If I had a hammer, I would hammer every morning and I would be looking for nails. If I had a drill, I would be focused on making holes. Now I see millions of little audio smart speakers in living rooms, bathrooms and kitchens all over the world and I think people should be listening to podcasts on these devices, but by-and-large they are not.

We have written about smart speakers in the past, including here and here, and it remains a frustration knowing overall consumption of audio on smart speakers is on the rise, and while podcast listening is also up, it lags. Meanwhile, it is easier than ever to surface podcasts on Google Nest and Amazon Alexa devices, and likely to improve.

We sat down with Edison Research’s SVP Tom Webster to get his take on the disconnect between smart speakers and podcasts. Tom is a walking intersecting Venn diagram at the cross between podcasts and smart speakers.

The most read post in the five years that this blog has been published is this one: Why Can’t Music Be Played In Podcasts? In fact, it comes up so often it is a “Google Zero” post, meaning it is the first item that pops up with that query. Every month hundreds of ...

Back in the early days of podcast advertising, which means two hours ago, things were pretty simple. The host read an ad, someone clicked to a website, they activated a coupon code, and a mattress arrived at their home. Now as more brands are engaging with podcasts, we ...

It’s relatively easy to spin up a podcast – it must be, there are 1.4 million of them. Knowing when to throw in the towel is much more challenging. Interestingly, of the 1.4 million titles, most (55%) have not produced a new episode in the last 90 days, and 27% have ...

What is the most popular podcast? Is it Joe Rogan? The Daily? Michelle Obama? And who is the number one podcaster? Is it NPR? Or maybe iHeart? The answers depend upon where you look and that can be confusing and maybe even misleading. There is Nielsen for TV and ...

There is so much of everything out there in medialand – so much video, so much web, so much audio. The challenge for content creators and advertisers is standing out amidst the supersized garden hose of content and choice. In this moment when audio is seemingly ...

The Joe Rogan deal is about eyes and ears. In fact, at its essence, the business of media and entertainment is pretty simple; sales dollars chase eyes and ears. It’s always been that way. Television blew up in the late 1940’s as people wanted to see Milton Berle. ...

In the midst of the pandemic, following an aspirational blog post from Fred Jacobs, an email chain circulated with active and former senior radio executives – if you are in the radio business, these are names you would know. With COVID-19 wiping out the commercial logs ...

It’s hard to know anything about the future with certainty these days. Many are predicting a slow road back to normalcy. And what will be normal? Will small businesses make a sudden comeback? Will we sit in restaurants near other people right away? Would you go to a ...

When people think of voice, most think smart speakers. In fact, more people use voice on mobile phones and in cars than smart speakers. In 2018, there were 250 billion voice searches on mobile and other voice devices and that number is growing rapidly as people learn ...