Spotify: a podcast success story in 2022?

Île-de-France still accounts for 42% of listening in France, but towns with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants are increasing their podcast consumption and now account for 34.1% of listening, while Spotify has invested billions of dollars in the audio content sector. If you're interested in audio developments in 2022, read on!

Podcast success in 2022

Podcasting is no longer in its infancy, and podcast platforms, podcast studios and podcast advertisers are well aware of this.Among them, Spotify is trying to make its mark and dominate the market.Apple, meanwhile, is developing a partnership with Pulitzer Prize-winner Futuro Studios to create original, non-fiction storytelling podcasts.And despite the scale of this partnership, it's nothing compared to what the Swedish giant has devised to corner the market.

Become the leader in podcast advertising by 2022

Spotify understands that, by 2025, annual revenues from digital audio advertising in the U.S. are expected to grow to nearly $8 billion, including $2.7 billion from podcast advertising alone.Knowing that, by 2021, native podcasting has seen its number of advertisers increase by +92%.That's why the Swedish giant has set out to modernize podcast advertising:

• In 2020, with the launch of Streaming Ad Insertion,
• In 2020, with the first audio advertising marketplace, the Spotify Audience Network.
• In 2022, via the acquisition of : Podsights, one of the leading podcast advertising measurement services.
• Chartable, a podcast analytics platform that enables publishers to identify and develop their podcast audience through promotional attribution and analytics tools.

With these investments, Spotify expects to create impact for advertisers in measurement and attribution and growth for podcast publishers such as the :

• Wall Street Journal,
• ViacomCBS,
• AdLarge.

Getting stronger to moderate podcasts in 2022

In 2021, according to Spotify, more than a million podcasts were added to its service by "independent creators".and more podcasts mean more illegal, dangerous, violent content...Worse still, in its report, the Anti Defamation League states: " Content that violates Spotify's policies can still escape Spotify's radar in 2022 ".To combat this, Spotify has acquired Kinzen, a moderation tool supported by the analysis of academics and journalists, which analyzes potentially dangerous content and hate speech in several languages, just as Spotify announces the launch of its Safety Advisory Council.

Avner UZAN