Podonomics

A couple of months ago, I asked for your participation in a survey I was conducting with another company looking at the state of podcasting in Canada. Well, here’s the press release announcing the results.

The press release will tell you how to download your copy of the report. If after reviewing it, you’d like to blog or podcast about the report, do tag it as canadian podcasting.

Podcasting Taking a Hold in Canada
First Comprehensive National Survey Shows Traction of New Media

Toronto, Ontario (July 31, 2006) – With the objective of understanding podcast growth and technology adoption in Canada, the first comprehensive podcasting survey has wrapped up and results are currently available at www.canadianpodcastlistenerssurvey.ca.

Of particular note, survey findings indicate podcast listeners in Canada are almost evenly split between men and women, 59% of podcast listeners are between 25-44 years old, and the baby boomer generation is embracing podcasting at almost double the rate than those under 24.

For 77% of those surveyed, podcast is a familiar word - a compound word that combines: ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcasting,’ and according to Webster’s dictionary, is defined as “an audio file published on the Internet with an RSS feed, allowing users to subscribe to automatic downloads of a series of programs.” Moreover, of those who don’t currently listen to podcasts, 67 per cent said they would be interested in downloading one.

“Podcasting is moving away from early adopters and into the mainstream, and is no longer synonymous with young, tech-savvy men. The survey proves that podcasting appeals to the nation, whether they be young, professional or retired. Moreover, the podcasts users are downloading are just as numerous and diverse as are the podcasters themselves.” says Jen Evans, President of Sequentia Communications and co-creator of the podcasting survey.

While American podcasting research is readily available, especially as Forrester Research Inc. predicts 50,000 podcasters are expected by the year 2010, Canadian research lacks a comprehensive understanding of who, what, when, where, and why Canadians are podcasting. Consequently, Sequentia Communications and Caprica Interactive Marketing joined forces to delve into the state of podcasting from a truly Canadian perspective.

Additional analysis finds that Canadians prefer original, fresh, weekly, and entertaining content that can’t be found anywhere else. The top 5 podcasts of those surveyed include:

1. TWIT/This Week in Technology (USA)
2. Ricky Gervais Show (UK)
3. Quirks and Quarks (CANADA)
4. LOST (USA)
5. CommandN (CANADA)

However, poor audio quality, boring hosts, excess advertising, and episodes longer than 6-10 minutes may push Canadians to seek podcasts or alternative sources of information and entertainment, elsewhere.

“Although Canadians rely on other sources of information, Podcasts are quickly becoming integrated into their daily consumption of news and entertainment,” says Leesa Barnes, President of Caprica Interactive Marketing and co-creator of the survey. “This survey also shows that Canadians will become impatient with podcasts that fall below their standards. Content is indeed king and this old adage holds true to podcasts as well.”

For more information, please contact:
Nicole Meitsch
Sequentia Communications
416-203-3656 x229
nicole [at] sequentia [dot] net

Technorati Tags: canadian podcasting, podcasting, podcasting listeners, canadian podcast listeners survey

I use iTunes to listen to my podcasts. I just double-click the icon on my desktop and that little baby opens up showing all the podcasts I’m subscribed to.

At last count, there’s about 27 podcasts on my list. I subscribed to some for research purposes and found them good enough to keep on my list. Others are there because I met the host in person and liked their attitude so much, I subscribed to their podcast. Still others are on my list because I just find the content engaging.

Until I looked at the number of listening hours that showed up at the bottom of my iTunes screen.

“47 items, 19.4 hours, 917.8 MB”

My goodness, where am I going to fit in 19.4 hours of listening time?

Update: I just unsubscribed from a whole slew of podcasts and have narrowed down my listening hours to 6.9 hours for 15 podcasts.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, iTunes, podcast listening hours, podcast listeners

Think my take on the Nielsen numbers was harsh? Take a look at a few other perspectives.

Jon Watson over at BizPodcasting says that the Nielsen report wrongly compares bloggers to podcasters. As he puts it:

“That’s like comparing newspaper readers to karoake singers. No correlation between the two.”

Robert Scoble, VP of Media Development at PodTech.net, says that the Nielsen numbers blows when it comes to podcasting. He says:

“And podcasting doesn’t need the false hype. We need real numbers, real research, with organizations we, and advertisers, can believe. This doesn’t help us out AT ALL.”

Neville Hobson also had the same question in his post. More specifically:

“Um, podcast listeners on a par with blog writers? And online daters? What a strange comparison. Am I missing something here? I’d love to know what their survey methodology was.”

Read the Neilsen report. What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: podcasting, podcasting trends, Robert Scoble, jon watson

Yet another survey being released on podcasting. This time, Nielson is weighing in on the growth of this industry. One thing really stuck out:

“In typical Internet fashion, podcasting is being adopted first by younger, more tech savvy demographics. The youthful end of the adult world, 18-24 year-olds, are nearly twice as likely to be active podcast consumers, while adults 45 and older fall mostly below the podcasting curve.”

Well, it seems like Canadians are finally outpacing Americans in this area. According to the survey that Sequentia and my company ran (the report is being released on July 21st), Canadian podcast listeners are older and are almost evenly split between men and women. Fifty-one percent of the people who filled out our survey are women, while 59% of Canadian podcast listeners are between 25-44.

Nielson reports that Americans over 45 fall mostly below the podcasting curve. However, Canadians over 45 know about podcasting and are actively listening to them. What’s surprising is that 25% of Canadian podcast listeners are over 45, while only 14% of Canadian podcast listeners are between 18-24.

So, gimme a break Nielson. Stop feeding unfounded stereotypes about who podcast listeners are. At least Canadians are mature in their podcasting habits.

Technorati Tags: podcasting trends, podcast listeners, canadian podcast listeners survey, podcasting

How many people are actually listening to podcasts? How often do they listen and are they listening right until the end? Check out the resources below to determine the size of the podcast audience.

Forrester reports that 1% of the 5000 adults surveyed have ever downloaded a podcast

Podtrac surveys 55,000 Americans and finds that 41% of U.S. online adults are aware of term “podcasting

Nifty surveys Japanese on podcast listening habits

Feedburner reports that the average podcast has 35 subscribers

Libsyn reports over 45-million requests for podcast feeds

CBC surveys 10,000 podcast listeners and finds that they really like CBCs podcasts

Homework: Using the statistics above, determine for yourself if it’s worth it for you to develop a podcasting strategy.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, 31days, better podcasts

Just a quick note to let you know that we’re getting close to our Ipsos-Reid-like numbers for the Canadian Podcast Listeners Survey.

After asking everyone and their mama to blog or podcast about this survey, we jumped from 350 to 770 in just 7-days. Now that’s the power of blogosphere and podosphere. What an incredibly wonderful story. I can’t wait to share the results with you all in July.

BTW, the survey is open until June 30th. Click here to fill it out.

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know how much I love numbers. You also know how I’ve been bellyaching about people making sweeping generalizations about podcasting based on small sample sizes.

Well, now I understand why. Unless you have a mailing list the size of a small town, it’s difficult to get anyone to fill in anything.

A few weeks ago, I announced a survey that my company and another company put together to get a picture on how much Canadians are embracing podcasting. After 6-weeks, we still only have a few hundred responses. We’re looking for at least a couple thousand.

So, we’ve done a number of things to get the responses we’re looking for.

1. We’ve extended the deadline.
2. We’ve offered a prize.
3. We’ve bribed asked Canadians in blogosphere to help out. All who do will be mentioned in the acknowledgements of a report that will go out to a few dozen media outlets and marketing execs. So thanks to Kate, Bob & Mark, Jon, The Mose, Sebastien, Master Maq, Podcheck Review, Kim, Alex.

I really, really, really want to prove that word of mouth and blogosphere are all a person needs to get the buzz going. If I have to buy advertising, then I’d feel like I’m cheating in some way.

So, if you haven’t filled out the survey, I urge you to do so. Then forward it off to your network of friends, family and colleagues. Click here to access it. And if you have a blog, trackback to this post or blog about the survey.

Technorati Tags: canada, podcasting survey, survey

Feedburner has done it again. They now report that the average podcast has only 35 subscribers.

Well, my podcast has three times that amount, so there! So, you may be asking yourself, “Well, why would she even bother? For just barely over 100 people?”

The reason why I podcast are many:

• I get loads of search engine traffic. Search engines love fresh content and anytime I do an interview for someone else’s podcast or when I update my own, I get favourable rankings in search engines. Don’t believe me? Punch in the keyword phrase “selling mistakes” into Google. My podcast is listed #1 (as of April 19th). Try “selling mistakes to avoid.” Where’s my podcast?
• I get new clients. Yup, you heard me. I have signed up new coaching clients as a result of my podcast. Since launching my podcast in October 2005, I’ve enrolled 10 new clients. Doesn’t sound like alot, huh? But that’s 10 people x $597 USD and you get $5,970. It takes me 1-hour to prepare my podcast, then factor in monthly hosting ($3.95 per month) and domain name renewal ($20 per year) and you can see where this is profitable for me. This doesn’t include all the other income streams that I generate each month.
• I have eliminated complimentary sessions. There’s no need for me to do them anymore. I used to go through 30 comp sessions a month and only net 3 new clients. So, I wasted about 15-hours on the phone (30 prospects x 30-minutes) a month just to turn 3 clients. Now, I use a product funnel where I offer my ezine and my podcast as freebies. Listeners can get used to my coaching style while listening to my podcast, so by the time they email me, they’re ready to hire me as their coach.

So, these are the reason why 105 subscribers are worth it to me. Subscribers get used to my style, they start to like me and when someone likes you, they trust your judgement. With trust comes sales and that’s why the ROPI (return on podcasting investment) works for me.

About a week ago, critics of podcasting were cheering a report released by Forrester Research that only 3% of the 5,051 people surveyed said they’ve ever tried listening to a podcast.

“See,” critics sneered. “Podcasting is just a fad.”

Well, hold on bronco! Feedburner just released a report with actual numbers - not guestimates from surveys of a small sample of people - that show that those who subscribe to podcasts are now in the millions. Just under 1.6-million to be more exact.

How does Feedburner measure this? Well, they have snazzy statistics that help podcast producers know how many people subscribe to their podcast, which podcatcher subscribers are using and some other cool stuff.

The report went on to highlight these points:

• There are just under 45,000 podcasts serving just under 1.6-million podcast subscribers.
• Twenty percent of all new feeds created through Feedburner are podcast feeds.
• Podcast feeds have grown 15% each month between June 2005 and April 2006.
• Fifty-seven percent of podcast listeners use iTunes to access their podcasts.
• The viral nature of podcast feeds means that they’re resyndicated, thus increasing its reach.
• Based on current growth, there will be over 100,000 podcasts and 5-million podcast subscribers by the end of this year.
• Podcasters will start making money and demanding the tools to help them measure their listenership.

Interesting. I still hold firm that podcasting is the wave of the future, especially in light of declining radio listenership.

I met with a prospect this morning, trying to convince him that he needed to add podcasting to his online marketing mix. While he was intrigued, he questioned the ROI. In particular, he wanted to know how one can measure the podcasting results.

Okay, I can understand why one would want to measure podcasts. But my goodness, why is it that people put so much pressure on internet marketing tools? No one would go to television network and say, “For my 30-second ad, how many actual viewers watched it? No, not just the CPM, I mean actual numbers?”

No marketing director can tell me that a person walked into their car dealership or that someone chose one shaving gel over another as a direct result of an ad they viewed on TV or heard on the radio.

I’m not talking about brand awareness. I’m talking about the direct correlation between someone seeing an ad on TV and then going to their grocery store to buy that item off the shelf. Those type of metrics don’t exist, not unless you run a specific contest or other campaign.

So, why is podcasting being treated differently?