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Transcripts
If you've been seeing all the recent propaganda that the future
Speaker:of podcasting is all in the video, and you've been
Speaker:sort of panicking about Whether you need a four camera setup, a ring light,
Speaker:and a face for, well, YouTube, I've got some
Speaker:news that might let you sleep a little bit easier tonight. The most
Speaker:valuable listening you have doesn't care what you look like, they care what
Speaker:you sound like. They care what you have to say. And they're
Speaker:significantly more likely to buy what you recommend and tell their
Speaker:mates about your show and still be listening two years from
Speaker:now.
Speaker:Welcome to Podcasting Insights. I'm Neil Valio,
Speaker:and we're going to talk about audio Primes. All right, first up,
Speaker:some context. Tom Webster and the team at Sounds
Speaker:Profitable have just recently published a piece of research
Speaker:that that should frankly be required reading for
Speaker:anyone making, commissioning, or advertising
Speaker:on any podcast. It's about a segment they've named the
Speaker:Audio Primes. One of the questions that we ask in the podcast
Speaker:landscape is thinking about all the podcasts that you consume.
Speaker:What percentage of them do you watch versus what percent you listen
Speaker:to? And 22% of podcast
Speaker:consumers say that they listen to three quarters
Speaker:or more of their podcast. That's roughly one in
Speaker:five. And on almost every metric that actually
Speaker:matters to a business, they outperform the average
Speaker:demographically. And this is going to be the bit that's going to really piss a
Speaker:lot of people on LinkedIn off. They're younger, they're not older,
Speaker:they over index in the 18 to 34 bracket. They
Speaker:over index in the 35 to 54 bracket. They
Speaker:under index at 55 plus. They've got more education,
Speaker:they're earning more cash. 9% of them have a household
Speaker:income of over 200 grand,
Speaker:versus 6% of the average podcast consumer.
Speaker:And this one is kind of interesting. They're more
Speaker:likely to have kids at home, which, if you think about that for more than
Speaker:a few seconds, makes perfect sense. Parents
Speaker:need their hands and eyes free, and audio
Speaker:is the only medium that delivers that. Now, here's where the
Speaker:research gets quite interesting, because it's counterintuitive.
Speaker:You'd assume that audioprimes listen because they don't like
Speaker:video, but that's wrong. They consume more video
Speaker:than average. They're significantly higher on YouTube,
Speaker:they're higher on Instagram Reels, and they're higher on
Speaker:TikTok. So they're not rejecting video. They're making an
Speaker:active, deliberate choice when they consume a
Speaker:podcast. You know, that specific deliberate act
Speaker:of consuming the content. They want it in their ears.
Speaker:And that distinction matters enormously because it means audio isn't the
Speaker:default for them, it's the preference. And preference
Speaker:is a much more powerful thing than than a default. Let's talk
Speaker:loyalty, because this is kind of where it gets fun.
Speaker:77% of audio primes listen to podcasts daily
Speaker:or weekly, 18 points higher than the average.
Speaker:72% use the same platform every time. Once
Speaker:they're on your platform, they're not hopping away. They follow
Speaker:fewer shows. In fact, 48% follow just one or two.
Speaker:But when it comes to those one or two shows, they're ride or die.
Speaker:It's all habit. It's part of their weekly rhythm. And my favorite
Speaker:stat from the whole report, which you can find linked
Speaker:from the episode description 22% of audio
Speaker:primes say they have never stopped listening to a podcast
Speaker:ever in their lives. Once they find the one they like,
Speaker:they just keep going with it. It's appointment to
Speaker:download, which should make every podcaster listening to
Speaker:my voice right now stop and breathe for just a second.
Speaker:You are building something that has the potential to become
Speaker:sticky if you do it right. And of course everyone
Speaker:wants to know about ads, because if you are monetizing,
Speaker:this is the bit you're going to need to know. Audio Primes don't really care
Speaker:about ad volume. They under index on too many
Speaker:ads as a reason to quit out of a podcast. What they do care
Speaker:about is relevance. They over index on
Speaker:the ads weren't relevant as a reason to quit a show.
Speaker:So translated into simple terms,
Speaker:audio Primes will happily listen to ads.
Speaker:They just want them to make sense to them and
Speaker:for the show, for the topic. Dumping a
Speaker:generic programmatic spot into a niche show is going to
Speaker:hurt this audience, whereas a thoughtful
Speaker:contextual host thread endorsement will probably land with them.
Speaker:So there's a lesson in there for anyone building a monetization strategy
Speaker:based on dynamic ad insertion alone. It's
Speaker:probably not going to work, particularly if you're farming that out
Speaker:to the likes of Libsyn ads or
Speaker:Acast ads. Now, the Sounds Profitable team brought
Speaker:in a real neuroscientist on all this, Alberto, who
Speaker:broke down what's actually happening in the brain when you're listening to a voice
Speaker:that you've heard before. And it comes down to three key things, all right? Number
Speaker:one, oxytocin, also known as the bonding
Speaker:hormone. It's what mothers produce when they're breastfeeding, and it's
Speaker:what you produce when you hear the voice of A podcast host that you listen
Speaker:to regularly. Number two, mirror neurons.
Speaker:These are firing up when you empathize with another human. When your favorite
Speaker:host sounds sad, your brain goes a bit sad. When they laugh,
Speaker:you smile. You are literally
Speaker:neurologically mirroring them. And point three,
Speaker:mere exposure. Now, this is the compounding effect that we talk about
Speaker:when it comes to showing up regularly. Consistency.
Speaker:Week after week, month after month, that familiarity
Speaker:accrues into trust. And trust in this space is
Speaker:the single scarcest resource on earth. So if
Speaker:you put all three of those together, you get what psychologists call
Speaker:a parasocial relationship. A one way bond where
Speaker:the listener genuinely feels like the host is their friend. And
Speaker:did you know audio creates a stronger parasocial
Speaker:bond than video does? Because video gives your brain too many
Speaker:things to focus on. You're looking at things, whereas
Speaker:audio strips it to voice and words. You're not
Speaker:watching someone, you're sitting with them. Or as
Speaker:Alberto in this webinar put it, a screen makes you a spectator.
Speaker:A voice makes you a friend. Which, frankly, I might get
Speaker:printed on a T shirt. We gotta address the elephant in the room here,
Speaker:AI because this came up in the research and it's relevant to the point as
Speaker:well. Audio primes really, really, really don't want AI generated
Speaker:voices. In fact, about half say they'd be less likely to keep
Speaker:listening if they found out their favorite show was AI
Speaker:voiced. Only 15% said they'd be more likely to keep listening.
Speaker:Video primes, which is those people who mostly watch, are
Speaker:far more open to synthetic voices, probably because
Speaker:they're being subjected to them all the time. With AI
Speaker:generated slop on TikTok and Reels, they've become
Speaker:desensitized to it. For those of us in the audio first world,
Speaker:that is a useful line drawn in the sand. Your audience
Speaker:came to you for a human, so don't feed them a machine.
Speaker:Okay, so what to actually do with this information? And let me turn all of
Speaker:this into something you can actually Action. If audio primes
Speaker:are your most valuable audience and the data is pretty
Speaker:unambiguous that they are, here's what the research
Speaker:is telling you to do. Number one, be consistent. Whatever your
Speaker:cadence. Weekly, fortnightly, monthly, be there. The mere
Speaker:exposure effect only works if you actually expose.
Speaker:So don't do what I did with this show and go silent for a month.
Speaker:In fact, it was more than a month. Show up. Do the recordings
Speaker:publish. Number two, be human. Your voice is literally your
Speaker:superpower. So don't outsource that to any AI software.
Speaker:Yeah, it's really impressive. What 11 labs can do. Use
Speaker:it as a backup. Don't lean on it. Point 3 Be relevant with
Speaker:your ads. Don't just take a paycheck. Ask whether the ad
Speaker:fits with your audience and read it with some
Speaker:thought behind it. Make sure there's alignment there. Point four
Speaker:don't obsess about video. Sure have a YouTube presence.
Speaker:That's fine. They are still saying it's the number one Discovery channel. Well,
Speaker:whether we like that or not, there might be some truth to it. It has
Speaker:a great search engine. But don't sacrifice the thing that
Speaker:makes audio work in pursuit of video metrics that don't really translate to
Speaker:loyalty anyway. Number 5 Nurture the word of
Speaker:mouth. Audio primes tend to recommend shows to their friends
Speaker:a 30 second if you enjoyed this, tell someone who'd like it.
Speaker:That's worth way more than most paid marketing. Point six
Speaker:Think about your listeners. Being parents, hands
Speaker:free, eyes free isn't a nice to have for them, it's a necessity.
Speaker:And it's a genuinely underserved market. Think about how your content
Speaker:can reach people where they are and how they consume. Thanks
Speaker:for listening. Send me your thoughts. You'll find me on LinkedIn. Or if you want
Speaker:to go to Podmastery Co and get in
Speaker:touch that way until the next episode. Good luck with your
Speaker:continuing journey towards pod mastery.
Speaker:Podcasting
Speaker:insights.
