Fiction podcasts are the next big thing
Here at Realm, we love audio fiction. In our Medium posts, we’ll share industry news, insights, and metrics from our own Realm channel, updates on how advertising is thriving in fiction, and advice from our team on strategy and direction.
For our first post, we’ll be covering what’s happening in audio fiction now: how the category is growing in the podcasting industry, what makes audio fiction listeners unique, and why fiction is poised to become the next biggest advertising market in podcasts.
Fiction is one of the fastest growing genres in podcasting
Over the last decade, podcast listening has experienced huge growth, with the number of listeners increasing every year. In 2021, podcast listeners numbered over 303 million worldwide, and that number is expected to continue growing rapidly. Anchor recently reported that 1 in 5 Americans listen to a podcast every day.
Comedy, News, Society & Culture, and True Crime continue to top Edison’s reports as the most popular podcast genres; however, we’re starting to see signs that Fiction may match True Crime’s trajectory to the top of the charts. Inside Radio recently reported on the Nielsen Scarborough Podcast Buying Power Study showing that around 11.3 million people listened to a Fiction podcast in May of 2022. This is roughly the size of True Crime listenership just three years ago. From 2019 to 2022, Fiction’s rate of growth was 49%, outpacing Comedy, the next fastest growing genre, which grew at a rate of 44% over the same timeframe.
Between the overall growth in listenership worldwide and the strong growth rates for Fiction-specific listening, it appears it’s only a matter of time before Fiction becomes one of the most listened-to genres. In fact, this is already happening in Latin America, where Fiction is the most listened-to category according to Spotify’s 2022 Fan Study on Podcasts. This trend is also growing across the world: according to a 2020 study by ACast, Fiction listening is growing at the incredible rate of 427%.
Fiction has the most engaged listeners
Engagement is one of the strongest metrics for podcasters and advertisers, as the longer users listen, the more they are exposed to the advertising presented. Podcast genres focused on narrative storytelling — like True Crime, Fiction, and History — all show impressive listener engagement, or “listen-through-rates,” as users appear to be more interested in hearing the whole story rather than tuning in for a single episode. According to Spotify’s 2022 Fan Study, Fiction boasts the highest completion rates in the industry, with the average listener completing over 85% of a given episode. True Crime runs a pretty close second, further indication that Fiction’s trajectory is on pace to match that of True Crime.
At Realm, we use completion rates as one of our core metrics, and we consistently see even higher completion rates for shows on our network than in Spotify’s study… but we’ll dive into that more in a future post.
Fiction will be the next big podcast advertising market
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), advertising spending is seeing huge growth, which is in line with the overall growth in the podcasting industry. The high listen-through and engagement numbers in Fiction podcasts give advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to a category of attentive, immersed listeners.
On the Realm network, our advertisers are already seeing huge successes, with some beating their targeted goals by 3x. Advertisers on our Fiction network have seen their ads outperform other top genres like True Crime. Realm listeners are not only listening to full episodes but are engaging with ads by following through to purchase or download advertised products.
More to come!
Stay tuned for more articles like this one by subscribing to get updates on new posts. In the months to come we will be covering topics like product strategy for apps and tech in the space, case studies of brands doing particularly interesting things, and marketing and growth strategies we are experimenting with.
We’d love to hear if you have any thoughts, any ideas for stories, or just want to reach out to chat. Email us at medium@realm.fm. If you’d like to advertise on Realm’s network, please get in touch with us at https://realm.fm/advertise
