How can you actually make money with podcasts?
A third of Swiss people regularly listen to podcasts, and the trend is rising. What does that mean for audiences and makers?
Hazel Brugger and her husband Thomas Spitzer recording their podcast “Just Married”.
Photo: Spotify
Most of the time, it gets honeyed and gooey when podcasters greet each other on their shows. The colleagues are then apostrophized as “highly valued”, preferably as “wonderful” or “unique”, and one sentence should never be missing: “I hope he or she is listening!”
From this point of view, it felt very refreshing when the moderator and podcaster Jan Böhmermann (“Fest & Flauschig”) and the comedian and podcaster Hazel Brugger (“Just Married”) recently clashed at least a little bit. Böhmermann had started a joking appeal in a show episode: couples who lived in toxic relationships should please contact him. “When you’re in a toxic relationship,” he said, “there are only two choices: you either do a podcast together, or you break up.”
Scramble for talent and deals
Brugger was convinced that this was meant as a tip against them. She moderates a podcast produced by the Spotify platform, in which she discusses marriage with her husband Thomas Spitzer. Spotify had announced shortly before that it would discontinue the series after four seasons. Possibly doubly disappointed, Brugger let herself be carried away by a sour Instagram post in which she confronted Böhmermann. “I’m also happy to try to improve the relationship between you,” she wrote to him and his duo partner Olli Schulz, “if your security forces allow it.”
So yes: At least now in the podcast business in German-speaking countries, a touch of real, glitzy show business can be felt, including gossip and jealousies, blockbuster reboots and controversially canceled shows, scramble for talent and deals. The industrious pioneers certainly would not have thought that when they uploaded the first lovingly hand-carved science fiction or net world monologues a good 15 years ago.
According to that IGEM Monitor 2.6 million people listen to podcasts in Switzerland, i.e. almost 30 percent of the population. 20 percent do it weekly.
A noticeable trend: increased accompaniment of podcasts with video.
“The German-speaking market has become more professional,” says Sebastian Romanus, German Managing Director of Podimo, one of the most important platforms that work via paid subscriptions. «Not only in terms of the quality of the productions. The structures are also sorting themselves more and more clearly. Where there was a certain Wild West vibe a year or two ago, there is now a defined landscape of platforms, production companies and marketers.”
Viewed from the outside, this topography still looks like a complex wickerwork. Large platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music distribute many of their own productions openly, i.e. in such a way that you can also listen to them (including inserted advertising) via free podcast apps such as Overcast or AntennaPod. Certain shows, on the other hand, are used as exclusive lures that require audiences to log in. “Fest & Fluffy” and “Gemischtes Hack” on Spotify, for example.
The «Dragon Lord» series At first it was only free in slices, several episodes at once were only available after registering with the newly launched RTL+ Music service. How the portals shape their door policy, what content they give as freely available high-quality radio and what as tough brand loyalty goods, remains a bet.
“Interactivity will become more important.”
A noticeable trend is the increased accompaniment of podcasts with video images, says Saruul Krause-Jentsch, Head of Studios responsible for the German podcasts at the market leader Spotify. “Interactivity will also become more important,” she says. Younger shows in particular use polls and question-and-answer formats, making a sport of encouraging the audience to give rating stars.
The dialogue could take podcast culture to the next level, says Krause-Jentsch: “A level on which we form communities and communicate directly with the audience.” In some markets, Spotify also uses so-called call-to-action cards, which allow listeners to order the products from the audio spots directly. So: without having to think about it too long.
The answer to where the platforms are headed in the medium-term future has a lot to do with advertising. There was a wave of shows by influencer personalities who have already earned their followings on YouTube, Instagram or Twitch. It would be an economic breakthrough for the audio industry if the medium of podcasts were to establish itself as the standard in influencer marketing, which beauty and game stars could quickly take care of with comparatively little effort.
Whether influencers stick with it depends on whether it’s worth it.
However, it has to be worth it. “Only if the creators have the opportunity to earn money with podcasts will we continue to see exciting formats and innovations from all directions,” says Krause-Jentsch. In other words, whether the influencers stick with it depends on what attractive advertising packages the platforms can offer them.
Do they automatically bring more audience to the platforms? Youtuber and neo-podcaster Dagi Bee with fans.
Foto: Getty Images for MTV
“It has already been noticed that the budgets invested in the podcast advertising market have recently increased significantly,” says Fabio Bacigalupo, who founded the online directory Podcast.de in 2006 and today heads the service provider Podcaster.de, among other things . For many years, it was customary for the podcasters to read the ads themselves into the microphone. Today, it is no longer technically a problem to dynamically import ready-made spots into the shows – i.e. in such a way that algorithms unerringly select the advertising that best suits the individual listener. For age, place of residence, data set.
Netflix promises escapism, while podcasts promise a double dose of the present.
“For many agencies that manage the budgets, the procedure used to be simply too complicated and time-consuming,” says Bacigalupo. “Since they can simply book into large systems, the sums have gone up.” He considers the scenario that artificial intelligence could soon automatically generate commercials with the voice of the podcaster and insert them into the audio stream as well-paid deepfakes to be realistic. Such models are already being played around with in some places.
And even for an ad-free platform like Podimo, financed purely by subscription fees, it is not out of the question to try an experiment with advertising ambassadors outside of the paywall, says boss Sebastian Romanus. In 2022, his service started shows with thriller writer Sebastian Fitzek and the influencers, among other things Dagi Bee and Tina Actsbrought the couple Oliver and Amira Pocher on board.
The presentation of the German Podcast Prize in June 2022.
Photo: PD
“I believe that in the future it will be more about quality than quantity,” he says when asked for his personal oracle. “The simple equation that creators can automatically convert their high social media reach into podcast format is simply not true. If there’s no added value in terms of content or a great concept, people won’t listen to it.”
That’s the difference to Netflix: while series usually mean escapism, podcasts tend to give you a double dose of the present. Escapism doesn’t really click here. We need something better.
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