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.

Podcast listening is gaining popularity in Europe. Almost 70 million people in the pre-Brexit EU-5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) will listen to podcasts this year, per our estimates. However, the combined number of listeners in those countries is still much lower than the total number in the US (117.8 million).

On today's episode, we discuss emerging podcast sub-worlds, how listener behavior has (permanently?) changed, and how the ad dollars are fairing. We then talk about what we expect from Twitter's Ticketed Spaces, what is going on in the world of print, and how Americans get their news on social media. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle.

BetterHelp is by far the biggest US podcast ad spender, laying out $35.7 million in the first seven months of 2021—more than twice as much as the next-largest advertiser, ZipRecruiter, which allocated $13.6 million.

Spotify is still expanding its podcast listenership in the US, while Apple Podcasts’ has essentially stagnated. In fact, Spotify will narrowly surpass Apple in this metric by the end of this year.

US adults spend significantly more time listening to terrestrial radio than to any other ad-supported audio format.

On today's episode, we discuss the likelihood of an attention recession, if Peloton's troubles are temporary, what shoppers think of SMS marketing, Amazon's podcast moves, TikTok for small businesses, the best work-from-home perks a company can offer, how the weather can make you friendlier, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer director of reports editing Rahul Chadha, analyst Blake Droesch, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.