hen websites came on the scene in the mid 90’s, it wasn’t long before all major companies had one. And not too long after that, all brands (large and small) were in the game. Cut to now, when not only do all brands have slick sites, but so does college student Sally who posts her fashion portfolio for potential employers to peruse, Sally’s brother who just started his own lawn care company, and Sally’s grandma who creates and sells colorful guinea pig art.
Similarly, blogging, vlogging, and YouTubing were all occupied first by folks with too much time on their hands to then become hugely successful industries for the “passionates”.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen podcasting take the same route, and for good reason! The listener audience has grown consistently from the onset, the quality and creativity of the content has made strides, and, even more exciting, ad revenue for the creators has skyrocketed in recent years. Like the aforementioned platforms, podcast creators come in all shapes and sizes, from Sally’s dad who created a super niche show about albino giraffes, to huge brands like Tinder, Slack, GE, and Target, just to name a few. It’s exciting, but also smart, when a company can not only advertise on a podcast (at rates typically much lower than traditional advertising), but also become a podcast creator which allows them to connect with their audience in a deeper way, create a positive ROI, and tap into a potentially new demographic.
With big corps such as Spotify and Apple recently investing major cash into the space (Spotify spending hundreds of millions of dollars to obtain exclusive rights to shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and The Ringer, and Apple investing in original podcasts), you can bet it’s an industry that’s being taken very seriously.
So, yes, it seems as though everyone and their brother now has their own podcast, but with the total number of shows tallying just over 1 million, there’s obviously still a lot of room on the metaphorical bus.
If you (or your brand) don’t have your own podcast, what are you doing?
