Observations & Predictions at the Intersection of Comedy & Podcasting

• Podcasting got its start in people’s garages, and while it will never entirely leave those roots behind, episodes recorded in front of live audiences will keep getting bigger and bigger, both in terms of the attention they garner and the money they make for podcasters.

• Talent agencies and management companies have already begun expanding their client rosters to include popular podcasters, independent of their (sometimes thin) standup CVs. Agents and managers who are experts in podcasting will wield growing clout among their colleagues — and credibility among comedians.
• There are two important questions around podcast engagement data whose answers are still not widely available, thanks to the primordial state of podcasting analytics. (1) If an episode gets X,000 downloads, how many people actually listened? (2) Among those listeners, how many didn’t skip the ads? Once we can reliably answer these questions, maximizing downloads will become much less of a priority for podcasters. Instead, their focus will shift more singularly to developing a loyal audience that tunes in week after week — and listens to episodes in their entirety.
• The long-run impact of better data is that podcasters will be incentivized to devise and deliver more engaging ads for clients, which will increase CPMs and attract new advertisers.
• Podcasting’s crossing-the-Rubicon moment will come when it starts attracting brand advertisers en masse. Today, by and large, the medium only attracts direct response advertisers (I’m good on underwear and stamps for now — thx). In the U.S., brand advertisers (whose goal is primarily to establish awareness of and affinity for a brand) spend about $3 for every $1 spent by direct-response advertisers (whose goal is to spark a transaction as a direct result of exposure to their messaging). Unlocking those brand dollars at scale is the most lucrative development podcasters can hope for. Better ad delivery technology and bigger audiences are prerequisites, here.
• For the foreseeable future, RSS 2.0 will remain the foundational technology of podcasting — and continue to frustrate people with its limitations. However, more and more companies will be using technology to innovate on the “last mile” of podcast discovery and distribution. Continued innovation in this vein will make RSS’ shortcomings less problematic for the industry.
• Podcast apps focused on specific content verticals will gain increasing market share. Depending on the unique needs of artists and listeners, these apps will offer compelling interactivity and functionality that’s complementary to the audio. For sports podcasts, it could be footage from games, press conferences, etc. For Laughable, our key differentiator is our comedian profiles, where you can find episodes an artist has appeared on and tap straight through to her social media pages. This makes sense for comedians but wouldn’t be logical for most other groups.
• Going a level up from podcasts: the spoken word ecosystem in general — encompassing standup comedy, audiobooks, podcasts, and so on— will make huge strides over the next several years. Entrenched players like Spotify, Pandora, E.W. Scripps/Midroll/Stitcher, and Amazon/Audible are pouring tons of money into the space, and startups like Anchor.fm are doing really exciting things around user-generated content. So long as audience growth continues apace, there’s plenty of room for myriad companies — and artists — to thrive. The biggest winners of all, though, will be consumers.