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iHeartPodcasts leads the podcast industry with 148 million downloads, while Disney holds strong positions. But the holiday season brought some unexpected challenges, and most publishers saw audiences decline.
According to Podtrac's December 2023 publisher rankings, the trend of audience declines during the holiday season could reshape content strategies for 2024. The data follows streaming data, downloads, and unique listeners across major podcast networks and individual shows, offering insights from networks such as iHeart, Disney, Vox Media, and various sales networks.
The Key Points :
iHeartPodcasts leads with 827 active shows, generating 148 million downloads and 27.9 million unique U.S. listeners. The Walt Disney Company secured the second place with 6.8 million listeners and 23.1 million downloads to strongly position themselves.
Holiday period disrupted regular listening patterns, with only This American Life bucking the trend
iHeart Audience Network leads globally with 627.9 million streams and 109 million YouTube views.
NPR's hourly newscast surpassed The New York Times' The Daily for the top show spot
This holiday season demonstrates how the podcast industry reacts to seasonal changes in podcast listening. Meaning publishers should prepare content and advertising strategies during peak vacation periods to keep their audience engaged.
Big Picture:
This points to some key implications for the podcasting industry: For producers, this indicates a growing interest in multi-platform distribution, particularly as iHeart seems to be doing well on YouTube.
For publishers, seasonal content planning is going to have to be considered far more carefully, and for advertisers, spend will also need to change around holiday periods. The persistence of news as a leading genre of content shows opportunities in that vertical for both creators and advertisers.
