Podcasting Part 2: Why brands are still apprehensive of the medium

Despite the huge potential, the podcast domain faces certain challenges. What are the lacuna and issues plaguing the podcast industry? What is required to improve this nascent industry?

For the longest time, says Bijay Gautam, Co-Founder & CCO, WYN Studio, awareness of the medium has been the biggest challenge. There were not enough creators creating the content and music platforms were yet to include podcasts as part of their offering, he adds. 

“However, that is changing rapidly with a much wider acceptance of the medium. As per the Redseer report, there were 95 million monthly podcast listeners in 2021. This number has quadrupled from 25 million in 2017 reported by another PWC survey. The biggest opportunity currently lies in the regional podcast space. While there is a lot of awareness about the medium, we don't have as much quality content that caters to the regional audience. Lastly, monetisation in podcasting is the biggest puzzle to solve. Since there is not just one platform where everyone consumes podcasts, the audience is scattered over several platforms. This makes it difficult for platforms to roll out ad revenue models as YouTube does. We've seen some brand sponsorships on individual podcasts but is largely restricted to a few creators. Creator motivation to continue creating podcasts is the piece that needs to be addressed for this medium to thrive.” 

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Podcasting - Part 1: Despite huge opportunity, where India lacks in tapping the potential?

According to Ideabrew Studios Co-founder-CEO Aditya Kuber, the availability of content in regional languages is one of the challenges. While there is some content in almost all languages, more variety of content will help accelerate growth, he feels. “Once more creators who already have a following in a specific language also start to use podcasts, the growth will be faster. The distribution of content and its availability is now quite widespread and what is limiting the growth somewhat is relevance and timeliness of content. News content is starting to grow and this could be the next big driver of consumption,” he adds.

According to him, businesses and brands have taken to podcasting in a major way. “They realise the power of audio. Some of the major benefits are longer time spent by listeners, community building and a positive recall of brands when heard in audio content. We have already worked with major brands like Asian Paints, Welspun, SBI Mutual Fund and many others offering brand solutions and advertising solutions as well. Education as a category is definitely an untapped area. While curriculum varies from different boards across the country, a unified approach may not be immediately viable. Co-curricular content, though, can work where it acts as a supplementary offering for students. Audio can actually play a significant role since it’s more accessible and its passive consumption nature means it can be consumed more by listeners,” he says.

Perception issue

Is podcast restricted to the urban audience alone?

According to Aditya Bathija, Associate Business Director (Mammoth Media) at Zoo Media, the biggest issue and gap that the segment faces is that ‘podcast’ as a term is perceived as a medium that is consumed by an urban audience.

“Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Delhi still make up the largest audience consuming podcasts along with a few urban pockets in other cities. Another issue that we are facing is that India is a video-consuming market and those who want to listen to their followers immediately turn to something that is more comfortable for them to use which is YouTube. So, making a shift to another medium will be a slow and challenging process. Advertisers also need to take into consideration that even though numbers are not comparable to TV or radio, the audience that podcasts deliver is more concentrated with a good conversion rate. There is no immediate and quick fix for podcasts to boom. You are competing with age-old mediums ingrained in the lives of India, such as TV and radio. We have got the formula right where we need to create more regional podcasts but it’s going to be a slow and steady process,” he explains.

Not many know how this medium is a billion-dollar market in the US and a booming market in the UK, Eastern Europe and in Australia, says Nikhil. “Having an understanding of what problems someone can solve and how a consumer brand/ D2C/ B2B can use this medium in their overall communication plan can grab someone’s attention and will start this as part of their omni-channel model. And awareness tops my list of what kind of gap there is in the market, awareness of the medium, and growth potential for any stakeholder in the market,” he says.

Rohan Thakar, Co-Founder & Creative Producer, Ep.Log Media, is certain that podcasting has a huge opportunity in India. India is soon approaching 1 billion internet users, and a large part of it will be coming for the first time on the internet, with a large population being the youth, he says.

“Many of them might not understand English or even Hindi for that matter. This is where we creators get an opportunity to hit the goldmine of India’s diversity! I believe that we have not even scratched the surface when it comes to tapping the potential. Considering the culture, knowledge, and diversity that India has to offer, there is a massive opportunity for every creator to tap in and create quality content on audio, and not just in interviews, but different formats that can entice the listeners through an immersive storytelling audio experience. Be it education, entertainment or self-development, I feel, we can scale it to a massive audience who are looking to gain benefit from this platform,” he says.

About the lacuna plaguing the podcast segment, he said: “The most commonly talked issue with podcast as a medium has always been about discovery. The way people discover blogs/ articles, or videos on YouTube, a similar revolution is necessary for audio discovery. For the Indian podcast industry, the way we could improve:

• Experimenting with formats beyond interviews and rethinking the way we could deliver an audio experience
• Going deeper in niches and also tapping in the cultural diversity that India has to offer
• Exploring the educational side further and blending it with entertainment
• We do need to think about unifying the contributors of the audio space and collaboratively work towards developing the industry.”

Awareness is the biggest challenge to winning the Indian market, says Hitarth Dadia, partner & CMO at Nofiltr.Group. “Obviously, the younger generation is aware of podcasts. From personal experience, I am more of a reader or viewer. My genre of listening to podcasts is different from what others will listen to. I might listen to self-help, philosophy, and my industry-related stories because I am aware only of those; however, I know that there is a completely different genre of content that I have not heard yet. So yes, awareness is the key that podcasts require to boom in India,” he adds.

Brands and businesses

Are businesses and brands tapping the true potential of podcasting? What are the other use case areas (such as education, etc.) that still remain untapped?

Over the last few years, notes Divyansh Gala, Group Head - Outreach, SoCheers, the acceptance of podcasts has seen a huge rise. According to him, while Indian audiences have slowly started to choose podcasts for consuming news, entertainment, education and more, it will be fair to say that businesses and brands are still experimenting at every step.

“There are several use case areas where the podcast medium can supplement the brands’ digital journeys. Every news organisation today, for example, has the likes of digital portals and YouTube channels, so dedicated podcast channels seem like a good next step of their digital growth. Similarly, video streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video can expand their offerings to include audio streaming. Netflix is already experimenting with newer forms of content like games and interactive content; so a podcast section seems like an organic evolution for them. For another use case, imagine a ‘theatre podcast’, where the scenes and acts of a play are conveyed in an audio format. Imagine ace actors like Pankaj Tripathi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vijay Raaz, etc. enacting the scenes. Considering the huge popularity that they’ve amassed across all geographies of the country, they could pull in a lot of new podcast users. Such format and content innovations are sure to tap into the potential of podcasting in India,” said Divyansh Gala.

Hitarth Dadia feels that podcasts are an extremely good medium for education. “If you are a student in a college and a specific lecture is done and you get down from that lecture and have to get your assignments done for it. There is a group of extremely smart people in your college who discuss all of these topics in depth, however, you are not knowing half of it. A lot of times what happens is professors stick to the syllabus and for you to understand the true topic you will have to gain more and more knowledge about it. This can happen if you listen to two people talk. This is a fact, to grasp something more effectively, if you listen to two people talk about it, you will understand it more properly than you will read about that topic. I feel Education is untapped at the moment because the young generation is yet to tap it up. Colleges/ schools should make it compulsory or take action to promote podcasts. As well as students should take equal initiative in the growth of podcasts through their college fests and by learning how to make one too,” Dadia adds.

Aditya Bhatija dwelt at length on the various use cases by which brands can make use of podcasts, and said, “We’ve seen Bumble, The Man Company, Boat and a few others that have jumped on the bandwagon of podcasts. Great move because we’ve seen a lot of young audiences tuning in to podcasts and that’s their audience. Dabur, with Let’s Rock Zindagi, has possibly understood the potential of podcasting. They’ve understood that brands need to build an emotional connection with millennials and genzs’ for them to even get them into their consideration set. They cannot be approached directly with ‘a buy my product’ approach. Take global brands like LinkedIn, J&J, and Shopify. All these have over 200 episodes where they do not hard sell their products but talk about relatable content for their audience.”

In terms of use cases, adds Bhatija, brands and organisations can use podcasts to help upskill individuals. “Fantasy sports, skill games, and e-sports are where there is a lot of potential. We’ve seen quite a few companies that have entered the market. Educating the users week on week to improve their individual strategies can help. (Topics – poker, cricket/ kabaddi/ football fantasy, e-sports career with top gamers). In terms of an enterprise, they can use podcasts to disseminate content within the organisation for employees for corporate training where the employee does not necessarily have to do active learning but can do it passively. Sales techniques, negotiations etc. – many forceful and unnecessary presentations can be converted into interesting audio episodes. LinkedIn’s – Hello Monday is a great example when it comes to organisational culture through a podcast," he explains.

Largely, brands are still apprehensive of the medium, maintains Bijay Gautam. “We cannot use the same yardstick and metrics used for video content to measure podcast performance. We cannot compare a million views on a 15-second reel that appeared uninvited on the audience feed with 30 minutes of listening time for podcasts the audience opted in to listen. The engagement in the podcast is incomparable. More brand owners need to start listening to the podcasts and understand the level of engagement and brand preference it can generate for them. On the other hand, some brands are leveraging podcasts to educate the audience and build thought leadership. For instance, we at WYN Studio produced a podcast called Crypto Ki Duniya in six different languages to educate people on the concepts of Cryptocurrency with Binance, the largest crypto exchange platform in the world,” says Gautam.

Kathanika Media LLP founder Nikhil Dintakuthi says that new-age brands are showing a keen interest in podcasting. “Recently when I visited a conference with a lot of new-age brands and some legacy brands, there is this idea that resonated with them: new-age brands want to jump in and see what this medium has to offer in terms of brand loyalty and how to retain their customers and as part of their communication plan. With the legacy brands, and companies with deeper marketing budgets, they want to wait and see how everyone is reacting to the market and to this idea and to make any decision; they need loads of case studies on particularly ROI and long-term value. Speaking of that, I got a chance to work with Beautiful Homes of Asian Paints. They were very excited to know how podcasts can bring value to their customers and TG through communication strategy on aspects like decor, interior design and other lines of products. This show sparked an idea to a lot of peers in the market and wanted to know how they can take advantage of this. It's a slow start but I can see a promising future in India for this medium,” says Dintakuthi.

According to him, there is a huge market for educational content, as this medium offers long-term retention and an opportunity to have an intellectual discussion and share some complex thoughts. It's just a matter of time that podcast producers like me will take full advantage of problem-solving and other benefits this medium has to offer and use it for educational content like language learning, UPSC, and other competitive exams. There new niches that are growing exponentially like ASMR, regional content, literature, fan discussion panels/ analysis for top TV shows, YouTuber shows, monologues on health/ fitness and many more.”

For brands, podcasts can bring immense value, especially for shows that have found their niche, says Rohan Thakar.

According to him, today, almost every notable brand is looking to build their own distribution, and podcasts can be a stepping stone for them, primarily because, compared to videos, the turn-around time is much less for the format.

“Brands in India are slowly considering into venture into podcasts, and we have seen some successful examples as well. However, the true potential can be unlocked when they look beyond interviews and knowledge series, and experiment with a focus on holding their audiences’ attention with not just serious discussions, but also fun content by exploring storytelling, documentaries/commentary, etc. This can subtly build a relationship with listeners who can potentially become their customers,” he says.

Thakar strongly believes that the future of education can have audio as a medium. Education here may not just involve formal education, but also learning beyond books. 

“A lot of initiatives have also been taken by us at Ep.Log Media, where we are bringing in the wisdom and wealth of knowledge from different industries and delivering it through podcasts. One example is also Ep.Log Kids, through which we are giving moral education through immersive audio stories. Storytelling has been one of the most impactful ways to deliver a message and audio is one of the most effective agents to deliver this. Other use cases that we are positively rooting for and working on is rethinking entertainment with audio series that people look upto with today’s OTT platforms and building an immersive audio experience,” he concludes.