Podcasting: The Voice of the Post-Covid-19-World

According to the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2020, the traditional media – like TV, Radio, print, outdoors – grew only 9% in Adex last year; whereas, digital media grew a whopping 32% from 2018. Amongst the main verticals of the Indian digital media mix – search, social, video, and display – video was the highest contributor, with a spend of 30%.

Simultaneously, the Ericsson Report states that India also has the world’s highest data usage per smartphone. It stands at an average of 9.8GB per month. By 2024 it is predicted to go up twice as much. All this, because Indians are expected to use at least 75% of this data to stream videos. This is very good news for the podcasting industry. Intrigued? Want to know why? Well, back then videos for digital were a low investment, high returns kind of a deal; much like podcasting today!

Consider this that during the Covid-19 lockdown in India; our podcasters at HT Smartcast are recording episodes from home which are then sent to the production team living across the country; and after that, they are forwarded to the distribution and marketing teams who make sure that you, our listener, get to hear it – most likely on your smartphone – is proof of concept enough. Not only this, but we regularly ensure that we put out an average of 500 episodes each month. Just so that we can reach out to our 2.5 million + loyal listeners out of the 40 million + Indians who are most likely tuning in to listen to a podcast, right now.

So, much like videos back then, podcasting is a collaborative effort, easier to produce, comparatively low budget, and combined with the rest of the digital media mix it can engage the listeners much better. In our case, you! Moreover, it is literacy- agnostic. This means that for people who might have trouble reading, who much rather prefer the audio-visual media to gather information, podcasts become one of their go-to mediums. Also, it is independent of a demographic. Especially because podcasts consume less data, one can produce and access it anytime, anywhere.

Bearing in mind how economies are currently suffering the world over and every industry is being forced to work on limited resources, to the extent that IMF has recently declared recession, podcasting is proving to be one of the quickest, most effective and entertaining ways to reach out to people. Currently, it also seems to be one of the safer bets.

The proof of the pudding not only lies in the experience but also in numbers. Downloads on podcasting platforms like Awaaz.com, IVM, Audioboom and HT Smartcast, have jumped 8-30% in the past 2 weeks. On content distribution and aggregation platforms subscriptions have also increased drastically. For example, for Hubhopper it has increased to an average of 40%. Interesting, isn’t it?

Well, some of our most recent podcasts are as follows:

HT News Daily Wrap – Stay Updated, now more than ever

Love you Zindagi – Take care of your health, mental and physical

HT Media: Covid-19 Audio Coverage – Mapping the trajectory of the disease from January till date

Khayal – Escape the chaos around you and take a deep dive into the world of poetry

The Millennial Mind – Find answers to what Gen-Y wants for a happy life

Happy Listening!

P.S. – In case you have more questions and can’t wait for the next blog post, you can always reach out to the HT Smartcast business team on our website’s Partner with Us page.