A survey of kids who listen to podcasting finds that once they pick up the habit, they often embrace it with gusto. Kids Listen surveyed nearly a thousand listeners of 44 different kid-targeted shows and it found that 48% of all listeners report listening to kid’s podcasts on an almost daily basis. Seven in ten respondents (71%) say they listen at least three-times a week, and 90% listen at least once a week.
It was also found that households with younger kids—those with at least one kid between the ages of 2 and 5 – are the most likely daily listeners. The study found that kids' podcasts were the most trusted source of recommendations for products or services as compared to things like magazines for kids and parenting blogs. Three-quarters said they would trust recommendations from their favorite kids podcast "a lot" or "somewhat.”
“When you’ve got an audience that is super engaged and puts a lot of trust in your shows, you’re doing something right,” said Melissa Victor, Kids Listen board President and creator of the Stoopkid Stories podcast.
The survey data also shows that BIPOC households are more likely to listen daily to kids podcasts.
Storytelling podcasts the most popular among fans of kid podcasts, followed by shows that cover science, history and music. As would be expected, shorter length episodes were considered “ideal” among those with younger kids. Episodes that are between 20 and 30 minutes work for the largest variety of ages, the report says, but generally the ideal episode length gets longer as children grow older.
While YouTube may be a growing outlet for podcast listening, the Kids Listen survey found just eight percent of kid show listeners used the video platform. There is a racial component to the results. Kids in BIPOC households also listen via YouTube more frequently according to the report.
“It’s clear this audience is unlike any other in the industry,” says Sanden Totten, Senior Editor at APM Studios and Kids Listen research lead. “There’s a lot of room to grow for creators who figure out the best ways to serve and delight this unique set of listeners.”
Kids Listen also provided an usual amount of transparency about how their survey was conducted and it reveals just how hard it is to do consumer research today, especially in the kid podcasting segment. The survey was conducted among 3,677 self-identified podcast listeners from Sept. 14 to Nov. 15, 2022 of which only 966 partial and completed surveys were used in the final tally. The report says there was a high number of discarded surveys because of a moderate number of respondents answered only one or two questions before abandoning the survey. It also received a large number of fraudulent responses – mostly from people who were not kid podcast listeners – that were submitted after a gift card incentive was added.
Kids Listen’s research team says it “erred on the more conservative side” and some legitimate respondents were probably removed, but it decided that was better than relying on bad data.
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