Aussie podcasting revenue tipped to reach $47m in 2020 [report]

Former Assistant Editor

Continued growth in the Australian podcast market will see annual revenue reach $47 million by the end of 2020.

That’s according to a new report from Deloitte, which predicts the Aussie market is growing faster than the rest of the world, with 1.6 million Australians now tuning in.

The 2020 Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions study predicts a 62% increase in Australian podcasting revenue, placing the local market way ahead of a predicted global growth of a global prediction of 30%.

The predicted growth comes off the back of a fall in revenue from advertising across metropolitan commercial radio stations in Australia.

Commercial Radio Australia recently reporting a figure of $760.799 million, a downward turn of 6.1% for the 2019 calendar year,

Should revenue remain flat in the upcoming year, then Delloite’s numbers would see podcasting revenue sit at 16% as a percentage of metro radio revenue, a bold prediction.

Deloite media lead partner Adam Power cites a love for mobile devices in this country as a key reason for the predicted growth.

“Australia’s love for mobile devices and insatiable appetite for entertaining and educational content are the real driving factors for growth in this space,” he said.

Another key reason behind the predicted growth is podcasters becoming more adept and optimising their various revenue streams, while the study also cites the fact that “podcasters have only really pursued making money from [podcasts] since about 2015.”

However, the study does note barriers to revenue creation for podcasters, including the sheer number of podcasts available for free.

29 million podcast episodes across 700,000 podcast series were “basically free” to listen to as of 2019.

“So long as people can listen to thousands of hours of high-quality podcasts essentially for free, profit-motivated podcasters will have a hard time getting listeners to actually pay for content,” says the study.

Despite this, Power added that podcasting should no longer sit in the “shadow of radio”.

“The rise of celebrity podcasters and true crime series continues to fuel audience growth and advertiser interest,” he said.

“As this platform enjoys steady growth, brands, publishers, creators, agencies and media buyers should all consider how they explore this group of active and engaged audiences.”

Locally, the radio and music industries have made sizable investments and acquisitions in the podcasting space over the last 18 months, in a bid to capture a share of the revenue pie.

It’s easy for broadcasters to “podcast-ify” a radio episode after it airs, as a catch-up, and radio networks can do this for “minimal cost”, explains the report.

For growth to continue, agencies, brands and media buyers “must start treating podcasting as a standalone channel rather than part of radio and streaming”.

This is definitely happening locally, with big players in the space including PodcastOne and Acast, who have partnership agreements with Southern Cross Austereo and NOVA Entertainment respectively, continually expanding their offering of original podcasts.

News Corp and Mamamia have also emerged as podcasting power players in recent years.

SCA’s PodcastOne recently fell into line with NOVA and ARN by agreeing to a deal with Spotify to make its library of podcasts available on the streaming platform.

Australia’s most consumed podcast genres are current affairs (36%), comedy (28%) and true crime (25%).

The full study is available to view here.

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