Darryl Battaglia

Daryl Battaglia is SVP of Measurement Products and Strategy at Triton Digital

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, this is Darrell Battaglia from Triton Digital.

(00:03):
Later, we will be talking about the US podcast report that was just released.
Triton Digital has been in the digital audio and podcast space for over 15 years.
We offer services across streaming audio as well as podcasting.
In podcasting, we have a hosting platform called Onme Studio to help you

(00:25):
manage and distribute your content. We have a full ad tech stack to help
publishers monetize their advertising. We have measurement and analytics
services to better understand the audience for podcasts.
That's where I come in, is leading our measurement strategy and products.
So you released the US podcast report for 2023.

(00:47):
That's got data from Omni Studio in it, from Triton Podcast Metrics, from Demos Plus.
Some really good data in there. What were the big findings from your point of view?
The biggest finding, I think, always is podcast growing.
And what we found is it's grown each of the last two years.
We computed to a 12% growth in monthly podcast listeners over the last two years.

(01:13):
What we saw was that came across all segments of the population, different age groups,
male, female. We really saw broadening of the audience.
While podcasting over indexes for a younger audience, for a little bit more male audience,
we actually saw more growth from the over 55 group in the United States and more growth from females.

(01:39):
So we're seeing a broadening of the audience and we're really seeing that podcasting appeals
to everyone. And it, I think, really is exciting for the future that the podcast
audience can continue to grow and there's really no ceiling that it can.
Obviously, there's all different types of podcasts and it can appeal to
all different types of people. Indeed, it's super exciting.

(02:02):
I wonder whether your report said anything about YouTube.
It's certainly all of the talk of the podcast industry over the last year.
It did. We did a pretty in-depth comparison of YouTube and Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well.
What we saw is that YouTube is the number one platform that people say they use the most

(02:28):
to consume podcasts. 33.5% of monthly podcast listeners said they use YouTube the most.
And that has been growing. 47% of their listeners said they started consuming podcasts in the last
year. So a lot of the new listeners are coming from them.

(02:48):
But we also saw a lot of differences in the demographics of the audience for YouTube
as compared to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because,
and this is data from Demos Plus and some really interesting data about the demographics of the
various platforms. So Spotify listeners being younger, Apple listeners being richer, YouTube

(03:12):
listeners being more male and a bit less money. What should we learn from that for podcasting?
I think it helps with distribution strategies. I think it helps to understand who your audience is
and help to inform your content strategies and help to inform your advertising strategies as

(03:36):
well to understand more about not only who your listeners are as a whole, which Demos Plus helps
to do, but to understand some of the differences amongst platforms. Yeah, and I guess it also shows
some of the benefits of Triton Podcast Metrics in that the data that you get from Spotify is only
data of Spotify listeners. And similarly, the data that you get from Apple is only from Apple

(03:59):
listeners and they're not necessarily the same types of people, are they? No, they're not. So as
you mentioned, YouTube, really all of those platforms are younger than the general population.
However, we saw that Spotify was the youngest, whereas YouTube was a little bit older. We saw

(04:21):
Apple Podcasts was more female, while YouTube was more male. Differences in income as well, Apple
Podcasts audience on average was at a higher income. So there are certainly differences amongst
those platforms, which were interesting to learn more about. Yeah, it's fascinating bits of data.

(04:43):
The other two bits that I saw, which I found interesting, firstly, the top shows by purchase
intent. So and again, I'm guessing that this is from Demos Plus as well. So if, for example,
you want to reach shows listened to by people who are interested in switching their wireless
provider, which seems very niche thing, then apparently Wow in the World or Fantasy Football

(05:08):
Today are two big shows for that. This is really focused information, isn't it? Really useful for
advertisers as well. Right. With our Podcast Metrics Demos Plus solution, we're able to
understand the profile of the audience across podcasts of all sizes. So age and gender, other

(05:31):
demographic insights, their purchase behaviors and intent, their political affiliation, their
other media usage. And so there's a wide variety of purchase intent data and in different
audience segments are important for different advertisers. So if you are a wireless provider,

(05:53):
you definitely want to advertising shows that will do a good job of reaching people who are in the
market to switch wireless providers. And in the report, first of all, we highlighted a few examples
of different genres at the genre level. But within our our ranker of the top hundred shows for the
year, we also highlighted for different audience segments and different purchase intents and

(06:18):
demographics. What were the top three shows that over index the most for those segments or would
reach that audience most efficiently? Yeah, and I think particularly helpful for an election year,
which of course it is. I wonder if anybody spotted this yet in the US. Particularly useful in terms
of that, because being able to focus on specific age ranges and also what which ways people are

(06:46):
which ways people are going to vote as well. Absolutely. It's not surprising, of course, that
different types of podcasts that have political content are going to be geared towards a certain
political affiliation. That part's not surprising, but it provides that insight for podcasts of all

(07:08):
genres and definitely helps with political candidates and their advertising campaigns
and determining what podcasts could be a fit for them. Yeah, and I particularly you know, it's
always nice seeing data where you can go, OK, that makes perfect sense. For example, the podcast
listens to by people with the most amount of household income podcasts like Planet Money,

(07:34):
or How I Built This with Guy Raz. I mean, that that makes perfect sense, doesn't it? It's really nice
seeing actually data that you go, yeah, that that's absolutely right. Right. I mean, even if they know
that this is the case because of the subject matter of their podcast, to have actual data with actual
numbers that is third party proof of the case and helps quantify it is a big help for them as they

(07:57):
try and find advertiser partners for their shows. So what do you think that the US podcast report
tells the podcast industry? What should we take away from that? Better insight into who the
audience is and how that differs across genres, across shows, across platforms with download

(08:19):
measurement. That data doesn't you mentioned, like sure, like Spotify can provide it for their
audience to a certain extent, maybe not to the same level of depth. But so I think that's been
a gap in the past for the industry is really understanding who the audience is and how it
differs across the whole the whole landscape. And so that's really a big part of it is to

(08:40):
to shed insight into that, share insights into that. And a lot of it is more at the aggregate level,
but we provide this type of data to our clients at the individual show level or for any aggregation
of shows as well. So the report is free. Where can people get hold of it? They can go to Triton

(09:00):
rankers.com. On there, you can see our podcast rankers, I'm sure monthly in every country,
but there's a link below under the resource section to be able to download the report.
It's about 30 plus pages of all different insights that hopefully people will find really useful.
And I know the team here has put a lot of work into it. So we're excited to put it out there.

(09:23):
Yeah, super helpful stuff. It's really good to talk to my friends at Triton. Darrell,
thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, James. Appreciate it.