Benchmarking's back, alright!

Tell me why I chose to start with an attempt at a Backstreet Boys reference? Who knows. Maybe because they, like this data, lay dormant for
12 months and then come out with a big new release on a (seemingly) annual cadence? Maybe just because I want it that way?
Ok, I'll stop that now.

You know what doesn't stop? Data! So, questionable article title choices aside, back by popular demand once more, I'm pleased to share
the 2024 instalment of Omny's annual benchmarking data. This year, I've also added some new data showing how long podcast episodes
of different sizes take to reach various download milestones.

Perhaps you're new to podcasting and keen to see how your downloads stack up. Maybe you're an old hand and back to see how numbers have shifted in the last 12 months. Possibly a search for Backstreet Boys lyrics has led you here, thanks to a wayward AI algorithm.
Whatever the reason, welcome and enjoy!

Ok, let's get to it!

Global podcast benchmarking and top categories

A reminder that this data is for podcast content hosted on Omny Studio in 2024. A few important notes around where that data is generated from and some caveats around how I use the word "good", as always, apply.

As usual, let's start with the global view of our 2024 benchmarking percentiles. This data shows how many downloads, 30 days after publishing, an episode needs to break into certain brackets.

No huge shifts in the data from 2023, where you needed just over 43,000 downloads to crack the top 1%. With the amount of content available increasing each year (both the number of shows hosted on Omny Studio and in general) and listeners starting to consume more from a greater range of shows, getting into the top 1% and 2% is slightly more achievable.

What were all those people listening to in 2024? Here's how the top 10 downloaded categories broke down for us last year.

Benchmarking by podcast category

Now, let's look at the data category by category. Starting with the most popular category, News, where getting into the Top 5% and 10% became more challenging than in 2023. Here, if you have over 24,252 downloads in your first 30 days - congratulations, you're the top of the top!

Next up, Comedy. Given we all have so much to laugh about nowadays, it's good to see that cracking the Top 50% has become ever so slightly more achievable. But perhaps showing the increasing popularity of the category in these oh so unprecedented times where we all need a good chuckle, getting into that Top 5% and higher has become a slightly more challenging affair.

The Top 1% jump up to 94,391 downloads from 82,026 that it took to crack this in 2023. Audiences really are gravitating to content they need here and driving those download numbers up.

Things in Society & Culture are heating up, with the Top 1% and 2% pulling way ahead of the Top 5%. And with less than 7000 downloads needed to get from silver to gold there, it's not unattainable as a goal this year for any shows in this category.

Of note, in 2023 you only needed 27,484 downloads to get into the Top 2% - seems we all have a lot more to talk about when it comes to society in 2024 that made competition tough at the top!

Showing a similar consumption shift, Sports also saw a massive jump (nearly double!) from 2023 data, where you now need 127,916 downloads in your first 30 days to say you're in the Top 1% of Omny podcasts. Similar to Society & Culture, the Top 2% also pulled far away from
the 5% bracket.

How did your show stack up? I focused a lot on the top percentages above, but I want to call out the Top 50% numbers for a moment. Yes, as podcasting grows in popularity and more advertisers enter the space, there are some eye watering numbers for episodes at the top. For those at the other end, some branded podcasts or shows for a very niche audience perhaps, I hope this provides comfort that you're doing things
well - even if you're yet to crack the 1000 per episode mark (or lower, in some categories).

Country Data

With no Olympics in 2025, I'm happy to help fuel geographic competition with some country/region specific benchmarking data. I've said it a thousand times - you can always count on Australia. Certainly, they're consistent down under where there has been almost no change in what it takes to crack the Top 50% or 1% (and everything in between).

Following Australia's lead, the UK also stays pretty much unchanged from 2023 data. Consistency is key, perhaps

North America, too, is fairly consistent. Though we do see some pressure easing to get into various brackets, including in the Top 1%, where it's now 10,000 downloads easier to call yourself the top.

For the second year, we're including LATAM data. We were right to expect growth here, with the Top 1% jumping up over 10,000 downloads to 33,278 downloads needed in your first 30 days of publishing to grab the top spot.

Episode downloads after release

If you've stuck with me this far, congratulations and thank you. Your prize? Some all new data!

I wanted to look at how long it takes for an episode to hit a critical mass of downloads after publishing. We broke the data into three buckets, based on how popular the episode was (where total downloads of the episode were either 1000 or more, 10,000 or more, or 100,000 or more), and then drilled into the first 28 days of it's published life.

Here's what it looks like.

No real surprises that most episodes get to around the 50% of downloads, 24 hours after release. What's most interesting to me is how much the most popular episodes differ from the rest - they're slower to reach most of the markers, meaning they have a longer tail of downloads. Evergreen content? Or maybe the more popular genres simply are less time sensitive for people to consume?

For those of us who have been in the industry a long time, we've lost count of how many times an advertiser asks "But how do we know if the episode was listened to? Aren't there a lot of auto downloads to people's devices?". Well, not in the first hour of publishing, according to this data (which you'd be forgiven for thinking is how auto downloads work).

I'll leave you to interpret the data yourself, but to me, the data above points to very intentional listening (aka, what those of us in the industry have been saying for a long time) and shows why advertising campaigns targeting specific episodes should be run for at least a month.

That's a wrap from me. I hope you found this valuable, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Until next year, where benchmarking is back again ... alright!