At Headliner, our mission is to help podcasters everywhere get discovered and go from audio to audience. And by everywhere, we mean everywhere! That’s why we started a global outreach program to podcasters as part of Podcast Promo.
Headliner partnered with over 180+ countries across 66 languages to connect podcasters with podcasters. Hear was the outcome!
An Intro to Podcast Promo
What exactly is Podcast Promo? Podcast Promo is Headliner’s paid promotional platform that uses AI-generated clips to help connect podcasters to new ears.
Podcast Promo is currently featured inside Make by Headliner’s export queue. It plays podcast clips to Headliners while they wait for their podcast’s video exports. It is important to note that Podcast Promo only serves clips to Free tier Headliners – so if you are Pro or Basic, you may have yet to see it! (Hear is a visual, in case you’re curious!).
Why do we call it Podcast Promo?
Why Podcast Promo? It is ads, after all… right? Well, not exactly. Podcast Promo is not an ad platform – it really just plays podcasts!
Podcast Promo is part of a larger discovery platform. It plays preview clips of full-length podcast episodes to give like-minded listeners A) an opportunity to find new podcasts and B) something to entertain them while they wait for their podcast videos!
Real Headliner feedback
Podcast Promo is an easy-to-use, powerful tool with tangible takeaways. Podcast Promo is helping podcasters everywhere grow their podcast and achieve their podcasting goals. But don’t just take our word for it – hear’s what some of our Headliner have to say about Podcast Promo:
“We’ve been using Headliner ads for the last couple months, and it’s great! It is a super easy way for a smaller show like ours to get some downloads and get our episodes out in front of different people to discover the show. Super easy to set up and to use! Would give it five stars!”
-Shayne and I Podcast
“Went up to top 1% of podcasts in Listen Notes from top 5%.”
– Reena Friedman Watts
“Went from top 15% to top 5% on Listen Notes.”
– Once Upon a Wasteland
As you can see, Podcast Promo is an effective tool for podcasting growth.
How Podcast Promo works
Podcast Promo can work one of two ways.
The first way is for podcasters to let our AI do the heavy lifting.
Headliner’s AI can create complete podcast clips (used in a variety of our products). Using Headliner’s AI, Podcast Promo produces clips optimized towards conversions – meaning it won’t just start at 0:00! It also intuitively clips audio while avoiding filler words like “uh” or “um. ” Podcast Promo uses Headliner’s AI to represent your podcast well and puts your best foot forward to drum up new ears.
The second way to use Podcast Promo is by manually sending us clips to play! If you already know what you
On your terms
Additionally, regardless of how you clip your podcast, you’ll have full control over how your podcast is promoted by working with a member of our Success Team.
Headliner’s Success Team can help set some targeting parameters (that is how we were able to go global!) to ensure your message gets in front of people who are most likely to listen. Currently, we offer things like geographic and language-based targeting parameters!
Our Success Team can help control how your campaign spends. We manually set a lifetime campaign and allocate spending evenly across multiple days, weeks, or months. So you tell us how much you want to spend over a specified period, and you’re good to go!
You’ll also be able to track performance and watch the listens roll in using your Headliner Dashboard account.
It’s really that easy! To get started, visit the Headliner Dashboard to create your account in as little as 5 minutes. You can also contact a member of our Success Team by shooting us an email. They’d be more than happy to answer any questions!
Podcasting growing in popularity worldwide
Currently, the United States still leads the world in podcast listenership. However, other overseas markets are quickly growing in listenership.
The increased international listenership supports a strong marketing growth rate. By next year, podcast listenership is projected to increase by over 16% or about 424.2 million listeners!
Non-English-speaking countries, however, are leading the pack in year-over-year growth rates. By language, Spanish and Portuguese podcasts have the highest annual growth.
Our hunch? Brazil is the country to watch.
Over 70% of Brazilian internet users report listening to digital audio at least once a month. Of that 70%, 35% report listening to podcasts regularly (at least once per week). Additionally, podcasting in Brazil has had the highest year-over-year adoption rate for the past two years, at 19.8%.
Listeners are branching out
Additionally, many podcasters are seeing a jump in international listenership.
According to Digiday, more and more international ears are tuning into U.S.-based podcasts. The inverse is also true – US listeners are tuning into more podcasts outside the US!
A study conducted by Acast also reported similar findings. Of the 1,500 listeners surveyed, 53% reported tuning into podcasts outside the US. The top regions/countries were the UK (52%), followed by Canada (34%).
Now more than ever, listeners are more open to podcasts and content outside their home market.
A “Case” for global targeting
After seeing these numbers, we were a little curious. What happens if we go global using Podcast Promo?
The team at Headliner put our heads together and found podcasters worldwide looking to grow their audience. We partnered with podcasters from over 180+ countries and in 60+ languages (thanks, AI, for some easy translation!). Together, we successfully helped connect more than +90,000 listeners to new podcasts!
Podcast Promo has helped connect more than 90K ears to new podcasts!
Hears how it shook out!
The results
English represents roughly 45% of our ears, with the majority living in the States.
But that still gives our international base A LOT of ears to work with! And, what we found, non-English speaking listeners are more receptive to Podcast Promo. They are more likely to engage with content than English-speaking listeners.
- Non-English listeners listened to a clip at a rate higher than 100% – this means they continued listening past Podcast Promo’s minimum listening requirement.
- Non-English listeners had an average Play Rate of 122%, meaning 22% of listeners listened to more than one Podcast Promo clip.
- Non-English listeners had an average click-through rate (CTR) of 1.26%.
- Our top-performing campaign is in Brazil. Brazil Headliners had the highest CTR at 7.48% and a Play Rate of 118%.
Takeaways
So what exactly does this mean? It means there is a lot more opportunity for podcasters than previously thought, and our data demonstrates podcasting’s growing popularity around the world.
Massive opportunity for podcasters
While the US market is definitely the most mature in size and listenership, industry growth is driven by non-US listeners and podcasters alike. For podcasters in the US, learning to create more inclusive or diverse sets of content may while adding accessibility tools, like transcripts or captions, in other languages will aid in growth opportunities.
Additionally, when considering who your audience is, think big! Like really big!
As we continue to move towards a more connected, integrated world (thanks internet!), people are looking to broaden their horizons and leave the confines of their local listening behaviors. So, when considering who your audience is, it may be worth removing location as a targeting parameter and trying a more broad, language-based set of criteria.
Whatever your podcasting goals are – we are 100% hear for it and happy to help. If you are interested in pursuing paid podcast promotion, give us a shout! Email our amazing team at jesse@headliner or join the conversation on Twitter and Threads.
