Proving Podcast Value: An Industry Challenge

From first client contact to renewal time, podcasting agencies face one challenge bigger than all others: a trackable, data-supported argument that there's a measurable return on client investment in podcasting.

That's one takeaway from CoHost's State of Podcast Agencies 2024 report, a look at the industry from the perspective of insiders.

Of the 42 podcasting companies surveyed by CoHost, a trackable ROI was the single biggest reported constraint on client success, with 36 percent seeing it as the primary obstacle. Budgeting (31 percent), audience growth (19 percent) and leadership buy-in (10 percent) were other major pain points.

Despite industry and platform changes, most agencies still focus primarily on downloads as a success indicator. Other tropical metrics include overall consumption, unique listeners, subscribers or followers, listener feedback and ratings or reviews.

What's missing? Agencies report wanting, both for their own use and for client deliverables, datasets including retention rate, listener content preference, streaming/download comparisons, brand, topic and industry-specific benchmark data, and specific, individual listener data such as demographics, location, and psychographics.

Agencies also want a single, multipurpose platform to view the compiled datasets, according to the report. (This, incidentally, happens to be one of the things CoHost does.)

The push toward robust analytics to prove ROI is one of the four report takeaways for podcasting companies moving forward. Others include prioritizing time management and efficiency using AI, leveraging referral programs and focusing on client experience.

The top takeaway, however, is that companies need to tap into the video aspect of podcasting. It's noted as the single most important trend for podcasting agencies in the next five years. It's probably time somebody started up a company called ... wait for the shameless self-promotion... PodcastVideos.com!