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Writer's pictureInside Audio Marketing

Podtrac: More Than Half Of Podcast Publishers Report July Audience Gains.


July can be a tough month for media consumption, with the July Fourth holiday, summer vacations, and school and work commutes not what they are most of the year. Podtrac says even with that hurdle, 11 of the top 20 podcast publishers it tracks had month-to-month gains in their unique monthly audiences last month. Three had growth in their download numbers between June and July.


Podtrac says iHeartMedia remained at the head of its rankings in July for both individual publishers and sales networks in the U.S. and worldwide among the publishers it measures.


Among publishers, iHeartPodcasts had the biggest reach, with a unique reach in the U.S. during July with 29.7 million listeners, a 2% increase from June, and downloads for nearly 167 million, an 8% increase from the prior month.


NPR was the second-largest publisher, with 18.4 million listeners, up 2% month over month, and downloads just shy of 112 million during July, a 12% increase from June.


Among sales networks, the iHeart Audience Network led in the U.S. with more than 366 million downloads to the 29,469 shows that it reps to advertisers around the globe. Libsyn ranked second, with 93 million downloads, followed by Wondery with 91 million and Acast with nearly 76 million. All four ad networks had more downloads in July than June, according to Podtrac.


Podtrac’s ranking of global publishers and ad networks shows five of the eight global networks it measures had month-to-month audience growth and more downloads in July as compared to June. That included the iHeart Audience Network, which had 695 million global streams, downloads and video views around the world in July, up 7% from June. That included more than 97 million YouTube views for the 57 podcasts in the iHeart network that also make their show available on the streaming viewing service.


Acast ranked second, with 356 million global streams and downloads in July, a 3% decrease from the prior month. Libsyn followed with 189 million downloads, streams and views — including 63 million YouTube views to the nine shows it posts on the video site. That was up 8% from a month earlier.


Podtrac says Paramount had the second-biggest number of YouTube views last month, as the 87 podcasts its distributes on the video site had a combined 32 million views worldwide. But that was down 11% from June, and so Paramount’s spot in the ranker slid one position to No. 6 as it traded places with The Daily Wire.


Podtrac says the New York Times’ morning news series The Daily was the most listened-to podcast in July 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.


Several changes to the lineup of publishers and networks measured by Podtrac have led the company to suspend releasing both month-to-month and year-to-year comparisons of how the industry is performing. But a review of the data shows numbers remain lower than a year ago, thanks largely to last fall’s rollout of iOS 17.


The Apple Podcast update, which changed how automatic downloads are dealt with, has been an overhang for the past several months. Prior to the release of the iOS 17 operating system in September, when a listener would un-pause automatic downloads, the system would automatically download all unplayed episodes. But since the release of the new OS, Apple Podcasts will resume automatically downloading only the new episodes. And the previous episodes will not be downloaded at all. Apple Podcasts also says that when a podcaster publishes an older episode to their show, they will no longer present themselves as new. The changes came at the request of several podcast companies, which have said the resulting data will be more accurate in the long term.

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