Agreed - media organisations, with top-down attitudes and old-media thinking continue to invest in podcasting as part of their new media landgrab, without adopting new models for monetization, and without investing time and energy into the relationships that will make podcasting work outside its place as an adjunct to their existing broadcast or publishing output.

Meanwhile, many small to medium-sized businesses and institutions, unhampered by large overheads and “old media” attitudes, continue to find enterprising ways to employ podcasting and to generate revenue from podcasting, using both B2B and B2C models, dosed liberally with the old fashioned “let’s try things out and see what works” methodology.

“According to the survey, 6 million people in the UK have now downloaded a podcast - up from 4.3 million in November 2007. And 3.7 million now say they listen to a podcast each week, up from 1.87 million in last year’s survey.

The average podcast user subscribes to 3.6 podcasts and spends just over an hour a week listening to them. Comedy and music continue to be the two favourite genres.

iTunes remains the preferred software for almost three-quarters of users who subscribe to podcasts, while a fifth simply download directly from the website via their browser.

According to the survey, 79% of people listen to podcasts on their home computer and 66% listen via a portable audio/mp3 player.

Podcasting appears to also have a marginally positive effect on live radio listening. Almost 15% said they listened to more live radio since they began downloading podcasts.

While 10% stated they listened to less live radio after starting to download podcasts, 39% said they were now listening to radio programmes they did not listen to previously.” (Guardian)

Download the research PDF here.

The comparative study looks at social media trends through three “waves”:

• Wave 1 - September 2006
• Wave 2 - June 2007
• Wave 3 - March 2008

Research highlights:

• Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.
• Asian markets (not including Japan) are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos
• The widget economy – 23% of social network users have installed an application – 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media (184m bloggers world-wide, China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers) – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog
• Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

The report offers additional details on Internet media use:

Video Sharing:

• Brazil leads on 68%, Asian countries dominate (not including Japan)
• Significant variation in involvement (Hungary 16% < Brazil 68%).
• High frequency of involvement: 20% are uploading every day

Watching video clips:

• Growth is universal across all countries (31% to 82% global reach seen in all markets)
• Lowest difference between markets of any social media platform (Range 63% – 99%)
• Very high frequency medium: 71% weekly reach

Downloading podcasts

• Growth massive between Waves 2 and 3 (from 21% to 49% world-wide).
• China is the world’s biggest podcast market (74% use, with an estimated 45m users)
• Actively involved medium: 18% listen and download everyday

Methodology:

Universal McCann Wave 3 survey was conducted on 17,000 internet users in 29 countries and was completed in March 2008.

Source: Universal McCann (pdf)

via Podcasting News

This year, our third annual Podcast Consumer Revealed report (derived from the 2008 Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study) details significant gains in both audio and video podcast consumption. The audience for downloadable media is not only growing, but also represents a very attractive target for advertising. Our national data shows that more than one in five Americans have ever downloaded and watched/listened to a podcast, which breaks down further to 18% of Americans having ever listened to an audio podcast, and 16% having ever watched a video podcast. Those numbers are up sharply from last year’s figures, which were 13% and 11%, respectively. Nine percent of Americans 12+ have listened to an audio podcast in the past month, and those 23 million Americans are affluent, spend lots of time (and money!) online, and are increasingly more difficult to target with interruption advertising.