eMarketer: Majority of Podcast Consumption Happens on Desktops
In a February 4 article touting new paid research, eMarketer paints a positive picture about the future of podcasting. eMarketer estimates that the total US podcast audience reached 18.5 million users in 2007, and should grow to 65 million by 2012.
Interestingly, they make a distinction between total audience and active audience. Total audience includes persons who have downloaded at least one podcast, while active audience only includes persons who download an average of one or more per week. The active audience projections are significantly smaller; a bit over one-third the total. That seems like an area where deeper definition and research would be useful.
eMarketer made a bold statement that the “majority” of podcast consumption still happens on desktop computers rather than MP3 players or mobile devices. I found that very surprising, and directly counter to NPR’s research, where roughly 70% of users consume podcasts on mobile devices detached from the computer.
NPR content focuses heavily on audio podcasts, and we have a high crossover with NPR’s radio audience, so perhaps our statistic is skewed heavily in favor of mobile consumption. But still, eMarketer’s statement seems quite high for a medium that has gained traction as a convenient way to time-shift content on the go.
I’d be curious how others publishers’ data aligns with the eMarketer statistic.
I think the way the survey is written could steer the result to either help the stats for mobile devices or for desktop consumption. Anyone who has a portable media player will have most likely consumed podcasts both on the portable media player and in the podcatcher application. Video podcasts may be another factor to this difference.
Speaking for myself, I can tell you that I listen to a lot of podcasts directly on my computer, I also sync the same shows to my mp3 player and listen to shows on the move and for long road trips I burn podcasts to CD-RW’s to listen to in my car.
Video is another story all together. I can watch some types of videos on my mp3 player, but I don’t even bother because the screen is so small. I’m sure even the most die hard iPod users may still watch most of their video podcasts directly in iTunes simply because the video looks better.
Back in 2003, I was using tools to download audio streams from NPR to convert them to mp3 so I could listen to them on my car’s mp3 player. NPR has a niche audience of very highly technical listeners, which could be another factor.
Rather than focusing on desktop/portable device consumption, I would want to find out how many people listen to podcasts while in the car, on a jog, at work, etc… I’ll be honest, podcasts that I listen to walking the dog or in the car get a lot more of my attention than when I listen to them while working at my computer.
Another question I would like to see in a survey is to ask how many different computers/places do you consume podcasts from on a weekly basis.Speaking for myself, I’ll download podcasts at work specifically to listen to at work and download other podcasts at home that I sync to my mp3 player.