Podcasts are the new ‘appointment to listen’ with rapidly growing and engaged audiences tuning in to the vast digital audio treasure trove that is out there. For brands, podcasts can provide valuable opportunity to become part of the conversation, writes Ruth Fitzsimons, director of digital with Bauer Media Audio Ireland.
Saturday night TV used to be the holy grail of marketeers offering guaranteed reach, creative excellence, cultural relevance and communal experience for mass audiences. Fast forward to 2025 and we live in a highly fragmented media market, and the concept of a single major advertising moment is gone. Audiences flit between broadcast TV and radio, social media, streaming services, on-demand video, web browsing, and podcasting. Figuring out how to get that cultural cut-through with the right audience at scale can be difficult. Podcasting offers the same strategic payoff but in a different shape.
What’s the last podcast someone recommended to you? The Rest is History? Talking Bollox? Diary of a CEO? Podcasts are not passive content. They create cultural moments that get audiences talking and capture the national zeitgeist.
In recent years, we’ve seen podcasts set the agenda – even change the outcome of elections. Donald Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan podcast for 3 hours allowed him to appeal to a fanbase of 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers, swinging undecided voters behind his campaign. Unsurprisingly this led to Irish political leaders like Catherine Connolly factoring podcast appearances into her media plan for the presidential election. Connolly appeared on several podcasts including The Blindboy Podcast, The Louise McSharry Podcast, How to Gael, Joe Brolly’s Free State podcast, and James Kavanagh and William Murray’s The Simple Life. In contrast Heather Humphreys focused on a very limited number of podcasts across the established media like Irish Examiner and Irish Independent.
It isn’t just politics where podcasts have created those cultural moments. Who can forget The Two Johnnies’ GAA Catfish moment that captured the Irish and international imagination last year and the social media furore that it sparked? Podcasters have become a fascinating combination of broadcaster and influencer with highly engaged audiences who directly connect with them.
How many TV stars have a loyal subscriber base of paying fans looking for extra content, or sell out Bord Gáis or Vicar Street like GoLoud’s Talking Bollox stars Terence and Calvin. In fact, when Terence recently announced a decision to temporarily step back from the show for medical reasons, we saw an increase in subscribers to the podcast looking to support the show. Why does this matter? Podcasts have a parasocial relationship with their listeners with many identifying themselves culturally through the podcasts they consume.
Peak TV was never just about cultural moments, it offered reach. Podcast listening has grown 20% in 5 years and currently 45% of adults consume weekly podcasts according to IAB Red C survey.
This a medium built on appointment to listen, deep engagement to the content and repeat engagement that compounds over time. The long form nature of podcasts, often ranging between 30 – 60 minutes, allows for more nuanced conversations with a highly engaged audience. This is a level of immersion that few other media channels can come close to delivering.
People don’t accidently listen to a podcast. The research shows that audience are selecting their personal favourites to accompany them across the day for household chores, driving, relaxing, working out, commuting, and even working, among other activities. In fact, digital audio listeners are twice as likely to say that listening to digital audio is ‘time spent well’ and ‘authentic’ in comparison to social media (Radiocentre Ireland).
Little wonder then, that after cinema, podcasts claim the highest attention of ads in any medium according to RedC 2025 survey – more attention than live TV or social media. This habitual space gives brands the opportunity to speak to an audience in greater depth without the ad clutter that can exist in other mediums.
Podcasts are the new appointment to listen. Much like the Sunday dramas of old, podcasts offer brands the ability to work creatively with talent over a longer period of time via 60 second host reads and 360 sponsorships across podcast and social video. With average listen through rates of between 60- 80% of podcasts according to Edison and Nieman Lab, this is a medium that can provide more nuanced messaging for brands, more space for creative integrations.
In more recent times, we’ve also seen video increasingly become a part of the podcast landscape. While we don’t have Irish metrics on this yet, 69% of UK podcast listeners (Ofcom) and 79% of American (Edison Research) have consumed a ‘video podcast’ – essentially watching or at least listening to the content on a video streaming platform. That makes podcast investment a multi-format play with incremental reach across audio and video touchpoints.
To date, many buyers have been concerned that podcasts were too niche with little attribution. As an industry, we now offer detailed attribution via Veritone and Veritonic as well as IAB standards around measurement that have been well established. While radio and tv continues to be excellent for reach, podcasting enables brands to reach audiences in their favourite media spaces, play creatively with messaging and nuance across podcast audio and video. Peak time was never just a channel, it was a strategic ambition. More than ever, podcasts allow brands to join the national conversation.
