Archive for the 'Podcasting Research' Category

Universal McCann has published a new report that suggests that new media is rapidly becoming mainstream media around the world.

The comparative study looks at social media trends through three “waves”:

• Wave 1 - September 2006
• Wave 2 - June 2007
• Wave 3 - March 2008

Research highlights:

• Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.
• Asian markets (not including Japan) are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos
• The widget economy – 23% of social network users have installed an application – 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media (184m bloggers world-wide, China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers) – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog
• Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

The report offers additional details on Internet media use:

Video Sharing:

• Brazil leads on 68%, Asian countries dominate (not including Japan)
• Significant variation in involvement (Hungary 16% < Brazil 68%).
• High frequency of involvement: 20% are uploading every day

Watching video clips:

• Growth is universal across all countries (31% to 82% global reach seen in all markets)
• Lowest difference between markets of any social media platform (Range 63% – 99%)
• Very high frequency medium: 71% weekly reach

Downloading podcasts

• Growth massive between Waves 2 and 3 (from 21% to 49% world-wide).
• China is the world’s biggest podcast market (74% use, with an estimated 45m users)
• Actively involved medium: 18% listen and download everyday

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New data from Podtrac and TNS suggests that podcasts may be a much more powerful advertising platform than television.

The companies studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television.

““The studies showed a 73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product,” said Velvet Beard, vice president at Podtrac. “The studies showed that 69% of audience members have a more favorable view of in-show advertisers.”

“Podcasting delivers a level of end-user engagement that is rare in today’s multi-format world,” said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer.

There are many reasons why podcasts could be more effective than television. People are sick of the barrage of ads on television, so they routinely tune them out. Podcast advertising is typically much less intrusive than television advertising. It also has the potential to be much more targeted and relevant.

Because these stats come from Podtrac, a company with a vested interest in podcast advertising, marketers are likely to want to see these numbers independently reproduced.

Edison Research’s Tom Webster, who has been researching and reporting on podcasting for years now, has some interesting thoughts on promoting your podcast through social networking sites like MySpace and Twitter:

Change occurs at the margin, and it would be unwise to ignore the increasing popularity and utility of the various social networking sites.

However, as a researcher of that big ole’ middle of the bell curve, I am compelled to add here that this means that the vast majority of podcast users–and of Americans, period–do not maintain social networking profiles. This means that if you confine your marketing and promotional efforts to getting the word out on social networking sites, you are depriving your podcast of a potentially much greater audience.

If you produce a podcast on restoring and customizing automobiles, for instance, the number of auto aficionados on Twitter is a rounding error compared to the vast size of this potential affinity group.

If you are creating well-written, well-produced quality content on a topic or subject, you have as much right to the big fat middle of the tail as you do the long part, so think big–and market your content accordingly.

What do you think? Are social networking sites over-rated tools for promoting your podcast?

According to the most recent Tech Poll from radio research firm Jacobs Media, the audience for podcasts is up 87% year to year among rock radio listeners.

Here are some of the highlights of their research:

• New technology continues to rapidly move into radio listeners’ lives. This year, the “big gainers” in terms of occupying their time includes streaming video, iPod ownership (and podcasting), and text messaging. Almost the entire sample now owns a cell phone and has access to a hi-speed Internet connection.
• In-home radio listening is declining, as respondents continue to utilize other media in their residences.
• A variety of things are cutting into people’s time listening to radio:
  • Reading news online
  • Social networking sites (continuing to grow)
  • iPods/mp3 players (getting bigger every year)
  • Podcasting (up 87% year to year)
  • Streaming radio
  • Music sites like Pandora, iTunes
  • Video games (which was trending down last year)
  • Cell phones (which continue to be huge)
  • DVDs
  • TiVo/DVRs (which leads to more television viewing)
  • Video sites like YouTube
• Nearly six in ten respondents own a iPod/portable media player, an increase of 23% over last year’s poll. And the iPod’s presence in cars continues to rise.
• HD Radio is going nowhere fast - awareness is limited to about 1 in 100 people surveyed.
• Three in ten (28%) respondents (whether they own an iPod or not) say they’ve downloaded/listened to a podcast.
• Two-thirds (69%) of those listening to podcasts are very or somewhat willing to access a free podcast that contains an introductory commercial from a sponsor.

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While mainstream coverage may not reflect it yet, podcasting is rapidly moving towards mainstream adoption.

According to a new e-Marketer report, a  January 2008 Arbitron-Edison Media Research study found that podcast use is exploding:

• The podcast audience has grown nearly 40% in the last year.
• Podcasting reaches 18% of the US population, up from 13% a year ago.
• Podcast adoption is accelerating. A year ago, we reported that the podcast audience had grown 18%, less than half of last years growth.
• An estimated 23 million, or 9% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the past month.

Note that Edison uses a fairly limited definition of podcasting (radio style audio downloads) and their statistics need to be understood with this context.

“Traditional radio and Internet-only radio must realize that they are now part of an even broader world of online information and entertainment options and respond accordingly,” said Pierre Bouvard, president of sales and marketing at Arbitron.

“Advertisers who want to go where the trends are pointing need to be more involved with the new forms of audio media as they continue to expand,” Mr. Bouvard said.

Image: zengame

Internet video viewing will grow massively this year, according to research from Accustream. Professional and “user-generated video” (UGV) views are expected to grow by 43.4% in 2008, following a 57.6% increase in 2007.

Other highlights of the research:

• Partner Channels on YouTube, for example, accounted for a 10.6% share of total video views in 2006 - 2007, forecast at 15.4% in 2008.
• Comedians/Directors captured 8.9% total viewing share on YouTube in 2006 - 2007 and forecast at 11.1% in 2008.
• Universal Music Group claimed the top channel partner position, with a 29.1% share, according to AccuStream.
• Combined, Partner Channels, Comedians and Directors made up 19.5% of total views on YouTube in 2006 - 2007, and forecast at 26.5% in 2008.

Their research also digs into the relative strengths of user generated vs professional video:

• Entertainment captured a combined 17.1 billion views, for a 33.1 share, with professional sites owning a 52.4% launch share, and UGV hosting networks the remaining 47.6%.
• Music video (including artist info, mash-ups, spoofs, tour videos etc. on UGV networks) captured 12.5 billion combined views, 55.6% owned by professionally managed sites and brands compared to 44.4% for UGV.
• News is almost completely dominated by professionally managed sites, with a 93.8% share.
• The Sports category remains largely the domain of professional, formal partner or syndication-powered websites, with an 80.7% share compared to 19.3% share for UGV networks. Sports on UGV networks typically include extreme events content and spectacular wipe-outs.

New research from comScore confirms one of the more important new media trends - that young people are abandoning newspapers for Internet media.

As a result, newspaper readership is getting smaller and older.

���That current generations are growing up getting their news online for free is an indicator that print circulations are likely to continue their decline,��� said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore.

Younger News Consumers Less Likely to Read Print Newspapers

Heavy print newspaper readers show a strong skew towards older age segments, while the non-newspaper reader segments skew younger.

• Those age 65 and older are nearly 3 times more likely (index of 296) than average to read the print edition of newspapers 6 times per week.
• Those age 18-24 are 38 percent more likely than average to not read a print newspaper at all during a typical week.

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Two thirds of all Americans are dissatisfied with the current state of journalism, and most now regard the Internet as their most important source of news, according to a new Zogby International survey.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Other highlights of the research:

• Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago.
• 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.
• Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information.
• Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.
• Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets - 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The survey has clear implications for podcasting and new media - people are looking to the Internet for news and information, but may not be ready to trust new news sources. The onus is on new media sites to establish a track record and build that trust.

Overall, the survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources - nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%). (more…)

People now spend twice as much time surfing the Web as they do watching TV, according to new research from IDC.

IDC surveyed nearly one thousand Internet users for the survey. They found that:

• The Internet is the medium on which online users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week). This is equivalent to almost half of the total time spent each week using all media (70.6 hours).
• People spend twice as much time on the Internet as they spend watching television (16.4 hours).
• People spend eight times as much time on the Internet as they spentd reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).

“The time spent using the Internet will continue to increase at the expense of television and, to a lesser extent, print media,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment at IDC. “This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising.”

The data also show that consumers tend to use the media they grew up with. The older the respondents, the more they consume TV, newspapers, and magazines; the younger they are, the more the Internet displaces usage of traditional media.

Using search engines (84% of respondents), mapping and navigation services (83%), personal research (77%), and using email (76%) are the most frequent online activities.

Most marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective in the past two years. As a result, marketers are interested in exploring new ad formats and new forms of video commercials, according to the the latest TV & Technology survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Forrester Research, Inc.

Highlights of the study include:

• Sixty-two percent of marketers believe television advertising has become less effective in the past two years.
• Close to half of the advertisers surveyed have already started to experiment with new ad types to work with DVRs and video on demand (VOD) programs.
• Advertisers are eager to try new ad formats, including ads in online TV shows (65 percent), ads embedded in VOD (55 percent), interactive television ads (43 percent), and ads within the set top box menu (32 percent).
• Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they intend to spend more on Web advertising this year.

• Media agencies are getting better at helping clients deal with new media. Only 28 percent of respondents reported that their media agency is ill-equipped to address the changes in TV advertising, compared to 47 percent two years ago.
• Creative agencies did not fare as well, with 47 percent of marketers indicating that their creative agency was still ill-equipped to help deal with changes, a slight improvement from 55 percent of marketers two years ago.