Justin JacksonHey everybody, Justin here, I've got a treat for you today. Uh, some of, you know, my daughter did a podcast research report, it's on the transistor blog called gen Z and podcasting. And her and I sat down to discuss her thoughts on the podcast industry, based on some of the research she's been doing. She's 18, so she's firmly in that gen Z demographic. And it's interesting. It's interesting to see what the next generation is thinking about in terms of podcasting, audio, audio ads, Spotify.
We get into all of that stuff i think you're going to enjoy it let's get into it
You were telling me the other day you were doing some research on podcasting and you
"women are the future of podcasting." What did you find that made you say that?
Well, the main reason why I said that is because I'm reading an article done by Edison research they did mostly on women listeners. And it showed that the new women listeners, so people who've been listening to podcasts for six months were women. It was 53% of women and only 47% men. Whereas men before dominated within like the past three years.
Oh, I see. So, Edison was looking at " who has started listening to podcasts in the last six months." And, what percentage was women?
uh, 53% were women. Of all listeners?
So 53% of the folks who started listening in the past six months were women. And in the past, this would have been mostly men.
yes. In the past it was 63% of men. They were considered " super listeners," I think? Those who were listening for three or more years; who started listening for three plus years.
Got it. So the trend is going the other way now. If it started off mostly men, now, increasingly we're seeing mostly women who are starting to listen to podcasts. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it's changing now?
Um, it could be for a bunch of different reasons. I think one of them was actually COVID. Um, more women were reported to stay at home. More women are reported to be working also. So the combination of work and home, cause that's where most podcasts listening gets done is at home or at work.
Yeah.
And, also, On that same article, they interviewed a lot of women and they
" how did you get into podcasting? How were you introduced to it?" And most of them said, Spotify, actually. They're like, oh, I was just on Spotify. And I just happened to stumble upon and they have podcasts now, or, oh, I see an ad about it. And.
They opened up the Spotify app. They see podcasts in there, and that was enough to get them interested to, to listen for the first time.
yeah.
So what do you think this means? If up until now, the podcasting industry has been mostly dominated by men. And that includes traditionally a lot of the big names like Adam Curry and Joe Rogan and, in the tech sphere, Leo LaPorte and all these guys. What do you think this means now for the future of podcasting if there's going to be more and more women listeners?
I think it's going to be interesting for sure. I think information's going to be different. I think how people see podcasts in general are going to be different. One thing I was kind of thinking about is: not that many women even know about podcasts or how to find a good podcast. And they say that most of their podcast recommendations are suggested from Spotify, social media or their friends. It's more so of a social means of finding it.
And in a way that's kind of related to advertising as well, because a lot of women dominate the, the consumer industry. 70 to 80% of all consumer purchases are done by women.
Oh, wow. Okay. So, so, so in households, a lot of the buying happens with women. And so I guess there's an irony there that a lot of podcasting listening and personalities, the podcast creators have been men. And so a lot of the ads have been maybe targeted at men.
Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the ads have been targeted at men, and it's also said that 91% of women believe that they feel misunderstood by advertisers. And I think that that can also be attributed to podcasting. So how are we presenting the information to women? Because right now it's just, the market is just men. It's just getting presented towards men . It's men talking to men, whereas half the other population is not getting recognized maybe.
Yeah. Not being recognized or served. How do you think the ads might change? Maybe the thing that's being advertised or the way they advertise it, do you think that will have to change if advertisers want to reach female podcasts listeners?
Yes, absolutely. I don't think it's the, I don't think it's what is being advertised like the product itself, because the three most popular or bought items are food and beverage, beauty and grooming and health and wellness.
These are the products being advertised on podcasts?
Correct, yes. So these are the products. These are the three, three of the top five most advertised products on podcasts; these are also the top things that women purchase. So it's not what is being advertised. If it's a host read podcast, ad people love that people prefer that way more and people are more likely to purchase things and to remember products, if it's a host read ad. So I don't even think it's who I think it's just how the information is getting presented.
Most of it is playing off of gender stereotypes. I've seen a lot of just TV commercials of women vacuuming and saying something to their son about cleaning. And I don't that doesn't make me want to buy a product for sure.
Do you think that advertisers should be, even with products focused on men, do you think advertisers should still be considering women ? Like not always assuming that men are listening to these ads? And then the other question is, if I have a podcast and let's say 30% of my listeners are women, what should I be doing with the ads to kind of accommodate all groups?
Okay, so to answer your first question. I think they should definitely put in more of an effort to make their product more appealing towards women because 80% of the consumer purchasing is done by women.
When you say 80%, that could theoretically include in household that could mean that women might be buying like products for the men in the household as well.
oh, absolutely. 50% of all men's purchases are actually done by.
Okay. Okay. If a man has, whatever, $10,000 of purchases in a year, $5,000 of that was a woman is buying on his behalf, basically.
yeah. Correct.
Wow. Okay. So this is actually, for podcast advertisers, this is kind of a hidden opportunity. Because if they haven't been thinking about this so far, there's this group, like you say, it's roughly 50% of the population. It's most of the new podcast listeners, but also they're responsible for 80% of the purchasing decisions, including 50% of men's products purchasing decisions are also done by women.
yeah. yeah
So to get to the second question then, how should advertisers respond? Is the right response to focus more ads with a female audience in mind? Do you try to address every group with each ad? What are some things that you think podcast advertisers should be thinking about with all this information in mind?
I think definitely creating a story, creating a relationship is super important. It's a lot more empathetic. It's a lot more emotional. It's a lot more about connection, typically. And so using more of a pathos approach: more empathy, creating a relationship, using more emotion, using something that can really engage with them and also steering clear of stereotypes and just showing what women are actually doing now.
A lot of the ads are super outdated: women aren't just vacuuming and cleaning all day. They're making money and going to work and they have friends and they have fun hobbies. And. You know, have different interests and super intelligent people out there.
Yeah. So be very careful of old cliches. I mean, this isn't even hard, like even you and I talking about this, there's like a little bit of, um, I always had like this, like you said, uh, the way women's brains work, is there more. Uh, emotional. And even I was like, oh, is that too much of a stereotype? Even there, you know, uh, how, how do we do this dance? Like if w podcasts, creators and advertisers, what's, what's the approach?
How can we make sure that we're connecting with people where they're at and not, you know, making assumptions and not reverting to old cliches.
Yeah, that's a really good question. Well, what I said before, women need more of a story or need more of an emotional connection. In psychology, there's quite a few studies that show this. They show that even .. Like it comes down to movies that women prefer to watch. Music has a lot to do with emotional connection. The amount of professions that women go into could also be an indicator of how their minds work and what they've preferred.
I want to say the majority of women, if you're wanting to appeal to the majority of women, I'd say including some empathy in there, for sure. Along with other things as well, but making that a focus
Yeah. One thing that came to my mind while you were talking is like, if you truly want to know your audience, You have to listen to them. Let's say you have a podcast and 50% are women listeners. One way to get to know them better is you could do a survey. You could do a series of, listener interviews where you get on the phone or a call like this with listeners and just ask them real questions about their lives. Because you can ask, for example, what kinds of shows are you watching on Netflix?
What do you do for work? What's most important to you? Like how do you prioritize different things in your life? Which car manufacturer appeals to you most and why? And you might get answers there that surprised you, right? I think you also said that, women have a big say in car purchase. What was, what was that stat?
So 75% of car purchases are done by women, even though it's a highly, man focused industry, masculine industry, 75% of those purchases are done by women
that really surprised me. In our family, I'm not a car person at all. Uh, your, your mom is more of the car person and so. Um, I like, I've never really cared about car commercials. So it's definitely true in our family. But yeah, the stereotype in my head was, "well, most vehicle purchases are probably done by men," but that's not true at all.
it's not.
It's the reverse. So if you were going to construct a podcast ad for women or targeted primarily at women, like a car ad, what kinds of elements do you think you'd have?
oh, I would definitely. So for the ad, I would make it to be unscripted, a style that was unscripted, personal. Cause there's also research done that shows that ads, done by regular people, so you find these ads a lot on Tik TOK, Instagram, Facebook. So kind of starting in podcasting where it's just average people saying, "oh my God, I bought these leggings. They came in the mail, they look great."
They like put them on and it's people of all different shapes of sizes, people of all different backgrounds, people with all different ages and that ad focus I think it's simple, and already like immediately there's empathy. There's, there's a relationship. There's like, "oh my God, you're like me. You're not a celebrity. You're not a known model. You're just another person saying what they like about it, honestly."
And I think going from that approach of trying to sell a car and be like, "you know, I like this because of this, this and this. This is how it works for me. It looks great. You know, the cost is wonderful. Gas is cheap, or if you get electric car, whatever you get."
Yeah.
from that approach,
I like
what I do.
And, if you were a female podcast host, like if you're on the microphone, sharing your own personal story could be powerful. Like, "Hey folks, you know, I've been looking for a car for months and I just found one. I had this bad experience at this dealership, and then I went over here and I had this incredible experience. And the experience was so good I reached out to them, asked if they would sponsor the show. They said they would." Like, that could be a great ad.
And like you mentioned, maybe also, in your survey of listeners, ask: how many of you have purchased a car in the last six months?" If those were the kinds of ads you want it to attract, and then, uh, "tell me about your experience." And then, pick one or two of those, reach out to them and interview them. So, " Hey, Janet, I heard you just bought a new car. Can you tell me about it? What was the initial thing that made you need a new car? What were the kinds of things you were looking for?
What did you find? How'd you make your decision?" We call used to call this "native advertising" which is a advertising that's organic. It feels like, "oh, this is just an interview on the street." But in this case, it's about this particular brand, because this person had a great experience.
Yeah.
It was that kind of what you're thinking? Like, do you think those kinds of approaches would work?
Yeah, for sure. I think the car industry is difficult though, because it's so masculine focused, even walking into a dealership there's you can feel as a woman and people weren't, people warn me and they say, "oh, you be careful. They're going to try and sell you. They're going to try and charge you more for this car, cause you're a woman. You need to ask questions, you need to be strong."
And I think it's a difficult industry in general, because I think a lot of women are treated as if they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know the details of the car.
yeah.
They " need a man's help to decide. " Justin: That would actually be, that would actually be a great concept for a show. A hidden microphone show called, uh, "Women going into stores." Yeah. Yeah.
so here's, here's an episode of, uh, the hardware store. A woman goes into hardware store and then, uh, you know, what, what kind of stuff do you get on tape? Cause I've had that experience too, when I go to the hardware store with your mom, again, I'm not handy. I don't own any tools; mom owns all the tools in our house. And we walk into a hardware store, they immediately turned to me and go, "well, you're going to..." And I'm like, I, I, I'm not handy at all.
Like, she's the one that does all that stuff. You can see some of those societal expectations and, and things showing up. Probably be good. That would be a fun show.
Yeah, that
Uh, is there. On the technology side, and this makes me a little bit nervous because, well, because Transistor, the company that I co-founded with Jon, we make podcast hosting software. So I'm a little bit nervous here, but what, w what do you think the like, technological implications are? For people making apps and podcast hosting and other things, what should we be considering?
I think definitely looking at your gender demographic and seeing like, who's like, if you're, if you're making content and your intention for this content is for all people. It's for all types of people and you look, and you see that only that 70% of your audience is men or 80% of your audience is men. It's like, okay, well, what can I learn from this? What can I do differently? How can I make this in a way that appeals to women? And I think a big part of it is just women don't.
don't have access or they don't have the right tools presented to them to get into podcasting or to find podcasting. I just think it's not designed to intrigue them because a lot of women say that they don't know how to find a podcast, they don't know how to find a good podcast. They feel overwhelmed by the amount of choices; it's not super clear to them. And maybe a way to do that is to include more visual pictures.
A lot of studies show that women like pictures, especially with faces, because it's that empathy thing; maybe including on your site, women experiences, like women who have used transistor who liked it. And yeah. Case studies so that other women can see this. Have a bit more of a path they can go down and know what podcast is right for them.
Yeah. I mean, the indie podcasting industry, I think has always had this. Uh, kind of S um, w we've been wary about Spotify coming in. And part of it has been awesome, like way more listeners have come in, way more people starting podcasts. Like for on Transistor, a lot of our customers start on Spotify's free podcast hosting product, Anchor and then they switched to us.
But there's also been this wariness of like, is Spotify going to take over and, you know, are they ultimately good for the industry? And one thing that's interesting, you said like a lot of women are discovering podcasts through Spotify. Like having everything in one app has been helpful. So, what do you think, like if there, is there things that like other apps could do, like Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts? Is there any way that they can improve?
You know, uh, I attract more female listeners and encourage more people to find podcasts, try podcasts? What should they be thinking?
I think, advertising on social media platforms is one of the best ways because women spend, uh, women are the, I think 90 or 80% of women spend more time on social media than men or something like they spend at least two hours or something on social media. And that's also where they find a lot of their podcast information is through social media. So I think using that as a means of getting women interested and having ads that are more organic and personal on there.
I think that's what other companies can maybe learn from that.
Yeah. If you were advising apple, you wouldn't necessarily say they should bundle it up into one app. Like it should just be apple audio. Do you think that would be better?
I think it's a better approach because I think it's kind of lame to copy somebody else's idea
Oh
it might be a great idea, but I say if you were to bundle it, I'd say take it a step further and add a third. Um, Audio option. So you have music podcasting and maybe phone calls or video calls, FaceTime calls, or you have, um, maybe more of a educational podcasting option or,
Yeah,
um, I don't know. Anything else. Audio?
Yeah. Like Spotify is doing this now they're adding Audio books. They're adding video there. They're adding a bunch of stuff. And uh, all of apple stuff is split up. They have audio books in their iBooks app, they have podcasts and their podcasting app, they have music in Apple Music. The one thing I, that's unfortunate about unbundling, is that with bundling, you get to go to the place where people are most often.
And for Spotify, a lot of people are waking up every day and playing music and Spotify. And so it's easy to get their attention if you have a podcast. But with apple podcasts, I mean, maybe they could cross promote somehow like put a little promo in apple music or something. I know there's a, that's the other disadvantage, apple doesn't do ads inside of apple music. Spotify can like run all these ads for their own
Yeah,
podcasts and things like that.
exactly. And that's a big part of their success as well as all the people are signing up for the first time doing their free trial there, they're exposed to all these ads that have to do with podcasting music and other products as well.
Yeah.
And, and also like, think of, think of the rise of gen Z and even millennials, this common trend, this popular trend of minimalism. And I think bundling kind of fits into that. It's like, why would I have five different things when I can just have one thing that does five? Yeah. That was everything right.
I mean, maybe apple should consider bundling, just putting it all in one app and then all that cross-pollination can happen. And maybe they can not be a copycat, but they can do it different and better. But,
yeah.
um, and what do you think, uh, Google has a podcast app, but it's not used very much. What do you think are some interesting things they could do? Uh, cause I'm thinking specifically, like they have YouTube. Do you think they should be leveraging that? For, you know, getting more people interested in podcasts, getting more people interested in that using the Google podcast app or, uh, listening to specific things on Google.
Yeah, for sure. I think that, they, they play a lot of ads. A lot of ads play on YouTube. I think that's a way for them to grow their popularity in podcasting, but I think YouTube it's, it might be even been D B doing fine on its own. Looking at the data that was collected from the survey that we did. Um, it was, it shared a very similar growth pattern to that of Spotify. So gen X 2% use YouTube to listen to podcasts. And then millennials was 4%. And then I think gen Z was 6%.
Cause that's a pretty big jump. I know it's small numbers, but it's a big jump in terms of the amount of people choosing to listen that for podcasts.
Yeah. Th th the interesting thing for me, cause I mean, now it's like, are they watching a podcast or are they listening? It's hard to know if they're actually, you know, um, but the. The last Edison research that came out, showed that, uh, in terms of the share of their audio consumption, um, it was like kids 13 to whatever it was 13 to 25 or something. Um, non-music audio entertainment is increasing.
Like it's becoming a bigger portion of their listening, which surprised me, uh, because you think kids are just listening to music all the time. Audiobooks and podcasts are taking up a bigger and bigger chunk of their audio listening time. Audio listening time itself is doesn't grow or shrink that much, it's pretty steady. But podcasts and audio books are getting more of that share, which is interesting.
Like it may means that not everyone's just, uh, uh, watching YouTube videos or watching joe Rogan as a YouTube video, but there is a younger people listening to it, in their earbuds, just audio only. Right?
Okay, but dad let's be real here. You have to watch the Joe Rogan podcast just for the faces he makes. Those faces make it all worth it.
I mean, and that's maybe another point is that, you know, there's these purists. And maybe I'm one of them, that say, "well, no podcast has to be an RSS feed and it has to be audio. And it has to be on all the different platforms, apple podcasts, and Spotify and Google and pocket cast and overcast." But the gateway for a lot of kids, a lot of younger people, uh, uh, whether we like it or not was Joe Rogan; watching Joe Rogan YouTube clips.
And maybe other podcasters and podcast companies, like Apple Podcasts and Transistor, maybe we need to be thinking about that. And, for attracting more female listeners or more female podcasters, things like YouTube clips might be the gateway, right? That might be how people discover that stuff.
Yeah, it could be. Cause I know for sure. There's been times where I've been guilty of listening to a Joe Rogan podcast of watching one. And then, and then only realizing that it's not the full thing. So I have to go and find the full version of the episode. So maybe only playing five minutes of a podcast episode on YouTube, so people get hooked, they get hooked and then they have to find the rest of the episode.
And then they got it. You create the, uh, the trigger: " okay, that's it for this clip, go and find the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and then listen to the whole thing."
Yeah. And that's a great way. Cause you can also direct your audience of where to listen to it.
This was great Sades thanks for taking the time to do this.
for having me here.
Awesome. Okay, I'm going to hit stop.