With summer vacations a distant memory and busy fall schedules in full swing, key podcast listening metrics rose across the board in October. All but two of the U.S. podcast publishers that participate in Podtrac’s monthly rankings had increases in unique monthly audience in October, compared to September. And all but three were up in U.S. downloads month-over-month.
Podtrac says iHeartMedia remained at the head of its rankings for both individual publishers and for sales networks in the U.S. and worldwide in October among the publishers it measures. Among publishers, iHeartPodcasts had the biggest reach with a unique reach in the U.S. during October of 32 million listeners, and downloads of 174.2 million, both up from September. The Walt Disney Company — whose shows include those produced by ABC News and ESPN — remained the second biggest individual publisher last month. Disney had 9 million unique listeners and 29.8 million downloads.
Among the sales networks measured by Podtrac, the iHeart Audience Network led in the U.S. with 376.4 million downloads to the 28,108 shows that its reps to advertisers around the globe, and 71.5 million unique listeners. Libsyn ranked second with 23.6 million unique listeners. It was followed by Wondery with 22.7 million, giving it a second consecutive month in third place after pulling ahead of NPR in September. With 21.2 million unique listeners, Acast moved up to fourth, ahead of NPR, which had 20.7 million.
Making for a podcast upswing hat trick, all but one of the global publishers and ad networks measured by Podtrac showed month-to-month audience growth in October compared to September.
The iHeart Audience Network, which had nearly 785.3 million global streams, downloads and video views around the world in October, again led the ranking by a wide margin with month-to-month audience gains. That included about 184.1 million YouTube views for the 61 podcasts in the iHeart network that also make their shows available on the streaming viewing service.
Acast held second place, up sharply to 406.3 million global streams and downloads in October.
Third place Libsyn lost audience in October, declining to 228.5 million global downloads, streams and views, including 99.3 million coming from YouTube shows.
Sonora Global Media was fourth with 104.7 million global downloads, streams and views.
Paramount was the fifth biggest global podcast network overall during September with 65.9 million global downloads, streams and views. Paramount once again ranked third in terms of YouTube views. Paramount’s 32 podcasts available on the video site had a combined 37.4 million views last month.
Podtrac says the New York Times’ morning news series The Daily was once again the most listened-to podcast in October among the publishers it measures. It was followed by NPR’s on-demand hourly newscast, and NPR’s morning news series Up First, with Dateline NBC and The Dan Bongino Show rounding out the top five, which remained unchanged from September.
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