How podcasters are measuring videos’ role in growing incremental audiences

That’s not necessarily a new trend. But as podcasters increasingly produce more and more video content from their audio shows, publishers and podcast organizations are measuring the success of those strategies by looking at growth both in listeners and viewers, according to conversations with five heads of audio.

There isn’t a way to directly measure to what extent video podcasts are attracting new incremental audiences to a given show versus cannibalizing existing audiences by converting audio listeners into video viewers — and to see which platforms are referring audiences to podcast shows, according to execs.

“That’s really difficult [to do],” said Collin Campbell, NPR’s svp of podcasting strategy and franchise development.

Because there isn’t a way to properly evaluate the incrementality of video podcasts, podcast producers and publishers are drawing correlations between a podcast’s video audience growth and the show’s overall audience growth.

Since introducing video episodes on Spotify last June (coinciding with the premiere of a new season of “House of the Dragon,” the prequel to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” TV show), Spotify-owned podcast network The Ringer’s “Talk the Thrones” podcast has seen a 70% increase in followers, with 84% of new users actively watching in the foreground, a Spotify spokesperson said. The Ringer produces more than 100 hours of content each week, across 50 shows. Most of the network’s shows are expected to feature video by March, they said. 

Another way publishers have figured out how to measure the connection between video and audio podcast audiences — and how well video is working to grow the overall audience of a show — is to track viewership on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok against listenership on an organization’s owned-and-operated properties as well as on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, said Nina Lassam, vp of business and head of audience growth, audio at The New York Times.

But it’s difficult to get people to “mode switch” — as Lassam called it — from a video to an audio experience. So podcast execs are primarily looking at the total audience of a podcast show when measuring growth. 

“Audiences are increasingly discovering content and consuming podcast content on video and social platforms,” said Lillian Xu, executive director of audio business at Vox Media. “Does video drive podcast listenership? We’re not thinking about it quite in that causal direction. We’re thinking about it [as]… a show that exists in an audio format and has listeners, but also has a broader audience in video platforms as well, whether that’s full-length or clips.”

Because of this, Xu said Vox Media measures a show’s total audience of listeners, viewers and total reach (including views and impressions) on social platforms.

Colin Tipton, global head of Bloomberg Radio, said that Bloomberg’s live audio and on-demand audio-only content is growing (though he declined to say by how much). “Whether I can attribute that to the video growth, I’m not sure. But I can tell you, both the audio and the video growth continue to show gains,” he said. 

Despite the inability to properly measure podcast videos’ role in driving podcast listenership, execs at Wondery, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Vox Media and Pushkin told Digiday their podcast audience has grown thanks to their video efforts.

Short-form video platforms have an important role for podcasters, mostly to distribute clips of podcasts to promote episodes and shows, execs said.

For example, NPR’s show “Short Wave” is one of NPR’s “biggest shows” in year-over-year audience growth, and videos are posted at least once a week on Instagram, Campbell said. The show’s audience has grown “double-digit percentages,” according to Campbell, who declined to give raw numbers. 

“That gives me confidence [that this is] the right move,” he said.

Short video clips of podcast shows can also test an audience’s appetite for a longer video format, too. Wondery’s show “The Big Flop” started posting video clips on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts a year ago, then began producing full-length video episodes last week, according to Marshall Lewy, chief content officer at Wondery. Vox Media has done the same for “Pivot” and other Vox Media podcasts, Xu said.

Some companies are introducing video capabilities on their owned and operated platforms, too. Wondery started rolling out video podcasts on its mobile app at the end of last year, allowing Wondery+ paid subscribers to toggle back and forth between audio and video and watch full episodes on the app.

The New York Times’ audio app has added more shorter-form video content since its launch last year, and the Times is planning to add more video to the platform for paying Times subscribers this year, Lassam said.

But overall, podcasters are primarily turning to YouTube to grow their podcast video viewership. 

Wondery published full-length animated episodes for every episode of its podcast show “Redacted,” and crossed over 50,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel in less than a week, according to Lewy. Since spinning out The New York Times podcast channel on YouTube last year, The New York Times has seen a “10x” increase in viewership on the channel, according to Lassam. And Bloomberg Radio’s video podcast channel — since adding video in January 2024 — has grown 600% in subscribers, according to Tipton. 

All the execs interviewed for this story said they plan to continue to produce more video podcast content this year.