Podcast advertising will see a slowdown in 2022, even as growth outpaces other digital media

Podcasting had a more sober 2022 – at least when it came to advertising.

According to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, released Thursday ahead of the Podcast Upfront presentations, total ad revenue for the podcast industry will reach $1.8 billion by 2022, which was less than the $2.1 billion the IAB had predicted in his previous ad revenue research.

While podcasting continues to grow ad growth faster than other digital media (including video and social media, which grew 19 percent and 4 percent respectively), last year’s ad revenue performance was a marked slowdown compared to the boom by 2021, when total Podcast ad revenue rose 72 percent, surpassing $1 billion for the first time.

At the time, the IAB predicted that the podcast market would reach $4.2 billion by 2024. Thursday’s report reevaluated that timeline, putting podcasting revenue projections for 2024 at $3.2 billion. (The latest study predicts that podcasting ad revenue will fall just below the $4 billion threshold by 2025.)

In terms of marketing spend, the top genres in podcasting saw a major shift in 2022. For the first time since 2018, news was overtaken by sports, comedy, and society and culture as the top content genres for marketing spend.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, a media partner of the IAB Podcast Upfronts, IAB Media Center VP Eric John said the drop in news was likely due to 2022 being a gap year between election cycles. “The pandemic is subsiding, so we’re getting back to personal life, and so you’re seeing an uptick in society and culture and comedy and sports — all of those things are driven by personal life,” Johannes said. “It’s not that news isn’t important, but I think people are probably showing an interest in not participating in a minute-by-minute cycle that we’ve all experienced during the pandemic.”

True crime, a podcasting avid, also saw a drop in its revenue share in 2022. But John said he believed the change was indicative of the growing diversity within podcasting, with listeners being introduced to more genres within the medium, rather than of listeners “dropping out”. real crime.”

But in terms of quarterly performance, 2022 suffered from a weak fourth quarter. While Q4 has typically been the medium’s strongest quarter, last year’s fourth quarter fell to its lowest level — 29 percent — since 2017, according to the IAB report.

“Anyone who works in advertising knows that the fourth quarter of last year was a huge challenge,” said John. “Podcasting was not immune to that. There was a lot of pause. Nevertheless, we are happy with the growth we have experienced.”