YouGov’s latest survey has revealed that two in five podcast listeners (42%) find ads intrusive and skip them entirely, marginally up from the 36% registered in 2019.
One in five (18%) will still listen to ads despite finding them intrusive, while 14% find them neither intrusive, nor particularly engaging.
Only one in seven (15%) said that they did not find ads intrusive at all and in fact found them to be interesting, with a further 6% saying that they did not listen to podcasts with ads at all (down from 15% in 2019.)
Drawn from YouGov Profiles data ahead of International Podcast Day on 30 September, the survey found that Spotify was by far the most popular platform (40%) among regular users, followed by BBC Sounds (26%) and Apple Podcasts (23%).
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Crucially for advertisers, listeners were found to skew towards younger demographics – with 44% of listeners falling into the 18-34 demographic (compared to 28% of the general public).
Some 38% of those who listen to podcasts fall within the 35-54 (vs. 34%) bracket, while just 17% are over-55s (vs. 38%). Podcast listeners were also more likely to be single as opposed to be married or have a family.
In terms of genre popularity – comedy was cited as the clear front runner, with (36%) of listeners engaging with it regularly, followed by sport (24%), music and news (both 22%), TV & movies (21%) and documentaries (18%).
