New Podcast Data Just Dropped!

It’s my favorite time of year, friends.

I don’t mean Halloween, although I dearly love giving candy to small children dressed as cartoon characters - it’s time to share the results of the latest and greatest State of Business Podcasting Report.

This report, which we’ve been releasing since 2020 is a deep dive analysis into the top 100 business podcasts, where we evaluate each of the top 100 shows on over 60 different criteria to look at industry trends and establish baseline best practices for podcasting as a business owner.

And today is all So let's talk about the sweet, sweet data. It's been an interesting year for business podcasting! We’re seeing big changes in social media usage, in sponsorships, and in network participation - there are some great takeaways for you to apply to your own show.

You should absolutely grab a copy of the whole report, but I’ve pulled some of the most interesting takeaways to share with you here today.

Report Highlights:

• Changes in release cadence: This year there were fewer daily and weekly releases, but more twice and thrice weekly releases, although weekly remains the most popular. Monday, Wednesday and Tuesday are the most popular days for weekly shows to drop new episodes.
• New data! This year we looked at whether the top 100 shows were B2B or B2C focused. We looked specifically at niche, show presentation, and types of engagement requests to make the evaluation, and we discovered some interesting differences between the two types, like that 29% of B2B shows were video first, but 50% of B2C ones were.
• Cover Art Style: Images of the hosts in cover art have dramatically increased compared to last year, with far fewer shows using graphics or typography only. This year 73% of the shows we looked at had a host image in the cover art, compared to 50% last year.
• Hooks are Back: After a 2 year decline, hooks (or sizzle clips) seem to be making a comeback. Separately recorded segments or content pulled from the body of episodes are used in about 60% of the top 100, compared to less than half last year.
• Indie Podcasts on the Rise: There was a significant dip in the number of the top 100 Business podcasts in networks this year: 40% compared to 66% last year, and 51% in 2022.
• Less Sponsorship Overall: Fewer podcasts had external sponsors this year, 60% down from 78%, and more were focused on promoting their own products, services and communities.
• More Accessibility: More top 100 business podcasts are sharing full transcripts of episodes this year. This is probably due to AI transcripts being higher quality and less expensive, and it’s a win for making your content available to more people.
• Changing the Relationship: Opt-ins on podcast episode pages have increased hugely this year, from less than 10% to 34% of shows offering a resource, community or other bonus for opting in, indicating a move towards converting podcast listeners to email subscribers.
• Episodes on YouTube: More shows had YouTube accounts, but a smaller percentage of the top 100 shows with YouTube Channels put full episodes on them. This might mean non-podcast video strategies are considered more important on the channel.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. We look at how shows start and end, how they’re edited, how often podcast content is shared on social media, how common guests vs solo episodes are… there's a lot of information you can use to help you make strategic decisions for your show.

There are dozens of interesting datapoints for you to look at and consider as you make strategic decisions for your podcast - and we’ve got a companion video that shares the year over year comparison and our recommendations based on the trends. You can get the whole report and watch the companion video that gives more detailed analysis and a year over year comparison at PodacstingforBusiness.com/Report.

If you have a community that would be interested this type of data, send me a message here to talk about getting a guest post or interview for your folks I’m always happy to talk about the data!

You’ll also want to make sure you’re registered for this year’s Podcasting for Business Conference. It’s happening in about two weeks and we’ve got networking events, we’ve got expert presentations, we’ve got live Q and A with industry leaders - I’ll go so far as to say we’ve got everything you need to take your podcast to the next level in terms of profitability. Grab your ticket at PFBCon.com! See you there!