New Nielsen service offers podcast audience insights for advertising

Marketing research firm Nielsen has launched a service to provide podcasting networks with insights on their audiences such as genre preferences and purchasing habits. The data comes from Nielsen’s biannual podcast survey of 30,000 respondents.

How it works. Networks can subscribe to the new Nielsen Podcast Listener Buying Power Service to have their podcasts included in the survey, which includes questions regarding genre preferences, purchasing plans, podcasts and other consumer and listener behaviors. 

The survey is conducted across a random sample of 30,000 Americans. At the service’s launch, customers include iHeartMedia, Cadence13, Stitcher, Westwood One and Cabana. 

Why we should care. In 2018, U.S. advertisers spent a record $479 million on podcast ads. That figure is predicted to surpass $1 billion by 2021, according to the IAB.

Podcast advertising has been held back by a lack of listener insights, making it hard to target an audience and measure ROI. Although Spotify has made some headway by allowing advertisers to target listeners of certain genres, the audience information available to advertisers is still far behind what other more mature digital mediums offer. 

“Nielsen’s Podcast Listener Buying Power Service makes it easy for advertisers to go deep within a specific genre to target listeners with interests and buying habits that match those of the customers they want to reach,” said Cathy Csukas, co-founder and CEO of Cabana. Although Nielsen’s service does not provide live data and the sample size is relatively small (for comparison, 32% of Americans aged 12+ have listened to a podcast in the last month, according to Edison Research), it does equip podcast networks with more information that they can use to attract advertisers.