You may listen to a couple podcasts yourself, or people you know are into them, but did you know that according to Apple there are over 550,000 podcasts with over 18.5 million episodes currently available?

As podcasts become more popular the advertising market for them has exploded as well, as premium audiences are targeted. According to Nielsen, 73 million people listen to podcasts at least every month and 48 million listen to podcasts weekly with those numbers only projected to increase in 2019.

According to eMarketer, “the average podcast listener skews younger, more educated and more affluent than average. Because their time spent with media is distributed among various devices and digital subscriptions, podcast listeners are both a valuable but difficult group of consumers for advertisers to reach.”

Podcasts, however, give advertisers the chance to reach their target demographic through ads read at certain points during the episode. Podcast ads are not as intrusive to the listener because they tend to be a quick read about a product or service that is tailored specifically for the demographic.

The audience listening to their favorite podcast is also more likely to trust the opinion of the host or co-host and hearing the ad from them increases brand recall. Podcast advertising in the United States is poised for continued growth in listenership and ad dollars plus big brands such as Pepsi, Google, Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft have increased their use of the ad format, which indicates that they are seeing ROI. Even if it cannot compete with the other advertising platforms revenue quite yet there is still remarkable promise.

If you are looking to start your own podcast or one for a business all you need is the proper equipment and a subscription to a podcast hosting site such as Anchor, Libsyn, PodBean, or BuzzSprout just to name a few! Also, please check out the latest episode of Digital Dialogue presented by Yelling Mule!