After a Year of Pullback, Podcast Industry Hopes to Regroup In 2024

Going into 2024, podcasting executives remain incredibly bullish on growth in the sector, with an eye to creating multiple revenue streams for creators and using artificial intelligence and video to expand the audience.

While the podcast sector faced some pullback in the past year, notably with layoffs and programming cuts at Spotify, Wondery CEO Jen Sargent and Conal Byrne, CEO of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group, say they believe there’s still room for the medium to expand, particularly on a global level. And while the overall advertising market took a hit last year, both also see podcasting advertising growing into the next year, fueled by increasing demand.

In an effort to further globalize the medium, Byrne said he expects artificial intelligence to play a big role in the translation of podcasts into other languages. With the approval of the podcast creator, Byrne said iHeartMedia is looking to use AI to translate, transcribe and then voice content from its podcast archives, including How into multiple languages. The technology is not quite scalable yet, Bryne said, but the company will begin testing it soon, ahead of the technology being firmed up in the second half of 2024.

“It’s not just meaningful for the creators to be able to access audiences in the language they want, but also to actually build businesses in those territories,” Byrne said.

The Amazon-owned Wondery also plans to continue expanding globally, as listening grows in Latin America and Europe. The company is partnering with local creators and talent in countries such as Germany, Mexico and Brazil to produce content and also taking already popular shows, such as Business Wars or Killer Psyche, and adapting and localizing them for other countries.

As for the pace of dealmaking in 2024, Wondery CEO Jen Sargent says the company will continue at the same level, sticking to its plan of introducing a mixture of original shows and partnerships aimed at hitting specific genres or audiences on its strategic road map. Going into 2024, the company plans to expand into areas including comedy, sports, kids and family (including a recent deal with Dr. Seuss Enterprises), business and history.

“We will approach that strategy with a mix of originals and partner shows, and a lot of times, if it’s something new for us, we’ll look for best in class partner shows where there’s talent that’s already kind of cracked the audience or is already established in the genre to partner with so that we can get a really strong anchor in a category,” Sargent said.

After finding that daily podcasting listening is on the rise, Byrne said his company is taking that data back to partners, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries, to see whether they want to create more frequent content or find ways to serve listeners who have been choosing daily podcast listening over other activities, such as social media. It also may mean creating more podcasts.

“I definitely think it means don’t slow down the launch of new shows,” Bryne said. “We continue to launch hundreds of new shows a year to test what’s working.”

iHeartMedia is the top publisher of podcasts in the sector, with 884 active shows and a U.S. unique monthly audience of more than 33 million, meaning the number of audience members who stream or download a publisher’s podcast content across all shows they produce, as of November 2023, according to podcast measurement platform Podtrac. Wondery is in second place, with 232 active shows and a U.S. unique monthly audience of more than 21.2 million. NPR, The New York Times and NBC News round out the top five publishers.

In addition to new global audiences, iHeartMedia is also looking to meet the growing demand among Black and Hispanic podcast listeners, which are among the fastest growing segments in the sector. The company is leaning into The Black Effect podcast network, which it owns with Charlemagne, and My Cultura, a joint venture with Wilmer Valderama and Enrique Santos, to meet these two sectors, but Byrne said he expects more growth to come.

Meanwhile, though Spotify has cut some of its podcast programming, the company is also expanding into new audiences with its recently launched audiobooks offering, and has made deals this year including partnering with The Unwell Network from Alex Cooper, the top female podcaster on Spotify and the host of Call Her Daddy.

The predicted deal paces comes as Sargent and Byrne say they expect advertising revenue to increase in 2024. Last year, some direct response clients were more constrained with their marketing budgets amid concern about the macroeconomic environment, but both Sargent and Byrne say this was largely offset by momentum from national brands last year, which they expect to continue into next year.

“I think that advertising in the space is really picking up for podcasting and more and more brands are getting into the space, partly because they want to reach these growing, engaged audiences, but also because the level of sophistication of podcasts and measurement and reporting and capabilities is growing,” Sargent said.

In 2022, U.S. podcast ad revenues grew 26 percent year over year to reach $1.8 billion, according to the IAB U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue study. Revenues are projected to more than double between 2022-2025 to about $4 billion, according to the study.

While Sargent predicts the demand from advertisers in podcasting will lead more publishers to adopt or grow their ad-supported model, she’s also seen continued growth in podcast subscriptions. With this momentum behind them, both Byrne and Sargent predict an expansion from podcasting into multiple revenue streams.

At Wondery, Sargent said the company already takes the approach of viewing every podcast with an eye to the potential for TV adaptations of the show, as the company has done with Dr. Death and WeCrashed, among others. The company is also using video podcasts, where a listener can watch and listen to shows such as Baby, This is Keke Palmer on YouTube, as an aspect of discovery to bring in more podcast listeners. These formulas don’t work for all shows, but Sargent said it’s something Wondery plans to tap into when it can.

“We probably have two dozen or so of our shows that are video podcasts. And we’re expecting that in 2024 because it’s been just such a great opportunity,” she said.

At iHeartMedia, Byrne says the company has been looking for ways to broaden how its podcasts are packaged and sold to brands. He expects more creators to follow in the trajectory of Big Money Players, which the company co-owns with Will Ferrell and includes podcasts from Nikki Glaser and Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. iHeartMedia recently organized a live comedy showcase, under the Big Money Players banner, which they then turned into a broadcast radio hour and then was packaged back into the podcasts.

“It means that podcasters can look beyond the amount of impressions they’re bringing to the table and start to package things a little bigger. We will be doing a lot more of that in 2024 for all of our creators,” Byne said.

As for whether more mergers and acquisitions could be on the table in 2024, Sargent said it will partly depend on whether early stage companies can access capital to keep their business going. But she expects growth in the segment to fuel interest.

“I think the fact that podcasting is still rapidly growing and just continuing to get discovered by more and more listeners, that demand is going to just continue in terms of M&A,” Sargent said.