This week on Behind the Numbers: Reimagining Retail, analysts Yory Wurmser and Sky Canaves discussed mcommerce trends with host Sara Lebow.

Among US podcast ads, pre-roll spots generated about 5% more website visits during Q2 than those in the middle of an episode. While that margin is fairly slim, both placements produced better results than post-roll, likely because earlier spots catch listeners before they drop off.

This week, our Reimagining Retail podcast crew gave their predictions on what will drive the next phase of ecommerce growth, ranked from least “spicy” to four-alarm fire.

Who took home the trophy and who went home with a consolation prize? We asked our Retail Reimagined team to give us the lowdown.

This week, our Reimagining Retail podcast crew talked about which retailers had the biggest opportunity in terms of sustainability as a follow up to our newly released “US Retail Sustainability Perceptions Benchmark 2022.”

We talked with our Reimagining Retail team to see if they could provide a little insight.

Digital audio has been taking up more than an hour per day of US adults’ time since 2016, and 2022 will be another year of solid growth. They will consume an additional 3 minutes per day of digital audio this year, to reach 1:40. Among active digital audio listeners, the daily figure will be a robust 2:17.

Spotify is the No. 1 digital audio service among US teens and adults, with 35% digital audio listeners ages 12 and older using that platform the most. YouTube Music comes in at No. 2, with 18%, while Pandora rounds out the top three at 15%.

About two-thirds of the US population ages 12 and older listens to digital audio at least once per week, up 5 percentage points from 2021. Over the past decade, that share has grown by 38 percentage points, making the weekly listenership now 192 million strong.

Podcasting finds favor with brand advertisers: US ad spending on podcasts is growing at double-digit rates and will pass $2 billion in 2023.

We forecast that US podcast ad spending will surpass $2 billion next year and $3 billion by 2026. Podcasts will account for over a quarter of digital audio services ad spending in 2022 and will be more than a third of spending by the end of 2026.

Podcasts have Spotify seeing dollar signs. The company’s US podcast ad revenues will hit $191.9 million in 2022 and cross the $400 billion mark in 2024, with growth well into the double-digit percentages. The format will also make up an increasing share of Spotify’s overall ad revenues: 16.7% of its $1.15 billion in US ad revenues this year, before growing to 19.4% in 2024.

Canada’s digital audio audience is growing faster than any other digital medium we track in the country, including digital video viewers and social media users. This year, digital audio will match terrestrial radio in listenership and exceed it in engagement, according to our forecasts.

YouTube is the leading podcast platform among US adults who listen to 5 hours or more of these shows per week, with 55% tuning in there. Streaming audio platforms Spotify and Apple Podcasts take second and third place, respectively, while Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Facebook round out the top five.

BetterHelp bested other US podcast advertisers in 2021 and spent $76.9 million on podcast placements that year. This was nearly triple the outlays of NBCUniversal, the second-biggest spender, at $27.7 million. All told, the top 10 podcast advertisers invested close to $300 million.

On today's episode, we discuss Spotify's Q4 performance and what it tells us about how the audio streaming giant is changing. Then for "In Other News," we talk about what the biggest threat to Spotify's podcasting dominance will be and a new way to improve the accuracy of audio ads. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Peter Vahle.

Spotify overtook Apple Podcasts as the biggest US podcast platform in 2021, when the Swedish company drew 28.3 million monthly US podcast listeners, about 200,000 more than its rival did. Come 2025, Spotify’s lead will widen to 13.2 million, while Apple’s growth in the sector will all but stagnate.

On today's episode, we discuss what the next big augmented reality (AR) experience might be, the Trojan horse of self-service retail, whether podcasting has a "hit" problem, the NFL's 2021 regular season ratings, a possible delivery drone milestone, an unpopular opinion about consumer choice, robot referees, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Oscar Orozco, Peter Vahle, and Blake Droesch.

The US is the undisputed front-runner within the global podcasting ecosystem, in terms of both content production and listener adoption.

For the first time, the eMarketer forecasting team at Insider Intelligence has produced a comprehensive set of international forecasts for podcast listeners.