernote article via text-to-speech, that's even better. When I commute, walk, exercise, cook, wash dishes, stretch, brush my teeth, take a shower, do laundry, mow the lawn, shovel snow, stop looking at a screen and go to bed 1h before sleep, I want to hit play and be fed a customized audio diet.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  I think you would love PocketCasts.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation. For others looking, I was very happy with DoggCatcher for many years on Android, and am moderately happy with Downcast on iOS now. Downcast does offer iCloud sync with multiple switches for various settings you wish to sync, and import/export (terrible name for something that makes me happy, tho). The thing that I liked about DoggCatcher is that, as I remember (beyond usual features like search and discovery) it was relatively easy to hook it up to whatever source you wanted. I had lectures in a Dropbox link, and I could point DoggCatcher at the folder and it would pick up my audio files, while being seamlessly integrated with “normal” podcast feeds.
- acjohnson55 7y ago
  This exists, several times over. I use Podcast Addict.
- 7y ago
ericol 7y ago
To be honest, I can't comment on if there's a "big era of podcast" ahead. But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news, specially in HN, that's where I consume quality content. I had recently, after getting tired of listening to music on my commute (A 12 minute bike ride, or a 25 minute walk) from home to work started to listen to podcast that I find normally here (My other source of content is reddit, but the quality is not the same). What I see, is that usually what gets named is really, really good; or at least very interesting. the other thing that I like a lot is that the duration of the episodes is more or less my commute. If it were longer I'd have the possibility of listening to a couple of them, or listening to a longer episode. When I tried to consume podcasts before they were always long, and that was annoying because they demand too much attention from you, and the UX of a podcast is not the same as television. I wont provide links but as probably is going to be asked I'll provide the episodes that got me hooked on different podcasts: "This American Life": Episode about a guy and his years long enterprise of outrunning an antelope. "Planet Money" and the Indian non-cash experiment. "99% invisible" and an interview with the writer of "Invisible women" a book about gender bias in daily life (This one was so good that made me scream in anger several times in the street!) Sorry but I don't remember much about another one, that was about a dirty cop that decided to go live in the wild because he was going to jail, and ended up living alone for more than 20 years (And hr got pardoned when he turned himself up)
- ericol 7y ago
  > But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news Sorry but my comment is crap here. This 2 ideas are separated one from the other. I live on a non english speaking country so I can comment on that (The big era thing). But even then, all the rest and blah blah blah. sorry about my lack of writing skills (And proofreading).
pcarolan 7y ago
We'll know we hit big podcast when they take away the 'skip forward 15 seconds' button. Advertisers will demand this like they did with video.
- zaque1213 7y ago
  I'd be interested to see stats on how often people skip over the ads during a podcast. I admit I do occasionally, but most of the time when I'm listening to a podcast I'm simultaneously doing something - like driving, exercising, mowing the lawn - that makes it inconvenient open my phone, navigate to to the app, and press the skip button a few times. Coupled with the fact that the adds are generally not too long, I don't find it to be too intrusive to the episode.
  - Splines 7y ago
    I think that's one of the reasons NPR bought Pocket Casts - to get this data. Where are users skipping? When are they dropping out of a podcast? Etc. Personally I skip forward past ads all the time. I have half a mind to write a podcast player that skips ads for me. It doesn't feel like an insurmountable problem.
  - pcarolan 7y ago
    Yeah, agreed. They don't seem as unwelcome as other ad forms.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    It’s probably one of the best features having an Apple Watch: flick of the wrist, couple of taps, bye bye ad. If I had to pick up my phone, I probably wouldn’t skip the ads, either.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Depending on your podcast player, what would be "next track" in a music app is "skip N seconds." I double tap my headphones and skip the ad. It doesn't work in the basic Apple podcasts app, but that app stinks and Pocket Casts is now free to use.
winkelwagen 7y ago
I’m a longtime podcast listener. The podcasting world did change a lot. The last two years the companies I’ve worked for both decided that it would be a great idea to release something for marketing purposes. The reason why podcasting works was because it was its own little internet within the internet. People with great stories, content that was just different en often more specific and niece then sites and video. We’ll see where it’s going to end up, but I do worried about the current fight of who is going to be the podcasting platform. The power for me was the sense of independence the creators had making it feel more like a labor of love then a marketing machine. Some of my current favorites: S-town: powerful storytelling, makes you wonder how much power the storyteller has. It’s a non fiction story about an interesting individual, explaining more would be a spoiler. White vault: thriller show, starts off a bit clunky with the voice acting. But as a horror lover the story itself is well written and it just works so well as a podcast. Benjamin walkers - theory of everything: it’s on a league of its own. The creator is just as historied as the brains behind the npr and gimlet podcasts. It’s interesting because you start to understand that the lines between what is truth and what is fake is so thin. I think there is even an episode over this exact subject. The big loop: great fiction storytelling most similar to the truth podcast but it takes more tune to tell the story, the little bit of extra space give the story a much deeper dimension. Darknet diaries: fiction podcast about hackers, gentle deep dive in the hacker world with some amazing stories. The author really does understand the world and you just feel the amount of research that goes into each episode.
- buzzert 7y ago
  For Darknet Diaries I think you meant “non-fiction”! Those are true stories! (I love this podcast as well)
- tartoran 7y ago
  Love Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything as well. Regarding how the podcasts trend will end up, honestly I think big players will try to bring it to the lowest common denominator and will make money but the original imtimate niche type of podcasts will stay the same, labor of love type of thing with various levels of financial success..
- 7y ago
dirtyid 7y ago
Maybe selection bias, but as a long time podcast listener, ever since the medium exploded, I've noticed more and more old podcasts that predate popularity surge getting canned. Creators that regularly cast for years fail to pivot to monetization their passion into a career, get demotivated and burn out. Maybe they're losing ears to plateuing audience and ad money to competitors. Maybe they're just getting old, starting families, have busy careers. Kind of a bummer either way, patronage is good for the arts to a degree, but extrinsic motivation (money) is also less resilient than internal motivation (passion). Also I miss quirky geocities pages.
sjg007 7y ago
Podcasts are great. I think Michael Lewis has really nailed the niche.
nautilus12 7y ago
The sad reality is anything that is funded through advertising is going to hit plateaus in the coming years. We've just been oversaturated with it, its become a burning pot for companies to throw money into with no ability to properly attribute it. I can't remember _ever_ buying something as a direct result of advertising.
- 333c 7y ago
  That isn't the point of (most) advertising. The point is to get the brand or product into your mind and make it familiar. That way, when you are in the market for Product X, you'll think of Brand Y due to their podcast ads.
fencepost 7y ago
Gimlet is interesting because it was a successful startup - start, get some investment, big exit for the investors and presumably founders. I suspect its shows are expensive because (for a time, still?) it's a core of former NPR people and NPR does a lot of production. Other podcast networks like 5by5 have mostly withered to one or two successful shows, though that example is due to a shift of focus from podcasting to providing tools for aspiring podcasters (Fireside). Kind of like running the general store in a gold rush town.
julvo 7y ago
What I struggle to see about this new era of podcasting is: why now? Would someone with more insight help me to understand?
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  The radio to podcast transition is an S-curve driven by smartphone adoption. There is a slight offset from the smartphone adoption curve because you need a bigger market to support niche productions long enough to work out enough standard formats that it can be easily replicated in non-niche segments. Once you have non-niche shows that are nicely formatted, and you’re past the tipping point for smartphones, the curve stands up.
m0zg 7y ago
Really? I think we're exiting the era of podcasting at this point. Both my wife and I switched to audiobooks a couple of years ago. We mostly get audiobooks from our local library. What's not available there we get on Audible. If you're going to spend the time, might as well spend it on something better than instantly obsolete drivel made up on the spot.
greggman2 7y ago
I don't really understand how there is a future for ads in podcasts. All the UIs have +30/-15 buttons making it trivial to skip the ads. Unless my hands are full I always skip them.

61 points by imartin2k 7y ago

I remember when the folks at TWiT were still trying to make "netcasts" happen and shared they had hit over $1 million in revenue and it feeling like the medium was going big. Pretty crazy to look at the numbers 10 years later and seeing how much further it's all come.

BinaryIdiot 7y ago
I did like their term of "netcast" because podcasts grew way beyond the iPod. But like with many terms nowadays it seems Podcast was the one to catch on as the generic term. Leo Laporte even mentioned that they gave up on "netcast" because it was obvious it would never happen and it was causing a lot of confusion with new listeners.
- nerfhammer 7y ago
  the mechanical cash register sound effect is still used to represent money in media despite the fact that the kids these days have never seen a mechanical cash register and have no reason to be able recognize that sound from real life.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    I wonder what percentage of the world's population was born after new computers stopped shipping with 3 1/2" drives. Probably at least 25%.
  - will_pseudonym 7y ago
    The one that comes to mind for me is the floppy disk icon for Save.
    - nerfhammer 7y ago
      and it's called "floppy" even though they weren't "floppy" anymore! And we still call "hard drive" that because they weren't floppy even while floppies weren't floppy! And we call it a "drive" after the tape drive motor from reel-to-reel tape storage!
      - luckman212 7y ago
        The actual magnetic media encased within the hard plastic 3.5" shell was "floppy".
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    I’m 38 and I doubt I’ve ever seen a “cha-ching” style cash register in active use either. Didn’t those get phased out in like the 60s? Maybe when you say “kids” you’re talking about me though!
    - nerfhammer 7y ago
      I didn't mean "kids these days" to be taken exactly literally. I'm not at all sure in which decade digital cash registers became overwhelmingly common.

mijustin 7y ago

Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has-problems https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted that big chunk of money to last for a while: two and a half years. Meaning, we wanted to burn about 6 million a year. But at this meeting, Jim is telling us that right now in early 2018, it's looking like we're going to burn a lot more than that: 10-11 million a month." He goes on to explain why: "And that's because a lot of the things we assumed would happen, didn't. We assumed audiences would grow, but instead they plateaued. Our launches had not done as well as they had in the past. And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them."

bilbo0s 7y ago
>And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them. Maybe I'm just thinking about this whole thing in too simplistic a fashion, but if the content is such that you can't make money on a podcast, why exactly are you spending money on producing it?
- nostromo 7y ago
  Because you can dump the company on Spotify for $200m before running out of runway.
- atoav 7y ago
  Many of the bigger German podcasters earn finance their podcasts entirely without ads by their listener’s contributions. The podcasts are usually people talking about topics they really enjoy with people they like. Why do people do open source software for free at times?
  - pmuse 7y ago

Gatsky 7y ago

One of the things I like most about Podcasts is that they don't overtake my time. They are just interesting enough without being too involving. Games, TV shows and books seem able to really grip my attention and displace everything else including sleep, but podcasts not so much.

ShteiLoups 7y ago
You're right. It's the perfect form of media in terms of consumption addiction. It's completely opt in, and easily opted out of. I wonder what we can learn from that.
coderheed 7y ago
I hadn't realized this, but it's so true. Thanks for the insight.
andrejk 7y ago
I have noticed this as well. I keep a set of "mildly interesting" podcasts for when I want to occupy mind enough to help me fall asleep, usually on airplanes.

marknadal 7y ago

Here's a great podcast by the creator of Javascript Jabber, Ruby Rogues (and ton of other popular ones) on the Future of Podcasting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaPmW2O5o1c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaPmW2O5o1c (video version) Or audio version: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-adventures-decentralized-distribution-ip/id1467007633?i=1000440692888 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-adventures-...

miguelrochefort 7y ago

Yet the user experience is a mess. Podcasts need to be published on so many different platforms manually. Ratings and reviews appear to be non-existant outside of the Apple ecosystem. You still can't export your subscriptions from some major applications, and good luck exporting your listening history from any. I feel like creating something 10x better is such a low hanging fruit, I'm surprised nobody has done it. Make a player that syncs across devices and platforms, exports/imports to/from other podcast apps/platforms (using scraping if necessary), aggregates and gather reviews, provides a basic recommendation system, allows subscribing to keywords (people, topics), etc. If it supports audio books, YouTube subscriptions (those channels with long talks and conversations and lectures that aren't strongly visual), and saved bookmarks/Pocket/Evernote article via text-to-speech, that's even better. When I commute, walk, exercise, cook, wash dishes, stretch, brush my teeth, take a shower, do laundry, mow the lawn, shovel snow, stop looking at a screen and go to bed 1h before sleep, I want to hit play and be fed a customized audio diet.

dvtrn 7y ago
I think you would love PocketCasts.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. For others looking, I was very happy with DoggCatcher for many years on Android, and am moderately happy with Downcast on iOS now. Downcast does offer iCloud sync with multiple switches for various settings you wish to sync, and import/export (terrible name for something that makes me happy, tho). The thing that I liked about DoggCatcher is that, as I remember (beyond usual features like search and discovery) it was relatively easy to hook it up to whatever source you wanted. I had lectures in a Dropbox link, and I could point DoggCatcher at the folder and it would pick up my audio files, while being seamlessly integrated with “normal” podcast feeds.
acjohnson55 7y ago
This exists, several times over. I use Podcast Addict.
7y ago

ericol 7y ago

To be honest, I can't comment on if there's a "big era of podcast" ahead. But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news, specially in HN, that's where I consume quality content. I had recently, after getting tired of listening to music on my commute (A 12 minute bike ride, or a 25 minute walk) from home to work started to listen to podcast that I find normally here (My other source of content is reddit, but the quality is not the same). What I see, is that usually what gets named is really, really good; or at least very interesting. the other thing that I like a lot is that the duration of the episodes is more or less my commute. If it were longer I'd have the possibility of listening to a couple of them, or listening to a longer episode. When I tried to consume podcasts before they were always long, and that was annoying because they demand too much attention from you, and the UX of a podcast is not the same as television. I wont provide links but as probably is going to be asked I'll provide the episodes that got me hooked on different podcasts: "This American Life": Episode about a guy and his years long enterprise of outrunning an antelope. "Planet Money" and the Indian non-cash experiment. "99% invisible" and an interview with the writer of "Invisible women" a book about gender bias in daily life (This one was so good that made me scream in anger several times in the street!) Sorry but I don't remember much about another one, that was about a dirty cop that decided to go live in the wild because he was going to jail, and ended up living alone for more than 20 years (And hr got pardoned when he turned himself up)

ericol 7y ago
> But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news Sorry but my comment is crap here. This 2 ideas are separated one from the other. I live on a non english speaking country so I can comment on that (The big era thing). But even then, all the rest and blah blah blah. sorry about my lack of writing skills (And proofreading).

pcarolan 7y ago

We'll know we hit big podcast when they take away the 'skip forward 15 seconds' button. Advertisers will demand this like they did with video.

zaque1213 7y ago
I'd be interested to see stats on how often people skip over the ads during a podcast. I admit I do occasionally, but most of the time when I'm listening to a podcast I'm simultaneously doing something - like driving, exercising, mowing the lawn - that makes it inconvenient open my phone, navigate to to the app, and press the skip button a few times. Coupled with the fact that the adds are generally not too long, I don't find it to be too intrusive to the episode.
- Splines 7y ago
  I think that's one of the reasons NPR bought Pocket Casts - to get this data. Where are users skipping? When are they dropping out of a podcast? Etc. Personally I skip forward past ads all the time. I have half a mind to write a podcast player that skips ads for me. It doesn't feel like an insurmountable problem.
- pcarolan 7y ago
  Yeah, agreed. They don't seem as unwelcome as other ad forms.
- mikestew 7y ago
  It’s probably one of the best features having an Apple Watch: flick of the wrist, couple of taps, bye bye ad. If I had to pick up my phone, I probably wouldn’t skip the ads, either.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Depending on your podcast player, what would be "next track" in a music app is "skip N seconds." I double tap my headphones and skip the ad. It doesn't work in the basic Apple podcasts app, but that app stinks and Pocket Casts is now free to use.

winkelwagen 7y ago

I’m a longtime podcast listener. The podcasting world did change a lot. The last two years the companies I’ve worked for both decided that it would be a great idea to release something for marketing purposes. The reason why podcasting works was because it was its own little internet within the internet. People with great stories, content that was just different en often more specific and niece then sites and video. We’ll see where it’s going to end up, but I do worried about the current fight of who is going to be the podcasting platform. The power for me was the sense of independence the creators had making it feel more like a labor of love then a marketing machine. Some of my current favorites: S-town: powerful storytelling, makes you wonder how much power the storyteller has. It’s a non fiction story about an interesting individual, explaining more would be a spoiler. White vault: thriller show, starts off a bit clunky with the voice acting. But as a horror lover the story itself is well written and it just works so well as a podcast. Benjamin walkers - theory of everything: it’s on a league of its own. The creator is just as historied as the brains behind the npr and gimlet podcasts. It’s interesting because you start to understand that the lines between what is truth and what is fake is so thin. I think there is even an episode over this exact subject. The big loop: great fiction storytelling most similar to the truth podcast but it takes more tune to tell the story, the little bit of extra space give the story a much deeper dimension. Darknet diaries: fiction podcast about hackers, gentle deep dive in the hacker world with some amazing stories. The author really does understand the world and you just feel the amount of research that goes into each episode.

buzzert 7y ago
For Darknet Diaries I think you meant “non-fiction”! Those are true stories! (I love this podcast as well)
tartoran 7y ago
Love Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything as well. Regarding how the podcasts trend will end up, honestly I think big players will try to bring it to the lowest common denominator and will make money but the original imtimate niche type of podcasts will stay the same, labor of love type of thing with various levels of financial success..
7y ago

dirtyid 7y ago

Maybe selection bias, but as a long time podcast listener, ever since the medium exploded, I've noticed more and more old podcasts that predate popularity surge getting canned. Creators that regularly cast for years fail to pivot to monetization their passion into a career, get demotivated and burn out. Maybe they're losing ears to plateuing audience and ad money to competitors. Maybe they're just getting old, starting families, have busy careers. Kind of a bummer either way, patronage is good for the arts to a degree, but extrinsic motivation (money) is also less resilient than internal motivation (passion). Also I miss quirky geocities pages.

sjg007 7y ago

Podcasts are great. I think Michael Lewis has really nailed the niche.

nautilus12 7y ago

The sad reality is anything that is funded through advertising is going to hit plateaus in the coming years. We've just been oversaturated with it, its become a burning pot for companies to throw money into with no ability to properly attribute it. I can't remember _ever_ buying something as a direct result of advertising.

333c 7y ago
That isn't the point of (most) advertising. The point is to get the brand or product into your mind and make it familiar. That way, when you are in the market for Product X, you'll think of Brand Y due to their podcast ads.

fencepost 7y ago

Gimlet is interesting because it was a successful startup - start, get some investment, big exit for the investors and presumably founders. I suspect its shows are expensive because (for a time, still?) it's a core of former NPR people and NPR does a lot of production. Other podcast networks like 5by5 have mostly withered to one or two successful shows, though that example is due to a shift of focus from podcasting to providing tools for aspiring podcasters (Fireside). Kind of like running the general store in a gold rush town.

julvo 7y ago

What I struggle to see about this new era of podcasting is: why now? Would someone with more insight help me to understand?

erikpukinskis 7y ago
The radio to podcast transition is an S-curve driven by smartphone adoption. There is a slight offset from the smartphone adoption curve because you need a bigger market to support niche productions long enough to work out enough standard formats that it can be easily replicated in non-niche segments. Once you have non-niche shows that are nicely formatted, and you’re past the tipping point for smartphones, the curve stands up.

m0zg 7y ago

Really? I think we're exiting the era of podcasting at this point. Both my wife and I switched to audiobooks a couple of years ago. We mostly get audiobooks from our local library. What's not available there we get on Audible. If you're going to spend the time, might as well spend it on something better than instantly obsolete drivel made up on the spot.

greggman2 7y ago

I don't really understand how there is a future for ads in podcasts. All the UIs have +30/-15 buttons making it trivial to skip the ads. Unless my hands are full I always skip them.