With Irish audiences continuing to tune into podcasts and the overall market continues to grow, Acast Ireland has reported over 7.5m podcast listens every month in Ireland. This is an increase of 39% increase on the previous year. Unique monthly listens, meanwhile, increased by 32% to 1.65m.
At its recent Sound Smarts Ireland event, the podcasting platform also reported that podcast advertising grew substantially in 2020 as more and more brands and advertisers look to podcasting as part of the overall marketing mix. Attendees at the Acast event also heard that 33% of the Irish population now listen to podcasts according to research carried out by Attest.
Micheal Scully, sales director of Acast Ireland suggested that podcasts are now “beyond the point where any serious marketeer can ignore them”.
“Irish brand investment did somewhat catch up with the growth in consumption in 2020 with Acast Ireland seeing a 3X increase in the advertisers who chose to invest in podcast advertising. The Attest research showed that Irish podcast listeners describe podcasts as inspirational, engaging and intimate ahead of all other media types,” says Scully.
“As a result of this unique environment, 92% of podcast listeners were shown to take action after listening to a podcast. These results along with many of the creative innovations that have been seen in the Irish market have made podcasts an integral part of many Irish marketing strategies in the past 12 months. Acast who areHuge growth in the volume and diversity of podcast content was also witnessed in 2020. Acast’s 3 biggest content areas, Comedy, News & Politics and Society and Culture all show substantial growth. And new talent flooded into podcasting in 2020. Tommy Tiernan, Hector Ó hEochagáin and Laurita Blewitt spoke about their passion and excitement for the medium at the virtual event. Their podcast The Tommy & Hector Podcast with Laurita Blewitt has quickly become one of the biggest podcasts in Ireland drawing an enormous weekly audience, many of them, first time podcast listeners,” he adds.
