Your audio audience is watching you, maybe not your podcast

A couple of years ago (almost to the day), I wrote this article about video podcasts asking creators to think about whether video was right for them. I think we can all agree that 2023 was a simpler time. At least for myself ... I was young and optimistic; time had not yet ravaged me, and we were just at the beginning of our video podcast journey as an industry.

Fast forward to 2025, and video podcasts are seemingly everywhere, being discussed by everyone (sometimes quite definitively) as the future of podcasting. Shows have expanded their reach, and video consumers are hungry for more. Video podcasts are here to say and with all the data available, that's certainly no longer up for debate (it's also the reason we continue to add more video functionality to our feature set and roadmap at Triton).

We've all jumped on the vodcast train (which gathers increasing momentum every day), but in our eagerness to board, I have to wonder...
do we know our destination yet? And more importantly, did our original audio-loving audience choose to board with us?

Those are the two questions I'd like to explore here: what is the experience like right now for our original audio audience, and how should we handle this mixed audience moving forward?

The listener experience

Before I answer those questions, I have a confession to make. I am a podcast listener. And like many podcast listeners, I started listening for many of the same reasons that advertisers entered the space - it's a lean-in medium, listeners feel like they have genuine relationships with the hosts, shows build an intimate listening experience based on those factors, and I can listen while multitasking... all of which drove revenue, building audiences and businesses alike.

In short - it was what was remarkable about podcasting. It made us stand out. We differentiated ourselves from other media. An audio-first medium for an audio-hungry consumer.

Now? I'm noticing that some of my favourite podcasts are becoming a video-first experience. As I listen in, cocooned in my little audio bubble, hosts are spending an increasing amount of time discussing things on the screen. It feels a lot like when you're watching a TV show from the other room - you're missing key elements of the show, which are purpose-built for an audience who are watching and not just listening in. More often than not, I am pulled out of the audio experience and left feeling like I am missing part of the experience.

The end result? I feel somewhat alienated as a member of the audience.

I think we're the only medium that does this knowingly or with some amount of intention? When you're watching a tv show or a movie, they typically use the visual medium to tell a story as opposed to having someone standing still on-screen orating. Media knows which medium it's going to be consumed on and tailors itself for the audience accordingly.

What does the data say?

There is plenty of data available to prove that video continues to grow as a source of podcast consumption. To reiterate an earlier point - there is definitely an audience and revenue available over there (though why we continue to build our houses on other people's land, as an industry without a licensing model, is a question for another article).

What's been somewhat lacking, in my opinion, is asking how our original listening audience are feeling about it all. Which is why I was so pleased to read Neil Cowling's smart take after he reviewed the latest Ofcom data, over here. Like me, this chart grabbed Neil's attention in Adam Bowie's great data break down.

The respondents were people who listen to podcasts that also feature videos. They said that they mostly (41%) prefer to listen to podcasts as audio-only content, and 29% are video-first consumers. To quote Neil on the next 23%, they "probably don't care about feeling alienated as they're consciously making the choice to play but only listen".

That Ofcom data is at odds with what YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said to The Ankler last week at Cannes. As Podnews reported, Neil believes that “People actually don’t want to just listen to podcasts, they want to watch podcasts, they want to watch this conversation happening… Video was a really big bet, that turned out to be true.”. ... say, what?

Real talk. I'm employed by an audio business and Neal runs a video platform, so I acknowledge we have some competing aims on either side here. But to blanket suggest that people who consume audio are actually wanting to watch video and either haven't figured it out or, for some unknown reason, just haven't done it yet, is like saying that people who prefer to read novels just haven't come around to the notion of audiobooks yet.

Everyone knows that different mediums exist for the same content. It's just that people have content consumption preferences which inform where and how they consume.

So, what do we do?

First up, as an industry, we should definitely keep making video content. To belabour the point - there's an audience and revenue opportunities for us which we should keep pursuing. I'm advocating for us to create content that is tailored to the specific medium in which it's being consumed.

Let's use books as an example. Books are adapted to film or tv all the time. But when a book is adapted, they don't just narrate it while the actors play their roles on screen. The story is essentially the same, but the scenes and dialogue are adapted to suit this new medium. Both in terms of audience tastes and consumption models.

Even video has examples we can learn from. TV shows and movies available on streaming platforms create snippets, highlights and trailers of their shows. They're hardly ever putting the whole episode up (though again, that's mostly due to licensing) and they cater for how viewers broadly consume on a platform, including knowing that consumption rates drop for longer content so their intros need to be snappy.

I'm suggesting we take all those learnings onboard for podcasting. What if you thought of your video and audio audiences as two different audiences? What if those audiences desired different versions of the same show, best suited to how they're consuming? We're assuming that a video consumer is going to engage with podcast content in a way that is substantially different to other videos they're watching.

The opportunity for podcasting here is a more engaged audience in both formats. The ability to tap into two audiences and different demographics with our content. Long term, I think that may mean completely different versions of episodes/series for audio and video audiences. In the short term, we should start somewhere. The lowest hanging fruit is to, at least, start trying to find ways to address both audiences in the same episode.

I'd love to hear your ideas on how publishers can best navigate this.

I'm looking at that Ofcom pie chart again, and I can't help but wonder - how does that blue slice grow over time? And does how we speak
to our audio-first audience influence that? Will listeners whofeel a little FOMO migrate to video? I'm sure Neal Mohan certainly hopes that's
the case. But what if they don't?

Because, let's remember, that the most widely used podcast platform is still podcast players. Our audience is listening ... but what are we showing them?

Source: Sounds Profitable

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