Nielsen report audio content consumption growth

Nielsen reported Americans spend almost 20% of their day listening to stuff, 67% of which is ad-supported. The illustration above shows the segmentation of 18+ year-olds across audio platforms.

While radio has a somewhat surprisingly strong foothold, this data isn’t completely out of left field. We recently reported on Spotify doubling down on educational and podcast content. As a reminder:

• In 2013, about 12% of US consumers listened to podcasts. In 2023, this number reached 41%.

• In 2023, there were over 2 million podcasts and 48 million episodes out in the world.

• In 2018, advertising revenue from podcasts sat around $479 million (US market). In 2023, that number exceeded $2 billion.

And product teams are paying attention.

For example, Beehiiv, the newsletter company, launched Audio Newsletters hoping to capitalise on this growing trend.

Or Wondercraft, a suite of audio editing tools to create studio-quality podcasts, audio ads, and more from the comfort of your laptop.

And, of course, products like ElevenLabs cover the AI-powered audio creation side of the equation with voice generators and AI-enhanced text-to-speech.

It’s clear this is only the beginning for audio, as more and more businesses find untapped opportunities in this underutilised channel.