Men are Listening to Podcasts but Women are Getting Hooked, Too

Study Finds That Today's Podcast Audience is Largely Male but Females are Just as Likely to Have Listened in the Past Week

WASHINGTON, DC, December 27, 2005

Podtrac, a leader in connecting podcasters and advertisers, today announced survey findings that benchmark the podcast audience and paint a picture of who is tuning in to podcasts and how often. According to the survey results, one in three respondents (32%) from the surveyed population are familiar with the term "podcasting", about one-third (32%) of those who are familiar have ever listened to a podcast and two in five (41%) of those who have ever listened have done so in the past seven days.

The study was commissioned by Podtrac and conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), the largest custom research organization in the world. The survey included US adult Internet users and the results were weighted to the overall US adult population.

According to the findings, 78% of those who have ever listened to a podcast are male. However, of those who have ever listened to a podcast, women are just as likely as men to have listened in the past week (51% of women versus 39% men).

"With podcasting just over a year old, the current maleness of the podcast audience at the aggregate level is consistent with gender usage trends of the early web," said Mark McCrery, Podtrac's Co-Founder and CEO. In the well known GVU's First WWW User Survey conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology in January of 1994, the overwhelming majority (95%) of Internet users were male, today that number is 48% according to data from TNS. "The fact that so many women who have listened to podcasts have done so recently signals the beginning of a trend toward a more balanced gender composition of the podcast audience. It's also reflective of the ever-increasing variety of podcast content with broadening appeal. Still at the individual podcast audience level, Podtrac's Audience InsightsSM surveys show dramatic differences in profiles of podcast listenership and viewership, including gender concentrations, which speaks to the targeted nature of podcasts as an advertising medium. All of which means podcast audiences will become even more attractive to advertisers in the year ahead," said McCrery.

Podtrac-TNS Study Methodology

  • Online survey conducted by TNS in December 2005
  • General population sample of online adults (18+)
  • N = 1,000

Podtrac Audience InsightsSM Survey Methodology

About Podtrac

Podtrac's new services for podcasters and advertisers provide the first complete system for podcast advertising insertion and podcast measurement. Podtrac is privately held with headquarters in Washington D.C. and an office in New York. For more information contact Podtrac at: www.podtrac.com.

Podtrac's Free Podcaster and Advertiser Services

Podtrac Demographics in Conjunction with Mediamark Inc. (MRI) , the country's leading provider of magazine audience and multimedia research data for publishers, agencies and advertisers, brings the same demographic research that advertisers have in traditional media to podcast media.

Podtrac Audience InsightsSM Survey provides every podcaster with a web-survey designed to collect the demographic and behavioral profiles of individual podcast audiences.

Podtrac Measurement Service provides third-party measurement of episode downloads and reach for any podcast.

Podtrac Media Kits include a podcast profile, Podcast Audience Survey results, and Podtrac Measurement Reports data.

Podtrac Content Rating System enables podcasters to self-rate their content based on five categories: All, Parental Control, Explicit, Graphic Violence or Pornographic. Podtrac provides audience feedback tools to monitor content ratings.