The audience for podcasts is relatively small and mostly male, according to a new survey from Podtrac, a company that tracks audience figures for individual podcasts. Roughly a third of the thousand Web users surveyed said they have heard of the term “podcasting.” Among that group, just 32 percent have actually listened to a podcast. Of those who have listened to podcasts, 78 percent were men, according to the study. [MEDIAWEEK.COM]
Early days. And I take some comfort in these stats, since our company is far from where we need to be with this technology. [Thanks, Morris. Again.]
I don’t buy the argument that podcasting is quite this fringe–even at this early stage.
The TWiT guys have pointed out that “market share” numbers aren’t all that compelling in some cases. For example, Firefox has a very small percentage of overall Web users. But of the people who spend much of their time online, a large percentage have Firefox. It’s the same thing with podcasts. Maybe a small percentage of 1,000 Web users is listening to podcasts. But if that 1,000 people included my parents, who get online once a day to check email, is that really a valid survey for what it’s trying to measure?