If you love hitting play on a podcast whilst commuting to work, doing the dishes, or going for a run, there’s a good chance you’ve listened to a News Corp podcast. From I’ve Got News For You, to Healthy-ish, to I Catch Killers – and the acclaimed The Teacher’s Trial – News Corp has something for everyone.
Mediaweek spoke to Ainslee O’Brien, general manager commercial networks, about what 2022 has looked like for the audio team and what comes next.
As the year comes to a close, O’Brien says that 2022 has been “an incredible year” for the News Corp audio department.
“We are certainly very fortunate to have a network of exceptional journalists and storytellers. Increasingly, audio is becoming a new way for these journalists to tell their stories, and to create really deep and meaningful connections with audiences.
We’ve continued to build on our world-class audio journalism and audio investigative journalism, and we’ve seen a lot of success in that space.
In a long list of successful podcasts, one in particular captured the imagination of people across the globe. With The Teacher’s Pet being suppressed for two years due to the ongoing trial of Chris Dawson, News Corp found a new way to bring audiences the information they were looking for.
“There have been exceptional success stories when you look at the programming that’s come out of The Australian through Hedley Thomas with Shandee’s Story, and more recently, The Teacher’s Trial.
“The Teacher’s Trial was a new model and not in its essence a traditional true crime podcast, because it wasn’t following or trying to unravel a crime – it was actually following the trial. But equally, it had such an incredible amount of interest in it. That podcast went exceptionally well.”
True crime will be an even bigger deal for News Corp in 2023, recently announcing a new audio-only product that bundles News Corp’s collection of true crime podcasts into a single channel on Apple Podcasts, called Crime X. Subscribers to the premium offer, Crime X+, receive access to exclusive, early and ad-free audio journalism.
“We’ve been thinking about that for a really long time, because we believe that consumers will pay for high-quality, premium audio journalism – just like they do for other forms of premium content,” says O’Brien. “Particularly in true crime, we just have the most exceptional calibre of content.
“These stories are captivating the imagination of Australians, but it’s actually broader than that. True crime doesn’t really have borders, people are interested in true crime wherever it might be. For us, it’s a really exciting chance for us to start to look to monetize international audiences, and start to build a relationship with audiences in different markets.”
See Also: News Corp launches partnership with Apple Podcasts
Another highlight of 2022 for O’Brien has been watching the team “lift the calibre of what we’re able to do commercially,” particularly using the hosts of some of the most popular podcasts.
“We have The Matty Johns Podcast which has just gone from strength to strength, and we’ve built some really successful and great commercial partnerships – particularly with Neds, who is our presenting sponsor.
“We’ve seen the calibre and the quality of commercial integration into that show really lift. With Neds, we change out the reads really regularly to be in line with the games of that week, and to follow the odds. From an integration perspective, we’re still using host reads, but we’re upping the frequency and regularity of those creative changes which means that the impact of the commercial integration into those programs is just going from strength to strength.”
Whilst News Corp has found innovative ways to better bring brand messages to podcast listeners, they’ve found ways to connect with people in other ways as well.
“There is a convergence between audio and video, and we’ve seen some really exciting results from filming episodes of some of our talent lead programs. We often talk about YouTube being the welcome mat into podcasts – particularly for millennial audiences – so we certainly are leaning into video as a pretty powerful marketing and promotional vehicle for us.”
Looking ahead to 2023, O’Brien says that News Corp will be focussing on quality, not necessarily quantity, when it comes to podcasts.
“Launching podcasts and building scalable audiences is really tough. We’re very restrained with our new releases.
“We are about investing in existing shows, rather than going off and creating a huge amount of new shows – not to say we won’t, but we’re certainly doubling down on the shows that we have. We’re particularly focusing on the four genres that we have: news, sport, true crime, and lifestyle/women. That is where we will play. and that’s where we’ll continue to invest.”
The industry is still facing some hurdles when it comes to marketing. Whilst podcasting is a well-established medium at this point, the speed at which the medium took hold means that it is still growing into its full potential.
“The world of podcasting is still nascent, it’s still growing, and it’s still establishing itself as a mature channel when it comes to consideration for marketers,” says O’Brien.
“In a market where consumer confidence is a little lower than we would like, you certainly have to find ways to cut through and be able to prove that you don’t strike podcasts off the schedule when your marketing budgets might pull back. It is channels like podcasts that have the levels of engagement that are going to deliver the results that marketers need.”
That level of engagement is significant. O’Brien says there is no doubt that podcasting is a buoyant market, and that’s due to audience growth.
“40% of Aussies now consume podcasts every month, the stats show that audiences are flocking to digital audio and they’re spending pretty significant sums of time engaging with that content.
“Just under 30% of Aussies listen weekly, and of those weekly listeners, they’re spending seven hours a week listening to podcasts. That’s 40%, up year on year, there are not many other channels that have seen that level of growth – particularly in such a fragmented market, and particularly in a market where there are so many choices.”