I call bull! on these podcasting market statistics

Posted At : February 22, 2008 2:52 PM | Posted By : Matt
Related Categories: JJHill Library, HillSearch, Sales & Marketing, BizToolkit

Earlier this month, eMarketer released some projections about the podcasting market in the U.S. According to the report, the American audience for podcasts by 2012 will be 65 million. Spending on podcast advertising will grow to $435 million.

Personally, I don’t believe it.

Audio podcasts are clunky. They’re difficult to maneuver. You can’t easily search them, or scan them, or skim through them like you can something in print. If you’re hoping to learn a specific something from a podcast, you more than likely have to sit through the whole thing to get to the point, and when the point comes you probably miss it because you’ve tuned out.

I just don’t see podcasting as an effective sales/business/educational tool. Perhaps for entertainment, and maybe that’s what these statistics refer to, but still… I’d be surprised if they were around in 2012 at all.

Has anyone had any luck with business or educational podcasting? I’d love to be proven wrong.

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Charles A. Weinstein's Gravatar Matt,

I wish I could disagree, but I cannot. I see plenty of people on airplanes watching sitcom episodes or movies on their video devices, but it would be hard to imagine widespread viewing of marketing symposia.
Of course it's impossible to know for sure whether it's tunes or business speeches flowing into all those earphones, but my money is on the tunes.

So, if the statistics aren't pure BS, what are they measuring?

CAW
# Posted By Charles A. Weinstein | 2/26/08 9:38 AM
Matt's Gravatar Hi CAW,
Yeah, it’s a funny report. Looking at the table of contents (http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarkete... it appears that the report covers topics like “online/mobile marketing tactics,” and “social media marketing applications by U.S. businesses,” which are of course very business-related things. But in the next section it’ll report on MP3 player shipments and ipod sales, which seem more entertainment-related to me. Maybe somewhere they tie the two worlds together somehow, but I don’t have $695 to find out! Thanks for the comment,
Matt.
# Posted By Matt | 2/27/08 11:49 AM
Ray's Gravatar For several years I had a 45+ minute car commute each way and I found podcasts to be a very effective way to keep up with the technology industry and other topics I was interested in such as innovation (e.g. with Phil McKinney's Killer Innovation podcast) and management. I can't speak for the projection, but my own experience is significantly different than what you describe.
# Posted By Ray | 2/28/08 6:05 PM
Matt's Gravatar That’s great – I’m glad podcasts have helped you fill a time void in a productive way. Maybe it’s just that I’m not familiar with specific serial podcasts in the business world. Anybody have any other management/innovation/business podcasts of note that you’d like to share?
(and thanks Ray, maybe I’ll replace my usual southern rock time with some Killer Innovations time.)
Matt.
# Posted By Matt | 2/29/08 11:59 AM
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