The Future of Podcasting, Media, and Audience Attention with Paul Riismandel

The Future of Podcasting, Media, and Audience Attention with Paul Riismandel

Paul Riismandel: Everyone skips ads. Almost nobody skips ads as much as they think they do or tell people they do, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting.

Paul Riismandel: And, and, and how do I know this? I know this because if, if that were the case, podcast advertising would have crashed a long time ago .

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, "Business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal." And we couldn't agree more. This is the Business development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development, capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 347 of the Business Development Podcast. Today, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Paul Riismandel .

Paul is the president of Signal Hill Insights, one of the leading audience research firms in podcasting, digital audio, and of course, the creator economy. For more than two decades, Paul has been at the forefront of audio media, helping brands, publishers, and advertisers understand not just who is listening, but why they listen.

From helping pioneer podcast advertising at Midroll Media to leading insights and measurement initiatives at SiriusXM, Paul has spent his career studying what makes podcasts one of the most trusted and effective forms of media in the world. Today, Paul oversees one of the industry's largest audience insights programs, advising some of the biggest names in podcasting while helping shape the future of how the medium is measured, monetized, and understood.

If podcasting is entering its next era, Paul Riismandel is one of the people helping the industry understand what that era actually means. Paul, it is an honor and a privilege to have you on our show today.

Paul Riismandel: You're hired, Kelly. Whatever it is. Whatever it is you're selling, you're hired.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh. I'm,

Paul Riismandel: I'm pleased to be here.

Pleased to be here.

Kelly Kennedy: No, it's super, super cool. If there's one thing that I've learned i- in my podcasting career, it's that I love talking about podcasting. And, you know, there's not a lot of people, frankly, more knowledgeable about, you know, what the future of podcasting looks like than you. And so having you on is truly an honor and a privilege, and I just wanna say, you know, y- you're one of the kings of podcasting.

Paul Riismandel: Well, thank you. Let's hope, a- and, and partly it's just 'cause they can't get rid of me. I, I just won't, I just won't go away.

Kelly Kennedy: It really ropes you in, doesn't it?

Paul Riismandel: Yep.

Kelly Kennedy: So, Paul, obviously our listeners might be meeting you for the first time. In the podcasting world, you're insanely well-known.

In the business world, eh you're probably getting there, too. But, you know, for people being introduced to you for the very first time, who is Paul Riismandel? How the heck did you end up on this path?

Paul Riismandel: How did I end up on this path? Like most people, by accident. I don't think you can plan it. But you know, lifelong media guy.

Since I was a kid into high school, into c- college, I was in college radio. Decided not to pursue a career in radio which probably worked out okay for me. I'm not sure I had the talent for the, for, to be entirely on mic and perhaps could have had one of those jobs that used to exist back in the back office.

I attempted a couple of PhDs and neither really stuck. Either the academy wasn't for me or I wasn't for the academy. But where I ended up in was educational media production. So what I ended up doing is working in some of the early days of digital media and online media at universities.

So basically saying, "Hey, we've gotta get this video and audio off of tapes."

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Paul Riismandel: For those of a certain age may remember when you would wheel a VCR and television into a classroom.

Kelly Kennedy: You betcha.

Paul Riismandel: And to kind of get this into the realm at which people were getting it on their devices whether at, you know, desktops, laptops, eventually mobile devices.

So I worked at that for a good 20 years until I burned out on working in, working in universities. You know, I'd been kind of, I like to think a bit at the cutting edge and, things are changing rapidly in terms of it becoming much more common at, at universities. I felt like, you know, in the 2000s, early 2000s, we were fighting tooth and nail to just get anyone to take digital media seriously and want- Wow

to invest in it. And so now, of course, today you know, if a university isn't using digital media- ... that's because they're teaching the Amish. I, I'm not certain- Yeah. ... who the, you know, what, what, what they're doing, right? Yeah. But, but someone had to be there early on you know, in, in scrapping away without budgets.

And I was lucky enough in 2014 to meet the acquaintance of a man named Jeff Ulrich, who helped found the Earwolf Podcast Network and ultimately Midroll Media, which was its ad sales division. And I'd been into podcasting since it began in the early 2000s. Yeah. I would've thought, "This is a great way to deliver audio on the internet," and I was very excited about it.

I don- I continue to be involved in community radio and I was the advisor to a college radio station, and I could just see, like, there was something here, like, that- Yeah ... was really going to take radio at the time to the next level, to allow people to not have to set, an alarm to remember to listen to This American Life-

Kelly Kennedy: Yes

Paul Riismandel: on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM or something, and instead be able to just download it and listen to it on their commute, on their iPod or their MP3 player. So I immediately saw, like, this was an exciting development and started playing with the technology. So as a podcast consumer- From then on, basically.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And had been following the business, and actually had been blogging about it. If you remember blogs.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Some of them still exist. I still write one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And Jeff had read my post writing about Midroll Media, 'cause I just learned about it, and said, "Wow, okay, really trying to organize the advertising."

'Cause at that point, there were ads on podcasts, but it, you know, it seemed very kind of, there were some pioneering brands perhaps, but it didn't seem very organized- Mm-hmm ... if you will.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Paul Riismandel: And the idea of starting this network to help lots of podcasts monetize by sort of centralizing their sales and, you know, making it easier seemed interesting to me.

He invited to be, me to be on his podcast called The Wolf Den, which was the podcast about the business of podcasting. Yeah. And again, this is 2013, 2014.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And he called me a few months later and said, "You know, we're trying to find someone to do content marketing, someone to help teach the ad community, one, what is a podcast, and two, what is a podcast advertisement."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. "

Paul Riismandel: We can't seem to find any marketers who know what this stuff is. You know a lot about it. Can you be a marketer?" And I said, "Yep, I can." And, and I wasn't just blowing smoke. Yeah ... part of my remit had been in, in working in instructional media, had been working closely with communications departments and marketing departments on putting together, you know, media assets to promote academic programs, promote the achievements of schools, and things like this.

So I was very familiar with a lot of that. And, and I'd also, in my time in higher ed, I'd, I'd been a teacher. I taught university courses on communication and media. So I was familiar with, like, what it takes to kind of help sell a concept, right- Yeah ... and bring things through. So that's where I got my start.

And as I was working through that you know, we were getting some success, but ultimately some of the bigger brands, you know, very big household names, said, "Sure, this sounds great. You're, you know, what you're telling us about podcasts, that they're intimate, that people are really leaned in prove it."

Yeah. That's when it turned into a research job. Yeah. And since I had attempted a couple of PhDs, one of which was in communication I had some research chops at my disposal, and so just dived in to help, help do that kind of research.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. You know, one of the things that was most confusing for me when I first started a podcast is what the hell all the numbers even meant.

Paul Riismandel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: And you don't know what's good or what's not good. Like, you know, one of the goals earlier on, and, and me and you both know her, but I brought on Fatima Zaidi who runs CoHost and Quill Ink, and ultimately was kind of picking her brain. Like, what the heck does all this stuff mean?

Because as a new podcaster, and frankly even today, and, you know, obviously the advent of AI, ChatGPT, Claude, things like that, has made it infinitely easier for people to get a little bit more info than we had back in early 2022, 2023 on what it all meant. But I think I found myself as a new podcaster not knowing what was good and what was bad.

And I think in the beginning I found it a little bit disheartening because you look at your numbers and you're like, "I'm getting 30 or 50 downloads a day." It's like, "Oh, that's not very much." But the, you know, over time you start to realize that's actually, you know, pretty normal for a new show. But there wasn't a lot of information out there to even tell you what was good, what was bad, or what anything even meant.

Paul Riismandel: One of the most pernicious developments in the internet has been the like button. And you say, "Well, why is that?" Well, because we all of a sudden started putting metrics on things that didn't necessarily need to have metrics.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: So I, I, you know, and, and just s- l- let me just say that the impulse to do so was benevolent.

Right? That we're literally, it's kind of nice to have someone say, "Hey, I like that post on Facebook." Totally. Or, "I, I like that picture you put on Instagram." But it immediately means now if you don't get a like or you don't get so many likes, you're like, "Oh, what did what did I do?" Right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, and on the one hand, if you're, if you're creating media that you hope to monetize, yes, you need to know about audience.

But the question isn't always quantity of audience, it's quality.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Right? There are different things between being Joe Rogan or being the best biz dev podcast. Definitely. Those are tr- those are different audiences. Yeah. And there's different numbers of people involved. And if you're gonna make the best podcast for dentists, that's a smaller community than making the best podcast for bowlers- Yeah

for instance.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And you need to really define who it is you're trying to reach, first of all, and then why.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Riismandel: Why are you reaching them? And, and, and it can be, reasons can be just 'cause I enjoy doing this.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

Paul Riismandel: That can be a great reason, but you, you need to therefore modify what your expectations are based upon why you're doing it.

And that helps to kind of tune it so that we're not just looking at these individual tick marks, one download, one download, one download, but understanding what's the perspective on that. And, and one of the perspectives I like to share very often, someone says, "Hey, you know, my podcast, I only got, like, 100 downloads."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And let's just imagine that in this particular case that's, that's actually 100 people. Well, what if you threw an event and 100 people showed up? How would you feel?

Kelly Kennedy: Pretty frigging great.

Paul Riismandel: Would you feel good? Would- Yeah ... would that be great?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Now we've got 1,000 downloads. I threw an event and 1,000 people showed up.

W- how would you feel? You need to think of it that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: We get stuck in the old paradigms of broadcast, right? Where, with a radio transmitter or TV transmitter, you know, you're just by very nature of it existing, you're reaching hundreds and thousands and millions of people. But what we forget is, yeah, it used to be really hard to do that.

When you had a TV channel, you were one of five, 10- Yeah ... 12? Depends on- Yeah ... where you live, right? That's right. Radio stations, one of 20 maybe in, in- Yeah ... a bigger city.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Okay. Well, and so, and then when someone turns on the radio they only have 20 choices, so you're going to be one of them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Right?

Paul Riismandel: For some- for somebody. Podcasting isn't like that. Podcasting is, is opt-in, people seek out, but it means that they are very directed. If they tune in and they, and they listen and they, and they follow your podcast, it's something they really wanna do. It's not so passive. It's not just I clicked it on and it's there.

100%. And, and that's important, so it means that that one listener of a podcast means something different than one viewer of, of television or one listener of radio. Yeah. In some ways, I would argue even is different than one viewer on, on demand, the, on, on say Netflix, where yeah, people are d- you know, there, but they're also, they're looking to fulfill different things with, with these diff- with, with what you're doing.

And that's why it's really important to go back to that what is it I'm looking to accomplish? Why am I doing this?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: And critically, what do I want that listener to take away? Or rather What does it fulfill for them? What need does my podcast fulfill for this listener? And it can be several different needs, but you need to start thinking about that if you, what you want to do is to grow a podcast and to grow an audience.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, absolutely. I actually made a series, starts around episode 260 last year, where I just started teaching everything that I knew about podcasting so far. And like, let's get real, you know, I'm two and a I'm three and a half years into my show now. At that point, I was about two and a half years into my show, but we'd already achieved quite a bit of success, at least here in Canada.

And so I was like, okay, well, I think I have, like, a good idea on how to do this. I'm going to lay it out. But one of the things that I did mention earlier on is podcasting is dedication. It is absolutely a long game. You know, it's very rare that you launch a show and in the first, you know, 10 episodes, you just blow up.

It's, unless you're a celebrity or get lucky. You know, I, I think on some level we did get a little lucky with the latest show. We had a right idea, right concept at the right time. It got pulled automatically by A- by Apple Podcast, and we got promoted and, and the rest is history. You have that big download spike.

But that was not the case with the BDP. The BDP was absolutely a slog for the first year. We got, you know, we d- we did okay, but I think it was about six to eight months, the first six to eight months of the show, Paul, before we broke 80 downloads in a single day. And you know, I remember, I remember being in the kitchen with Shelby, my wife, and just saying, like, "I don't know, like, what to do here.

I don't know how to get more people." But, you know, at the time it just all seemed like numbers. I never thought about it like 80 people in a room on a single day is a lot of freaking people.

Paul Riismandel: Right. Th- it's a small business.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, it's, lots of people open small businesses, and a lot of them close small businesses.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Because it's not build it and they will come. It's not throw open the doors and people are gonna flood in. You know, you can't compare yourself to opening up, you know, a new Chipotle.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Or- Yeah ... or a new Tim Horton's. There's no built-in audience. Yes. Right? So if you're opening, you opening up a sandwich shop, you're gonna have to prove yourself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You're gonna have to prove yourself one way or another. And sure, there are places in town where maybe there's more foot traffic, you're near a lot of businesses. Maybe, you know, more people will stop in and just wander by, but you're gonna pay a lot more for that real estate.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Right?

Absolutely.

Paul Riismandel: You, you're paying for that foot traffic in a different way. And if you don't prepare for that beginning, for that ramp-up, and understand that you may have to carry it for quite some time before they start queuing at your door. Or the maybe the one day that you, for whatever reason, some influencer mentions your sandwich shop on Instagram- Yeah

and they're lined up out the door, but you As much as people think you can, you really can't plan for that.

Kelly Kennedy: No. No. Like I said, y- you might get lucky, right?

Paul Riismandel: You might get lucky. And, and you can put yourself in a position to, to, to catch the luck when it comes.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely.

Paul Riismandel: But you need to think about it. It's a small business, and I think, you know, social media and the notion of virality have done a disservice to, to not just podcasting, but to creators in general, to giving people the sense that virality, getting lucky is, is the key to success.

I think you said it, right? It's, it's a long game. Yeah. And I think that's, that's true not just of podcasting. It's true of a YouTuber. It's true of a TikToker. You might get lucky, and you might hit it at the right time, but yeah, but you gotta keep delivering. You gotta keep doing it.

Kelly Kennedy: Hu- 100%. Like, even if you were to get super viral, right, if you stop, it's all over.

Paul Riismandel: It's all over. It's all over. Well, I mean, w- remember the Hawk Tuah girl?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Right? Right? Seemed like, like she was sitting on the world's shorter- shoulders for a minute or two, but- Mm-hmm ... easy come, easy go in a way. And, and that's- Yeah ... you know, and that's, I think, an object lesson. And I think when you see, even the celebrities who've been successful at podcasting, what you're going to see is that they've done the work.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and they probably really enjoy it, right? I think if I have to look at podcasting as a whole, it's one of my favorite things to do. I absolutely love doing it. I love producing the shows. You know, my, my newest show, I Used to Work There, is just, it's hilarious, and I get to laugh the whole time that I'm making it, right?

And so it adds a lot of value to my life even before, you know, we make a dollar. And I think that's the way you have to look at podcasting to truly find success. You have to podcast about things you enjoy. You have to really have a good time doing it, and that will allow you to keep coming back for as long as it takes to actually find the success you're looking for.

Paul Riismandel: Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: So take me back to, you know, we talked about this ahead of the show. You said you got into podcasting in 2003. Is that correct?

Paul Riismandel: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: So obviously you've been with podcasting now for what? What does that work out to be? 23 years- 23 years, yeah ... roughly. Mm-hmm. 23 years of podcasting. What was podcasting like back in 2003?

'Cause I think it's a little bit hard for me to even imagine.

Paul Riismandel: It, it was a hobby. I mean, right? I mean, it was, it was- But that was the internet. I mean- Yeah ... we've been through the dot-com boom, okay? So, you know, we had, you know, pets.com. We'd had, you know, the big spike, the IPO in Net- Netscape, and people had thrown a lot of money at the internet, and you throw a dot-com on it, it's all of a sudden worth 10 times as much.

Yeah. And it, and then, and then it crashed, right? So, so much was people... Podcasting was people saying, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?" In the same way that the original web was, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?" And I- Yeah ... I was at graduate school at the University of Illinois when the World Wide Web was invented.

Okay? So that was Tim Berners-Lee you know, who was i- in Europe. But the first Mosaic browser was created at University of Illinois- Wow ... when I was there. I had no role in it. All right? But I, I was there-

Kelly Kennedy: Still a cool place to be ...

Paul Riismandel: I, I was there, you know, going, "Oh, this is really cool. Let me look..." You know, I got access to one of the computers that was connected to the internet that I could try Mosaic on-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: okay, and see the World Wide Web for the first time. Wow. So, and that was all, all of that was built on, "Wouldn't it be cool if we did this?" Mm-hmm. "How about if we try this?" And that's exactly the foundations of podcasting. It was, "Hey, you know, it looks like we can distribute audio files on the internet. Now we have this thing called MP3-"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: that makes them easier to move around the internet than it used to be before, where the files would be really big and the internet was very slow." And it's like, okay, but then, you know, what do I have to do? I have to go back and just check this person's website every week, every day to see, did they post a new thing?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And it'd already been this creation of the RSS, Really Simple Syndication-

Kelly Kennedy: Okay ...

Paul Riismandel: standard, which was for websites. I could subscribe to a RSS feed, and using a piece of software say, "Hey, there's all these different blogs, and now when this person posts a new entry to their blog, I see it in my reader."

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. It was like- So I don't have to- ... a notification system.

Paul Riismandel: It's exactly, not even notification. You actually get the text, right? Okay. You'd actually get to read it, 'cause no one was making any money on their blogs.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, they were doing it for the love of it, for the love of sharing and community, and all of a sudden being able to publish to the world when it used to be to do that was extremely difficult and expensive.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, where either you had to become a published author or you would invest a lot in photocopies and postage, right? Sure. I mean...

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, you're like, you're up there on bulletin boards,

stamping things.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, but precisely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's hard to kind of recapture how revolutionary that was-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: in, in, say, the, in the '90s that we went from anybody could publish something to anybody else in the world. And it wasn't anybody else in the world because a much smaller percentage of the world was on the internet at that point. Sure. Whether at home or, you know, back then, it, you, you may or may not remember dial-up and people had to- Yep

use their phones. I very much remember dial-up. And you might be fighting with your siblings over who gets the AOL. And my mom would be

Kelly Kennedy: screaming at me, "Get off the internet!"

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, exactly, right? So not being always on and just in your pocket.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: So it w- it's in that spirit that it was created. And, and so immediately I'm like, "Well, let me figure this out."

And I hand-coded my first RSS feeds 'cause it wasn't- Wow ... hard to do. You could just do it in a, in a text in a, in a text file, and then, you know, shortly thereafter you know, th- then created software, you know, that you could put up on your own, you know, server account and, and make it easier to distribute, and that's ultimately what I, what I did.

And I, I did a radio show on a community radio station.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Paul Riismandel: And I started distributing it as a podcast, and I would just record it On mini disc

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: And digitize it, and put it up. It was a re- it was a process. Like- Yeah ... you know, you had to just do it 'cause you, you loved doing it. And if I had 25 downloads ever, I felt very successful.

Yeah. Because I was just like, "Hey, you could, you know, not everybody's available at Friday at, at 5:30," which is when my my, my show was on the air. So now if you miss it, you can go and you can listen to, to a very low bit rate MP3. But- And- But then, you know, but that, that was fun.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, man.

Like, I look back to, like, keep in mind too, like, I'm thinking, like, early 2000s, like 2002, 2003. I was a teenager downloading all of the pirated media I could get my hands on-

Paul Riismandel: Right. Right, right ...

Kelly Kennedy: off Limewire.

Paul Riismandel: It's Nap- Limewire and Napster and, and BearShare, right. Exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: But that was how it worked, right?

Like, you had to actually physically download the file and upload it onto your 128 megabyte MP3 player- Yeah ... with all 11 songs you could maybe fit on the damn thing and, and that's how you listened.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. And that's how I listened to my podcasts. For my commute, I would just load them onto you know, whatever portable media I h- device I had.

And but, you know, I had to remember to download it and do the transfer, and it just was my habit and took a few minutes. And they, you know, there was specialized software called a podcatcher- Yeah ... is what we called them back then, that would do that download for you until 2005, when Apple added podcasts to the iTunes.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Paul Riismandel: Okay. And made, th- that route made it, like, integrated, you know, into something that was easier to use. And if you had a Mac, then it was, you know, just part of your operating system. And if you had an iPod, you connected your iPod and it- Yeah ... would take care of it somewhat more automatically. But I was podcasting until, well past 2008, and the first iPhone came out.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. Yeah. Like, I would say the very f- I always thought, like, I, I was so dumb to it. I always thought that Apple had invented it, 'cause I think the very first time- Yeah ... I ever saw a podcast was on my, was on my, my i- my, my iPod. And I was like, "What is this podcast thing?" Like, I'd never even... And I assumed because I had an iPod it was clearly Apple's thing, right?

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, yeah. No, it was just because that was what people were using, right? That's right. You know, that was the most dominant portable media player, I suppose.

Kelly Kennedy: That's so, that, yeah. So cool. And then I would say, like, I didn't really find myself deep into podcast listening myself until about 2015. And I think it was about 2015 that I really fell in love with podcasting, and it just became a part of my everyday life.

And I didn't, you know what I mean? I always kinda felt like even when I launched this show back in 2023, that I was late to the party, but maybe not so much.

Paul Riismandel: No. I mean- look, what is the first mover advantage in podcasting? Y- you know, there are podcasts that have been around that long, and most of them are not seen up high on the charts at this day and time.

Yeah. You know, you have, you have public radio shows in the US, in, in, in Australia and Canada that have been distributed by, you know, podcasts for a long time, and they've sort of managed to stay up in the charts. But it's a, that's a different thing than, than sort of, you know, the average podcaster. And you know, and there are shows that have literally been around since the mid-2000s, like This Week in Technology, TWiT-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: is one that, that comes to mind just off the top of my head that was never a radio show, right? It was never otherwise on some other media. That was really born in podcasting. And it's still very popular, of course. Yeah. But you know, it's a tech show. It's not a general audience kind of show. There, there isn't

We, we have to kind of disabuse ourselves of that there's a zero-sum game here. There isn't. It isn't like s- I'm too late to the party, right? It's sort of saying, "Well, you know S- ever since the Lumière brothers first filmed a train coming at you and people ducked under their chairs, the opportunities in film are, are really- There's just n- you know, I'm, I'm really too late to the party in 2026- Yeah

'cause they did it,

Kelly Kennedy: they did it then, yeah.

Paul Riismandel: They did it in the 19th century. I mean, that's, right? No one thinks that. No one thinks I shouldn't try to get in- try to write a book today. Yeah. There's just too many books. I mean, you know, I, I, I can't possibly, you know, top War and Peace, so why should I even try, right?

No. So the same thing with podcasting. There's no too late. The thing is, is that, podcasting in, in, in Canada, you know, is reaches I wish I had the number off the top of my head. We're getting, it's 43, 46% of the adult population every month. Wow. Okay. Well, that's still half the population that isn't listening

Kelly Kennedy: regularly.

Yeah. Right? And is that a little bit hard to believe at the moment? I f- I find that hard to believe, actually.

Paul Riismandel: I, ugh, I don't, because I've I mean, I've been, I've been wa- you know, watching that needle tick up year after year after year.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, you know, so it's sort of amazing to me that we've reached those sorts of heights.

And, you know, we don't know what, we don't know what the ceiling is, right? We, you know, we don't know if, if it's going to become as e- ubiquitous as radio once was, or as broadcast television once was. But I'm, I'm, I will hazard to guess it's certainly going to grow to well past half the population- Yeah

in, in, in most countries, and certainly in most of the sort of Anglosphere. You know, that's a lot of opportunity left. And, and one of the reasons a lot of people have never listened to podcasts, or rather kind of haven't made it a habit, is 'cause they haven't found the show, the content-

Kelly Kennedy: Sure ...

Paul Riismandel: that turns it into a habit for them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And it's like-

Paul Riismandel: And, yeah ...

Kelly Kennedy: I, you know what I mean? I don't know how many podcasts are out there. There's gotta be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million by now.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, but there's not 5 million in regular production.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Paul Riismandel: That's the thing. I, I, I don't have the number off the top of my head, but y- you greatly reduce it.

You're in- you're into the, you're into the tens to hundreds of thousands- Okay ... when you're talking about things that are in regular production and how you define that. So, you know, because it's, it's a real commitment. Yeah. It's a real commitment to be in regular production to week after week or month after month, whatever your cadence is, to continue to produce and, and put it out there.

So there's a lot of podcasts that have been there for 10 episodes and someone's got discouraged or-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: you know, or that was it. They had 10 episodes worth of stuff to share, and that was the end of that . And, Yeah ... and, and there's nothing wrong with it, and it could still be out there in the internet, and maybe somebody will find it, you know?

I mean, it's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no, there's no failure here, you know? And it's really defining what is it you're trying to accomplish, what, what is it you wanna... And, and being honest with yourself about it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, and, and, and then, you know, doing an honest assessment of, of what might, what might be possible

Kelly Kennedy: As someone who understands the numbers, what does it actually take to build a successful podcast in 2026?

Paul Riismandel: It takes n- I mean, it takes knowing what audience, who is it that will and should listen to your podcast, and why they should listen. What need will it fulfill? That's the two biggest things. As content creators, we tend to start with, "Here's my cool idea. Is this a good enough idea?" And that's certainly part of the process.

You need that. However, if you wanna be successful, and, and I guess by success I mean potentially make money.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, whether it's a side hustle, beer money, or you know, quitting your job and making a living at it, then yes, you need to really think about, what, what will my podcast do for people?

Yeah. For my audience? What-- Why will-- Why would they listen to my podcast instead of turning on YouTube, instead of scrolling TikTok for an hour, instead of picking up a book maybe?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: What... Right? But does that-- That's what you're competing with.

Kelly Kennedy: That's, yeah, you're competing against every other form of entertainment they could possibly handle.

Paul Riismandel: But, but very critically, to, to a large extent, you're not kind of competing against other podcasts. Now, hardcore podcast listeners, they tap out at some point, meaning their queue gets full, they can't keep up with it. And we all know that feeling, right? Yeah. We all know that our, you know, the, our queue on, on Netflix that we, you know, or, or just the, the stack of books we haven't gotten to.

We all have it, and it, and it's just natural and, and, and such. So, so certainly if you're going after people who are like hardcore podcast listeners for the last five, 10 years, getting them to try a new podcast is tough- Definitely ... because they only, they don't have a lot of time left for a new podcast.

Yeah. They kinda gotta swap one out. And then we've done, I've done the research where we've asked people that, and they basically say, "Yeah, this, this looks great, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm t- I'm topped out. I got 10 podcasts-" Yeah "... a week. I don't have time for more." But you have to think about, well, what about the person who's only listening to one podcast-

Kelly Kennedy: Sure

a week?

Paul Riismandel: They exist. We've got an average of, I think, three is what most people say they listen to a week. Yeah, yeah. But that's an average, right? Which means that we have people who do a whole lot more- That's right ... and people who do a whole lot less.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And when you talk about someone who maybe is listening to three podcasts a week, they likely have time for more.

But you need to provide them with that incentive. What are they going to get out of this experience? Why is it going to be worth half an hour, hour, two hours of their time on any given week? That's what you need to communicate, and that's what you need to aim for. And, you know, what you hope is that there's overlap with what you want to do-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I would say that, like, if I have to look at the biggest challenge I have as a podcaster, no matter what the show I'm working on, it is discovery, 100%. Mm-hmm. How do you get that person who listens to, let's say, three or five shows a week to try your show? I think that might actually be the hardest thing for any podcaster, period.

Because like you said, I, I'm that guy, too. I have about five podcasts I listen to regularly. I go to them all the time, and I'm rarely looking for a new show. Something really has to, has to come across my page and be like, "Oh, okay, that looks really interesting," for me to even consider it. I think the last time I brought on a new show was probably six months ago, just to give you an idea- Yeah

of where, where I'm at. So like- And where

Paul Riismandel: did you find it? How did you find it?

Kelly Kennedy: I wanna say it was a recommendation from another podcast that I listen to.

Paul Riismandel: That's still you know, an important avenue. Another important avenue, of course, is the editorial in the podcast apps, whether it's, you know, like Apple Podcasts you mentioned.

They'll feature different shows.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: People increasingly are finding them on YouTube, of course. Yes. And so they're getting it recogn- recommended in their algorithm. And YouTube is its own beast.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: That is, it's podcasting, but it behaves a little differently and, and, you know, the hypothesis, though we haven't fully researched it, is that people interact with YouTube differently.

Interesting. And, and, and I mean, I, I can just give you the anecdotal evidence is if you use YouTube you mostly interact with that main home screen. And if you quit watching a channel or a creator for a little while, what happens? They stop popping up

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, interesting. It stops recommending it.

Paul Riismandel: So, and so you can go and you'll say, "Hey, whatever happened to this show?" Yeah. And you go look at it and you go, "Oh, they released like 15 episodes." And, and, and you do have a subscriptions tab that you can go to. Yeah In which case you can look at all, everything you've ever subscribed to. But it, the indication is most people don't do that very often.

And so you could, if you fall out and, and for whatever reason, you just quit clicking on it a few times, it'll get lost. Versus the way kind of Apple Podcasts work, and a lot of other podcast apps work, they say, "Hey, here's your new episodes from every- from the things that you follow," right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And if you, if you quit, but they're also, if you quit listening for a while, it'll quit downloading and it may, and it'll quit bubbling it up into your feed, right?

So there is... But with YouTube, it's a bit more, it's harder to predict.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, but there's some sense of like, yes, you n- it's that constant engagement is kinda what, what keeps people coming back to their YouTube podcasts.

Kelly Kennedy: Correct. Yeah. I, I think the thing that I've always struggled with with the YouTube aspect of it is, first off, what's the difference between a YouTube video and a podcast?

I think that's gotten very blurred right? You know, I- 'Cause I-

Paul Riismandel: Well- ... it, I, I don't think it's that blurred, actually. So-

Kelly Kennedy: Okay ...

Paul Riismandel: it, people intuitively know what a podcast is. People intuitively know that, that B- that the Business Development Podcast is a podcast, despite having podcast in its name. They intuitively know.

And sure, there's some blurry edges. There are always gonna be some blurry edges. But they get it, and they know that, like, watching the Drew Barrymore show is not a podcast. Because it's got this other format. Yeah It shows people talking to each other. You know, they know The National is not a podcast.

They get it, even if it's on YouTube or even if it's released as a podcast. They get that there's something to the form, right? And that it being very audio first, and it tending to be long form. Yeah And it tending to be not snippets and, and less so, you know, just we get three minutes on the couch to talk about my next new movie, right?

Then instead I get to talk an hour about my next new movie, and then all the funny things that led up to me getting in that movie, right? Yeah. It, people really do intuitively get it. It's, it's not, it's not as blurry as, as, as, as you think it is. You know? Okay. When, when, you know, it's about three years ago, when we had our first piece of research here at Signal Hill Insights, and it was in the US.

It's something, it's a study we do called The Download. We do it twice a year, which is nice because it allows us to kind of track things over time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And one of the questions is we ask, "What is the podcast platform you use the most?" And in 2023, YouTube took the number one spot. Now, not the majority.

I always have to remind people. It took the number one slot in people saying that it's, that they use it the most, but it's still under 40% in the US. Okay. And we had seen it creeping up. It had bypassed Apple and Spot- it was kind of competing with Spotify. In 2023, established its number one status that it's kept since then And we reported on this, and I had so many people inside the industry basically say, "No, that can't be.

That ju- just- that's just wrong." Right? Yeah. And we, we've been tracking it, right? So if it had just out of nowhere they'd become number one, we'd have been skeptical. Like, as, as a researcher, when you get something that just, you know, all of a sudden up with a bullet, you, it doesn't mean it isn't, it isn't right, but you really have to check yourself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Are we asking the question the right way? Is there an error in the research or something? Sure. But since we'd seen it creep up, it wasn't like a-

Kelly Kennedy: It wasn't a shock ...

Paul Riismandel: a shazam moment out of the sky, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. But people said to me things like, "No, people are just watching MrBeast and calling a podcast."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And I'm like, "I don't think that's true." So I g- was able to work on another piece of research later that year called Sound You Can See, which is a study put together by Sounds Profitable. I think you're probably familiar with them. They're- Very. Yeah ... an industry organization for podcasting. We at Signal Hill Insights, we're their research partner, so I'm, I'm utterly privileged to get to work alongside Tom Webster who is an eminent authority in podcasting research.

He's been researching podcasting since it existed, so- Wow ... so, you know, to be able to work with him is, is an utter privilege. But we put together a study to look at video podcasting for the first time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And as part of that, we asked our sample of 2,000 video podcast consumers in the US "List off all the video podcasts that you, that you watch."

And we, it just open text box, just do it, right? So that we wouldn't be accidentally biasing them.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: And we went and we, to the best of our ability, we matched every single thing people wrote in to a YouTube channel. You can't always, sometimes people would put in someone's name instead of the podcast name or whatever, but we were able to get a pretty good hit ratio-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: getting on, you know, close to 90%. And through all of this, so we had maybe, I think in the end, some people mentioned one podcast, some people mentioned 12, but overall we had a database of about 5,000 podcasts that people mentioned. Individual pod- or f- individual responses, I'm sorry, so that people put in.

MrBeast got mentioned, like, twice.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Paul Riismandel: And MrBeast is, like, the biggest YouTube channel. The, the YouTube guy, yeah. So if anyone's gonna be making that mistake- Yeah ... we'd have thought we'd have seen it.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: But two mentions, three mentions out of 5,000? No. Yeah. We were able to map almost anything GROCable, 'cause sometimes it's just gibberish or you just can't make sense of it-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Paul Riismandel: to, to what we would call a podcast. Do we-- Either it, it had an RSS feed, so it was in AudioToo- Sure ... or it was a YouTube-only podcast, but when we looked at it, we're like, "Yep."

Kelly Kennedy: Podcast. "

Paul Riismandel: That's a podcast." People weren't, weren't confused. Yeah. Right? They, they get it. They know, they know what this thing is.

They can feel. And in the same way that people, they know what a sitcom is. They know what a mystery is. Even if it stretches the genre or crosses- Sure ... over. People know what a TV show is as opposed to a movie.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Right? They, they get it, right? And so, you know, and there used to be, you know, the TV movie of the week, and sometimes it was just a longer version of Columbo.

But people got the difference. Like, there's the Columbo movie, and then there's Columbo the TV show.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: People get podcasting.

Kelly Kennedy: Fair enough. Fair enough. I guess one of the questions that I have regarding, you know, podcasting in general though is, are we seeing the end of the audio-only show? Mm-mm.

Paul Riismandel: No. No.

I, I mean, as long as there are people who need to do something with their eyes and keep their ears engaged at the same time, then no. Right? So the, the, the Google Glass, you know, the VR future hasn't hit us, that we're watch- that we're, we're, we're wearing VR goggles while we're mowing the lawn.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Okay?

That we're gonna be watching ... God, I hope not. Gonna be watching podcasts while we're driving, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. That, that could get a little dangerous.

Paul Riismandel: Right? So there, there, there is a firm place for audio media, and there has been ever since it was invented.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: That's where podcasting falls in. However, some of that growth and that opportunity is in the hands of podcasters themselves because people need to be told and reminded of that way to use podcasts.

So for those of us who've been in podcasting a long time, we take for granted that it's an audio media-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: and that it's something for your ears when your eyes are busy. The person who first stumbled upon podcasting on TikTok may or may not know this.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: It doesn't mean they're not open to the opportunity, but you need to tell them

Kelly Kennedy: I, yeah, I can't tell you the last time I told my audience to listen to a show.

So listen to a show. You can, you can find us where you can listen.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, I mean, you really do. It's, yeah, it's hard- So I mean, this is the advice I would give to any podcast who is on Instagram, TikTok-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: YouTube, whether it's, whether you're posting full episodes, obviously you can't get a full 30-minute episode up on TikTok, but you can put 10 minutes up.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: And there are 10-minute podcasts. Yeah, yeah ... as you, on all of those other platforms, you should be saying, if it's a clip, "Get more of this conversation on my main channel, or look us up on Spotify or Apple Podcasts."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And if you're putting long form up on your YouTube channel, and that's where people are seeing it, then you should be telling them, "Hey, for your next commute, for the next time you're mowing the lawn, you can just, you can listen to the audio version."

Or- Yeah ... "Let us remind you, there's an audio version of this show."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: We need to tell people. We can't just expect today that everyone knows it, because you gotta go into it with a beginner's mind. There's people starting podcasts for the first time right now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And so what they know of podcasting is that first podcast that they watch or listen to.

Yeah. And so maybe it's on Apple Podcasts, and it's obvious to them how, how to do this, although, you know, there's now video on Apple Podcasts and, you know, and there's video on Spotify.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And then some of them are seeing, you know, a podcaster's clip on TikTok for the first time, and unless you tell them, they don't know that that wasn't just a podcast.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I know. Like, and I think that's maybe the problem that I have with clips, right? I feel like I'm not a fan of clips. I feel like clips are a bit of a disservice. I know they're really great for like, you know, introducing your face and maybe a short message, but I hate being a podcaster where everything really does tend to have, you know, it takes time to convey the true message behind whatever you were saying, whether it's a guest, me, someone else.

And I find that, like, all of these limited clips, 30 seconds, one minute, you're getting, you're not understanding the context behind the message.

Paul Riismandel: I think that people, generally speaking, are starting to wear out on short form.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: I think short form has peaked. It doesn't mean that short form will not continue to exist.

It- I don't think it's like there'll be a crash or something. I think there is some, backlash is maybe too strong of a word. People are starting to feel like, "Man, I kinda want my attention back." Yeah. Or I've, you know, I sat down, I opened my phone, and it, it's an hour later, and what happened to me? Yeah. And people are starting to kinda, go like, "Hey maybe I don't, maybe that's not how I wanna spend all of my time."

Not to say that you shouldn't spend some of your time, right? And they're starting to say, "Hey, I wanna kind of be a little more thoughtful of, of how I'm consuming media and how I'm spending my time, and, and maybe I wanna get into a place where I can dig more deeply and concentrate and, and pay attention for a while."

And yet, and I think what you're seeing, though, is in, partly in response, you see Instagram and, and TikTok increasing the amount of time you can put into a video or a reel.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Sure.

Paul Riismandel: What we forget is that early YouTube, you could only post five minutes.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. I didn't know that.

Paul Riismandel: And so it was a big deal.

You had, and, and, and initially you had to be a really y- you had to earn getting long form onto YouTube. Okay. They didn't just give it to everybody. So, you know, there's been, we, we've seen these developments before, right? And so part of my education is, is basically as an historian of media. These things, it's not that history repeats itself, but there are always echoes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And we can learn a lot by looking back and seeing that very rarely has any particular form, format, or medium shot up, become dominant, and stayed dominant. The turnover tends to be faster these days. Well, you know, I'll, we'll give it that. But, you know, so I think that we're seeing some burnout with, with short form.

That said what I would say, you know, perhaps with regard to using clips for your podcast is, you know, use that as your permission that maybe you don't have to boil everything down to 30 seconds or a minute any longer.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Right? Absolutely.

Paul Riismandel: I mean,

Kelly Kennedy: there's also that. I'm done, I'm done doing that. I, I completely- we've done it, and you know what?

I just don't think it, it provides a ton of value. I think giving people the full four minutes or five minutes of a segment is so much more valuable than a 30-second or a one-minute clip. And I think that's,

Paul Riismandel: you said the value, right? And, and again, that gets back to, it's like, what value are you providing?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And you really have to f- have to think of it that way. Which is why when people say, "Do I have to be on video?" And I'm like, "Well, will, will it be valuable to your audience? Will they find value in it?" Or are, or rather, are the people who you want to reach, they're on video, and will they find value?

And that, that, that's the thing about, you know, the death of audio. There's no death of audio. Like, audio continues to be a very, very popular medium- Yes ... and very, very popular way to consume podcasts. What we forget is that the podcast audience continues to grow and grow, which means more video viewers and more audio listeners.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Now there's a choice in a way that, that was less prevalent. I mean, the choice has existed for 20 years, but it has become more prominent in the last three or four.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, and it's a push/pull situation. You know, in that there's an audience, but there's an audience 'cause there's content, and then people are chasing the audience, so they're making the content, right?

Yeah. It's, it, it is a bit of, a bit of a, a loop there. But does that mean that audio's-- No, it does not mean audio is dead.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay.

Paul Riismandel: Right? And, and people y- what it took to be a chart-topping podcast in 2015 doesn't put you on the chart in 2026 in terms of audience size.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. And, and that was maybe what I was gonna get into.

Because one of the questions that I had, and, and we can talk about it because actually we just, we just had, like, kind of a, a, a monumental run with our new show, I Used to Work There, which has been awesome. Been a lot of fun. We're six episodes out. We hit we peaked out at 65 in US society and culture last week during an Apple New & Noseworthy promotion, which was- Right

freaking amazing. So we, like you said, we won the lottery a little bit with that one. Apple New & Noseworthy is pretty hard to get. We managed to get it. They promote the crap out of your show and, and we had a great run in the US. And we're an audio show still. We, we, we do share stories, individual stories as video clips, the whole story, 'cause that's the way I wanna do it.

But primarily it's an audio show, and it did make the charts. But, you know, one of the things that I questioned was, is Apple and Spotify, are they starting to prioritize shows with videos?

Paul Riismandel: I mean, that's-- It seems that Spotify does, not in terms of the charts. I think Spotify might- The chart, I mean, not, not in terms of the charts- Yeah

but in terms of in, in-app promotion, yes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, I mean-

Kelly Kennedy: So, so that was why I was kind of questioning, do you think potentially people that only make audio shows are gonna find themselves at a disadvantage to people who are making either an audio and a video show or strictly a video show?

Paul Riismandel: Hard to say. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and, and the reason why is, is that if you're only relying on a podcast app for your promotion, then you need a new marketing plan.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So bring me into that. Obviously, as somebody who understands the numbers, understands where people are spending their dollars when it comes to podcast advertising, what are, what are the things that people should be considering when they're growing their shows here in 2026?

Paul Riismandel: Find the audience. Find the audience. So, if I'm, if I'm making a podcast for bowlers Where are the bowlers? Yeah. Not where are the podcast listeners.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Where are the bowlers? That's the question. And sure, do I want to find the bowlers who are already podcast listeners? Sure I do. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: But first, find the bowlers. That's, that's where the, that's where you wanna go. And that's important. That's really important because you want them to feel like, "Hey, there's something here I wouldn't otherwise get somewhere else." Yeah. That this podcast is offering me something interesting, different, educational, whatever, w- w- with regard to what I'm most interested in.

That's what you wanna do. You wanna find them. Now, you know, it's tough to convert somebody to a new medium, but if not you, then who?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Right? Well, a- and you kind of made the case that honestly, it might actually be easier to convert somebody who isn't already following a bunch of shows.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly, because they may have the time. They may be the person who isn't following a bunch of shows 'cause they haven't found a bunch of shows that they're that interested in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And so while, you know, you know, if there are other bowling podcasts and you've got a bowling podcast, you may wanna do ch- exchanges with them, but you know, you're sort of keeping a fairly, fairly narrow field in that way, right?

You may wanna figure out, "Hmm, what's some adjacent things here?"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, who else can I run a promo swap with? But really, you know, are there bowling Facebook groups? Yeah, definitely. What about the bowling Reddit, right? Yeah. And not just go in there and spam, "Listen to my podcast," right? No one likes that stuff.

It's are you part of that community? Yeah. Are you part of a community? And are you serving that community?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, and that- Where,

Kelly Kennedy: where's the value? That's- How are you adding value?

Paul Riismandel: There's a lot of value there. So an example I'm gonna give is there's a podcast called Office Ladies, right? Ho- hosted by two stars of The Office Jenna and Angela, and that podcast, I worked at Earwolf when, when it was debuted.

Yeah. And that podcast was an immediate hit, right? And pe- then we, people go like, "Well, that's a celebrity podcast," blah, blah, blah. And I said, "No," because inside, we had looked at other celebrity podcasts and I'd seen other celebrity podcasts that, that whimper out. Yeah. You think, "Oh, this person's real popular.

They got a big name. We'll release a podcast." Nah. So what was different, right? First off, this is one of the first rewatch podcasts, so they w- rewatching The Office together. Okay. Right, and they were on set and so they got some inside information.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: But in the background, when this, when this podcast debuted, it was about 2018, 2019 The Office had become one of the most popular shows on Netflix.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Very, very popular with millennial women who were following these two actors on Instagram. But it wasn't just following them because the actors were very responsive. They engaged, they took questions, they did Q&As, they did all the things you need to do to engage and create a community And they had created a community around their involvement in The Office.

Yeah And their lives and, and everything else. It was not strictly about it, but that's how their fans came to them, was because of this show that they had fallen in love with and be- become their comfort watching on Netflix. And they had, you know, managed to create a community around it on, on social media.

So when they created a podcast, that was going to bring something new to the equation. So not just Jenna and Angela sit around and talk about whatever random thing comes to mind. Yeah. But no, let's re-watch The Office together. It was an immediate hit.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: But it was because they'd created a community, not 'cause they were just two famous actresses.

Yeah. It's because they created a community. And that's where podcasting lives. And if you think about, you know, so many popular podcasts, especially ones maybe created by people who weren't terrifically famous beforehand, you'll see it's the community aspect that is, that is fairly important to their development and to their ongoing popularity.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, 100%. If I look at, like, all the stuff that I've done in the podcasting world, I couldn't have done any of it without the support of my community, right? Like without the community, you might as well not even, not even have a pod- Like, there's no point really. It- it's what impact are you making, regardless of whether that impact is entertaining people or educating them.

Paul Riismandel: You know, I, I had to, I I was just at the podcast show, it's a podcasting conference in London, which is a really fun conference. It's super dynamic and it's nice, it's international, so there's people from around the world. And I was asked to participate in these kind of one-to-one kind of advisory sessions.

And so it was just for like an hour and I talked to three different podcasters. And this one gentleman you know, about my age, middle-aged guy, sat down and said, "You know, I'm looking to grow my audience." So I asked him about his podcast, and he's like, "Well, it's just like me and my middle-aged friends, and we sit around and we talk."

And I'm like, "Okay." You know, I'm starting to, I'm starting to pre-judge, to be honest. I mean, like, "Okay, well, good luck with that." And, but I, you know, so I push on. I say, "Why would you like to?" "Well, eventually, you know, we'd like to, you know, whatever you know, like to do it more professionally, make some more money, et cetera."

I said, "Great." I said, "So, so what do you know about your audience?" And he's like, "Oh, yeah. I mean, they're basically blokes like us, but, and I said, "Well, how do you know this?" He said, "Well, you know, we've got a Facebook group and these people are super active." Yeah. "And we have a lot of discussions and, and they s- suggest ideas and they give us feedback and th- they love the in-jokes."

And I said, "Oh, okay." And then it's like, you know, "But how many people?" And he said, "Oh, we've got several hundred." And I said, "Wow." I said, "That's, that's an accomplishment."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And I, and I s- and he said, "Yeah, yeah. You know what's really cool is we did this last year. We, we did a pub night, and we went out to a pub, and we had, like, 70, 80 people show up to the pub-" Wow

to just social-" And I said, "Okay." I said, I said, "Now, all right, now we're talking."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You- I said, "You, you're, you're actually done a lot of the groundwork you need to do. You created a community." I said, "So here's the question, though." It's like, really, why, why do they listen to your podcast? And he, you know.

And he's saying, "Yeah, no, this," and I said, "Well, how do you know this?" He's like, "Well, I guess it just makes sense." I said, "Have you thought of asking them?" And he's like ... I said, "Yeah, ask them. Why?" Yeah. "Why? Why do you listen? Why do you keep coming back?" Because what that tells you now is what role does that podcast play in their life?

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Paul Riismandel: That tells you why somebody else might listen to the podcast.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: I said, "Have you ever asked them to to invite a friend? Have you ever asked them to turn into your street team?"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You could gamify it. You could turn it into a contest.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely.

Paul Riismandel: I said, "Have you ever asked them to do that?"

Yeah. "Oh, no, I never thought..." And he w- and he was delightful because, you know, instead of telling me all the reasons why he couldn't do that, which is what, how the conversation sometimes goes, he was very much like, "Oh no, that's something we should definitely consider." I said, "Yeah, you know, I mean, it's work.

It's going to be work." Yes. It's not, there's no magic snapping your fingers, here's the one simple trick to grow your podcast that doesn't involve bot farms auto- downloading your show to, to boost your numbers. Which will do

Kelly Kennedy: you no good anyway, so don't even bother.

Paul Riismandel: Yes, I know. You know, it's, I said, you know, but he, but i- i- clearly he was willing to do the work and had already done some of the work.

Yeah. And so just needed some, some fresh ideas and to, just a shift in perspective on thinking about audiences, which is, you know, really what, what, why you need to be, or what you need to be thinking about.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that, right? Like, when I hear that 80 people show up to an event, it's like you know those are 80 people who are gonna show up week over week over week to listen to your show.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: And tell maybe another, you know, 180, 200 people, right? Like, I

Paul Riismandel: love- And now, now, now maybe you want to get a pub as your sponsor,

Kelly Kennedy: right? Yeah,

Paul Riismandel: absolutely. You don't, you don't need, you don't need to sell ads to, to Squarespace and BetterHelp. Hundred- who are, who are great advertisers and have done a lot for podcasting, but it's a different economic situation selling a basic CPM to a commodity advertiser versus developing a relationship with a sponsor-

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah ... who's probably gonna see a hell of a lot more value out of the relationship than just a click.

Kelly Kennedy: 100 percent, and actually, this is where I wanted to go next with you. Great. Because I think one of the questions that I started to get asked a lot about was, how do we get sponsors, right? And, you know, I mean, I can say, like for us, we've always looked at service companies with people we knew.

And we reached out to them and said, "We're building this great thing. We're having a big impact. We have listeners here." We show them the data. "We would love for you to be a partner with us." And so far, every sponsor that we've had on the BDP has been somebody that we knew, has been somebody that we've worked with, built relationships with.

Our longest sponsor, Hypervac Technologies, Colin Harms, we've become great friends, right? Like, that's the level of relationship that we've went and, and we recognized early on we were never going to hit the CPMs we needed With with, you know, a show like this and you know, I would say now we're doing pretty damn good.

We have a thousand download days on the regular now on this show, but it took years to get there. We were not going to get there e- fast enough to make any real money, and we had to find partners. What are advertisers looking for on your side? What are you seeing?

Paul Riismandel: They're looking for audience That's why you need to know who your audience is.

That's why you need to know who the audience you want to reach is. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for audience. So, you know, if I am a general sort of advertiser, I'm looking to hit everybody I can, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Which is great, but I'm not, you know, I don't, I don't wanna pay a lot for each incremental person I reach.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: Right? You know, if I'm McDonald's, I wanna reach as many people as I can, but I'm not gonna pay a ton for each incremental person.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know, but if I'm, making custom bowling balls, then, and I wanna reach hardcore bowlers, each incremental person I reach is worth a lot more. Yes. If they're a bowler and they're hardcore and might want what I'm selling.

You see the difference there?

Kelly Kennedy: Big difference.

Paul Riismandel: It's that fit between audience and advertiser and sponsor, and who they're trying to reach and why they're trying to reach them. And when you find that sort of alignment that's what unlock, that's what unlocks it all. So it doesn't mean you shouldn't do commodity advertising.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Right? But that commodity advertising, by its very nature of being a commodity, requires relatively large audiences to return decent amounts of money.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: But niche is what podcasting has always had as a superpower. Yes. And there are so many niche businesses out there. I mean, I run a niche business.

Signal Hill Insights is not a business where we could possibly serve millions of people or billions of people, right? We're serving a fairly discreet, well-known community, people who advertise on podcasts and people who make podcasts.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: It's, it's a big community, but it's not as big as the number of people who, you know, stop by Tim's for a double double in the morning, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's radically different numbers, or even the number of people who, who created a website on Squarespace, right? So knowing that, you know, you know, where I'm going to, if I'm going to market and I'm gonna do paid marketing, it really changes how I'm going to approach it compared to to a big consumer brand.

Sure. They're just, they're very different. And so that's why understanding that connection there is important. And, and you could say even like a, you know, a podcast, you know, say, you know, the guy who is, you know, the four, his four friends who sit around and drink beers and do their podcast, right? So, maybe they're, you know, they don't have a direct kind of on-the-nose fit like the, like my bowling example.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: But, you know, that's where I say like, well, look, if you still, if your listeners are sort of concentrated in, in one area, maybe it's that pub, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%.

Paul Riismandel: Maybe it's that microbrewery.

Kelly Kennedy: Or that, or that beer company.

Paul Riismandel: Or that, or that microbrew, right? The one, you know, that doesn't have, you know, massive nationwide distri- distribution but is, you know, pretty well known in your county, right?

Yeah. That, that's- That's your opportunity there. Yeah. And they're gonna be willing to pay way more from a CPM basis, right? Cost per mil- mi- mia, you know, cost per thousand.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Because it, it's like the old newsletter business. Like, it's like the old newspaper business, right? In your newspa- when we had local newspapers, right, they sold ads to local businesses at a rate per eyeball that was way above what you pay for digital ads today.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And why was that? Because they were guaranteed to reach people in the local community who are more likely- Yeah ... to walk in and see the sale and see, you know, and see just even the fact that they exist, right? Very good alignment between audience and advertiser. So they were willing to pay far greater rates on per eyeball than what, you know, digital ads are today.

And that's, you know, that's unfortunate the way that, that, you know, the, the proliferation of digital advertising and the relative ease and the perceived ease of targeting has kind of watered down you know, been this sort of downward pressure on podcast ads, unfortunately.

Kelly Kennedy: Bring me into the understanding of companies the power of podcast advertising.

'Cause I kind of feel like there's still an education out there happening. It's like there's still, especially with these smaller service-based companies that are not necessarily used to being approached by a podcaster. Not to mention, most of the time they're being approached by independent shows because there isn't exactly a conglomerate business that represents 10,000 podcast- There might be, actually.

But They,

Paul Riismandel: they, they exist, but they're probably not reaching out to that niche business, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: That, that's, that's really the, the difference.

Kelly Kennedy: So where are we at with regard- Like, 'cause to me, I think the opportunity is still absolutely massive. Oh,

Paul Riismandel: absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely it's there.

So I mean, so kind of what's your question then?

Kelly Kennedy: I, I guess the question is are companies becoming ... Well, obviously they're becoming more receptive, but, like, I think there's still, it, there's still a lot of work in educating companies- Oh,

Paul Riismandel: absolutely ...

Kelly Kennedy: on the power of podcast advertising.

Paul Riismandel: I mean, yeah. Yes, absolutely.

It's hard, you know, and, and part of it is- You know, it's the very, it's the very nature of podcasting is that it's, it's extremely diverse, extremely heterogeneous, and extremely flat, meaning it is a long, flat tail.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And yeah, there's a big difference between the, the c- the advertiser that has, you know, hundreds of thousands of millions in their budget versus an advertiser who has thousands for the year.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, you know, the person who's thousands for the year, they're probably a niche kind of business, and that's where they should be looking niche, right? They should be looking to, where's the podcast that serves my audience? Yeah. The problem is, yeah, th- it's not, it's not necessarily obvious and right in front of you, right?

Not in the same way that kinda Meta has made it very easy to-

Kelly Kennedy: Sure ...

Paul Riismandel: to log in- Yeah ... buy some Facebook ads.

Kelly Kennedy: You, you can buy some ads in your sleep with Meta.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, exactly. Right? And, and, and, and you click off on here's, you know, here's my, my profile, and you, you trust them that that's who you're hitting, and you get your clicks or you don't, right?

Yeah. And you, you can figure out from there and optimize from there. And people do very well with it, and it, I'm not putting it down. The difference is, are you, what are you trying to convey? Like, are you trying... How are you building up your customer? Like, if you think about it again, the way I've asked people to think about their podcasts is, what is your product going to do for your customer?

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Paul Riismandel: Okay. Podcasting is a great way to explain that-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: in a way that's harder to explain in a display ad.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: In a way that kinda happens a little bit on social media. It happens in TikTok, and it happens in Instagram Reels and things. But also, you know, by the very nature of, you know, the medium, no one really wants to sit on an ad for 15 or 30 seconds, right?

Yeah. In the same way, they'll, people will gladly sit with a good podcast ad for 30 or 60 seconds, or more.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Absolutely. Not to mention, especially if you're mowing the lawn, because- Yeah, right ... you're not gonna pull, you're not gonna pull your, your phone out of your pocket to skip the ad.

Paul Riismandel: Absolutely. I mean, and that's right.

I mean, and that's, you know... And I mean, everyone skips ads. Almost nobody skips ads as much as they think they do or tell people they do, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting.

Paul Riismandel: And, and, and how do I know this? I know this because if it, that were the case, podcast advertising would have crashed a long time ago. Right? It wouldn't work- Yeah

because people wouldn't hear them. They have to hear. This is the critical thing. They have to hear the ad for it to work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And podcasts wouldn't be as popular and successful as they are if people weren't listening to the ads. And, and the amazing thing about podcasting, and this is something that we've tested with, with our friends at Sounds Profitable, is that- Like still, listeners get that there's an exchange going on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: That the advertisers are what allow them to get this show for free. Absolutely. And that's increasingly important, I think, in the day now when, you know, people were like, got the idea of like, "Okay, well, I, I would pay for Netflix. I understand that I don't get ads. But now I pay for Netflix and I get ads?"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. "

Paul Riismandel: Now I pay for Hulu and I get ads?"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. "

Paul Riismandel: Now I pay for all these things and I get ads." And with podcasts it's like, well, at least by and large, no one's really asking you to pay. And then, and in cases that, you know, people run great, you know, shows on Patreon and don't have ads, or there are some definitely ad-free services.

But the, the vast majority of monetized podcasting is still through advertising.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And listeners get it. And they, they, and they, and what they understand is that their favorite podcasters usually don't abuse their attention and their time. They get the exchange. And, you know, back when I was at Midroll Media, so you know, one of the first successful podcast ad networks.

So this is, again, 2014-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: 2015 we were explicit about it. So we represented hosts and we ran surveys to understand the audience, 'cause we knew that was a really important factor. And we were explicit in having the host as part of asking people to take surveys. Say, "Hey, you know, we run ads on this show.

We'd like to learn more about you to help hook you up with the advertisers. The advert- you know, the advertisers are what help us keep this show- Yep ... free for you." Yeah. "We'd like to learn more about you so we can make sure you're getting the kinda a- the ads for the kinda things you'd like to hear about."

We were explicit. No, no games here. Yeah. We're not trying to put, pull the wool over anyone's eyes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: We're telling you why we're running a survey. So if you don't like that idea, then you don't take the survey, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Unlike having your data harvested without your consent, or with consent that you gave but you didn't know you were giving because how many of us read all the terms and conditions of everything we go through?

Sure yeah. Or read every email from Spotify that says- Yeah ... we've changed your terms or conditions, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Oh, okay.

Paul Riismandel: Explicit about it. You wanna give us your, your info? And we never asked for you know, we, we never wanted your, your name and address and things. We just wanted you to take the survey.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Paul Riismandel: You opt in, and you've done it. You've done it with full knowledge of why we're doing it, and we've told you what we're doing, and we did have real terms so you understood what we did with the data, which was not- Yep ... share it, which is very important.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep.

Paul Riismandel: One-to-one relationship's still there, explicit.

And people get this still. And it's, it's a fantastic advantage that podcasting has in, in, in this understanding and this kind of, you know, br- brokered agreement with the listener- Yeah ... that in exchange for the content, we ask a little bit of their time for the advertiser.

Kelly Kennedy: What was the response of the survey?

Paul Riismandel: Generally pretty good. So-

Kelly Kennedy: Okay ...

Paul Riismandel: yeah, I mean, you know, we, we re- we had discipline, so meaning we had to have a certain number of responses in order to- Yeah ... use the data. Because otherwise, you know, too small of a sample and one, just one response either which way throws what it was, throws the what we have.

So no, we had, and we were generally able to, to get a response. So at Signal Hill, we, we do audience surveys for podcasters all the time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: We do them for ad effectiveness, we do them to help them understand their audience. We generally know, based upon downloads, reviews, what kinda response rate we can expect.

We know how often you should run the announcements and everything. And, you know, we don't run into too many podcasts where we can't get a good sample- Yeah ... where we can get people, and people really will, will participate. And, and we always, we incentivized it, but we incentivize it with a contest, you know?

Yeah ... win one of three, Sure ... Amazon gift certificates or something like that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's st- there's still value in incentives, 100%.

Paul Riismandel: And the incentive, it's less the incentive itself, it's the further demonstration That I'm respecting your time and energy You're

Kelly Kennedy: respecting them. Yeah.

And I think that is like, that is a piece of podcasting that is very important, is that there is respect and there is trust, right? I think that's something that podcasting has maybe over other advertising mediums, is that I think there's a lot of trust that happens between a listenership and a host of a podcast.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. We've I think you'll see- be seeing some more research about that this year. I can't say much more about it. But digging really, really into that trust factor, because that does seem to be an X factor and, and one that it's important to understand and for us to understand more deeply because it's also one that can be violated.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Right? Yeah. I mean, we cannot take trust for granted.

Kelly Kennedy: Of course.

Paul Riismandel: Y- you know, podcasting has developed as it has, in part by historical accident. It's not by design, but it is upon, to some extent, the monetization taking 11 years, 12 years to really kick in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Right? Yeah. For having this long gestation before anyone really was thinking, "Hey, I'll make money in podcasting."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, it's funny 'cause even if you look at, like, what ... I think in the beginning, I kind of thought, like, you know, you could probably do this in a couple years, right? Not, not knowing anything or doing any research. That was just a best guess.

Paul Riismandel: Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: But when I did some digging, what I realized is, if I look at all of the shows that I am absolutely in love with, that I listen to religiously, they've been at this a freaking long time.

I think even, even the youngest of the podcasts that I listen to have to be pushing eight years old.

Paul Riismandel: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, and you don't have-- I mean, you know, look, if you, if you wanna create a podcast and make it a business, you wanna keep making money, you gotta kinda keep doing it, right? Sure.

That's right. I mean, although people, I mean, there's certainly the opportunity, you know, there is still an opportunity to do things that are bounded, to have things that come in seasons, or to have stories that end. Like not every podcast has to be always on. Not every- Sure. Y- you need to sort of, you know, set your expectations appropriately.

But not, you know, not everything has to be an al- always-on podcast. There is a lot of still room to develop things that are narrative, that tell stories.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: At some point, if you want to make ongoing money, you need to figure out a way to continue doing it, but there's no one way. And, and, and, and what's important is, is there's a lot of great examples And yet, there are a lot of great podcasts yet to be made, and we've never conceived of what they will be.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the other things that I wanted to pick your brain about as well is the concept of a follower. Like bring- let's, let's bring it into the metrics a little bit, 'cause I think for instance, we still don't know what to value as podcasters. You know, we can see a download, but what is a download?

Is it somebody who's actually spent some time listening? Maybe not. Maybe all they did was click on the damn show accidentally and now you got a download, but it didn't mean they stuck around. The other thing is a follower, and the reason I wanna talk to you about a follower is because we looked at a statistic the other day on Apple Podcasts.

We have a massive amount of new influx to our show, but only 13 or 14% of the people listening had followed the show. And one of the questions that I kind of had was, well, are there people who are listening to shows but they're not following them? Are there regular listeners of shows who have not hit the follow button?

Is that happening?

Paul Riismandel: I mean, I mean, you just answered your own question.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, that's what I thought, right? But it seems a little bit hard to believe, 'cause I follow every show that I listen to.

Paul Riismandel: Well, it's the discovery kind of thing, right? So, you know, you have some people who discovered you by your feature- Sure

in Apple Podcasts, right? Yeah. And so what they've done is, is they're, they sampled it.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Paul Riismandel: I mean, that's the way you need to think about it. They sampled it. And, and you know, how often have you, watched something on, on, on Netflix or, you know, on Apple TV and watched episodes, said that was fine."

Sure. Yeah. Right? Like- Yeah ... you know, even though it's a new se- you know, and then all of a sudden you're going like, "Oh, no. Okay, there's six episodes. Well, there goes the weekend. Here, here I, I'm diving in."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And, and, and, and so you, you have to think about it the same way, that yeah, there, there are people who are, who are just testing and tasting.

What, what... In the podcast industry, right, so many of us have been at this for so long, we have to remind ourselves actively to, to have that beginner's mind again, to think about podcasting fresh and not just with the assumptions we had. And the assumptions we had 10, 11 years ago- Which were, you know, were, were correct-ish.

We didn't have the research to, to really, you know, necessarily validate it. But we thought, you get these hardcore fans of these Earwolf shows where I used to work, Comedy Bang, How Did This Get Made, right? Yeah. And they're, you know, and if the s- for whatever reason we had production problems, 'cause we tended to be like, you know, things were a little r- rough around the edges then, and a show went up late that day, we'd hear from the fans, right?

You'd, you'd we'd get emails. And on Twitter they'd be, they'd be complaining. They'd be- Yeah ... in the message forums, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Where's, where's my Comedy Bang Bang today, right? So we, you know, developed this sort of model of like, yeah, you know, podcast listeners, like they are hardcore. And I think more so you had to be because it was harder to listen.

Sure. It was harder to know how to listen.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: All of those things that wasn't so front and center. They

Kelly Kennedy: were jumping through the hoops, so they wanted their show.

Paul Riismandel: So we had developed this kind of model that we had of thinking that the hard- podcast listeners are, are, are followers. Or back, back then we we called them subscribers- Yeah

in the same way we do on YouTube, right? Yeah. And, and that you were, you were all in or all out. And I don't think that that has persisted in the same way as podcasting has become more ubiquitous, as we welcomed in new listeners and viewers, as we, as we brought in the audience. Podcast consumption is starting to look a bit more like other media consumption.

Okay. It's less specialized. You don't have to be quite as hardcore.

Intro: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: It's the same way if you think about comic books. You know, comic books 30 years ago and even comic book superheroes and the Marvel Universe weren't what they were t- what they are today. Yeah. Right? You had to, you had to be a little tuned in and hardcore because in some extent, right, you were looked down upon a little bit if you were- Sure

too mu- too much into Iron Man- Yeah ... when you were 35. In, in 1995.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Paul Riismandel: By the way, I was not 35 in 1995. Yeah. Just wanna set the record straight. I,

Kelly Kennedy: I still love Iron Man. I'm 37.

Paul Riismandel: Right. So there you go. But, but it was a little ... but, you know, there was a little, little bit of a thing, right? Yeah. And then as, as the, the, you know, they built out the movie franchises and, and the- Yeah

but, you know, it was a little bit of like, you know, there was this sort of great, you know, Saturday Live sketch. I must have been in the '80s or '90s, remember where it's William Shatner goes to, a Trekkies convention, is basically like, "You losers get a life." But today, right, people, you know, there's widespread love for these franchises.

Kelly Kennedy: That's

Paul Riismandel: right. But it doesn't necessarily mean that every single person who's kind of into it is hardcore and, and never misses a new installment in the, in the universe, right? It's a bit more like, "Oh yeah, maybe I'll catch the new-"

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: the, you know, maybe I'll catch the new Avengers. I'll catch the new whichever.

You know, but ... And that's me. I mean, I like this stuff, but- Yeah ... I don't, I don't catch every single one. I don't always have four hours, five hours. How long does it take to get through an MCU movie now? Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: No

Paul Riismandel: kidding.

Kelly Kennedy: They're getting long.

Paul Riismandel: But you know, it, and, and I think people are now consuming podcasts more so that way because they're coming to it fresh and new, but they're just approaching it like they approach everything else they consume.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Amazing. So that being the case, we got, you know, some changes in the way that people are listening, changes in the way that maybe people are choosing to follow or not follow a show. For our podcasters out there, what should they be paying attention to? What are the numbers that really matter?

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. So, here's where I'm gonna, I'm gonna name drop my friends Dan Misener and Jonas Woost at at Bumper, which is a consultancy.

And they've done a lot of really hard work at trying to help podcasters of all stripes understand what it is they should be paying attention to. And one of the metrics that they are working on, and I believe working on a dashboard to allow people to understand, is by looking at your sort of your Apple Podcast metrics and your- Yeah

Spotify metrics. They're looking at listen time, right? And that's sort of looking at, you can see by episode basically where your falloff is. Yeah. Like how much people are completing. And then you can see by episode how many people listened, right? So you look at that time, multiply by how many people listened, now you have listen time.

And so looking at this listen time, you know, and there's something equivalent you can do on YouTube dashboards. And this isn't my specialty, right? So I, I just wanna be very clear that the people should go and look up Bumper and look up their blog and read- Yeah ... a bunch of what Jonas and Dan have written because I think they've, they've really thought long and hard are how trying to help podcasts understand- podcasters understand this.

But right, it's really looking at like, are people, are, are they drive-bys or are they sticking around? Yeah. Are they consuming minutes and minutes and minutes or, or are they just downloads? Downloads are a number... You know, they're not useless. They do tell you kind of how many people have tried to listen.

Yeah. How many people-

Kelly Kennedy: How many people at least clicked it.

Paul Riismandel: How many people clicked it. I mean- Yeah ... the thing is is that some of those are going to be bots, and not- Yeah ... malicious bots, but just bots that are out there, you know, trying to understand podcasting. So, you know. But, and to some extent, you're, you're depending on your host, they probably help to filter out some of that, some of that traffic.

But yeah, it's worth noting. But yeah, the more, if you can log into these different platforms and look, are people, are they completing? Are they listening, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. It helps you understand, and it'll give you a better understanding of, of how many listens, right? Or how many views you have on, say, YouTube.

Yeah. And look, are, you know, are people viewing five minutes? Are they viewing two minutes? And again, YouTubers, YouTube tends towards people dip in for a minute and they leave, dip in for a minute- Yeah ... and they leave. People in podcasts tend to give it a little bit more time to take root and hold on before, before dipping out if they're going to.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You have a little bit more time to kind of, catch people's attention and hold it. But yeah, that's what, that's what, something you should be looking at. And then the other parts are what other points of engagement am I encouraging? Am I encouraging any? And am I getting it?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah. That tells you am I, you know, am I poised for some growth?

Am, am I fulfilling something? And, and I, I encourage every podcaster out there to find that way to engage.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Whether it's through an online community of some sort, a Reddit, a, a subreddit, a a Facebook group, or your own message boards. You know, li- lots of podcasters have those too. Email lists, et cetera.

Find ways to engage and find that engagement. And of course, some of that can be kind of, organic on YouTube YouTube comments aren't all terrible. In fact, it can be quite good especially if you're willing to engage there, right? Yeah. And, and to reward people for, for reaching out and to, and to making positive and constructive contributions to the dialogue.

Running, and running your own surveys can be great as well, just to get that picture. People wanna tell you. Yeah. Like, people who like your podcast wanna tell you they like it. They wanna tell you why they like it, and they maybe wanna tell you about the thing they don't like.

Kelly Kennedy: Which- Which is just as valuable,

Paul Riismandel: frankly

which is just as valuable. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Paul, this has been absolutely incredible. Take us into your work with Signal Hill Insights.

Paul Riismandel: Absolutely. So, you know, we have two big pillars of work. One is this audience research. And so our audience research, we do what we call landscape studies. These are studies where we're trying to understand podcasting in a certain region.

We, we have a, a study we call the Canadian Podcast Listener, which we do annually. It is the longest-running and really only comprehensive survey of podcast consumption in Canada.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Paul Riismandel: We run it in the fourth quarter, so we usually release those results in December. That's a subscriber kind of thing where the, all the major podcast networks in Canada do subscribe, but we also release a public report so people know, hey, where is podcast listening in Canada this year?

And we do this in a number of different territories. And we also dig in deeply then on specific questions. So, we recently released a report we did in the UK called Podcast in the Living Room, where we're looking at the growing trend of people consuming podcasts on smart TVs. Okay. And it appears that that is taking root in UK more so than in North America or Australia- Wow

at this point in time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And is a n- is a new consumption ha- pattern, and then we, we try to get our hands around it. Really, when we start to see, like, that little bit of, like, something's changed here, that's the benefit of doing these year after year after year studies, is that we see the change. You can

Kelly Kennedy: see the ch- the

Paul Riismandel: difference, yeah.

We don't have to just go on our gut. We can see it, then we can go, "Okay, we need to dig and ask some new questions and- Yeah ... and get deep, more deep into that." And then we also work individually with podcasters to help understand their audiences, or help to understand potential audiences. We sit on a lot of data.

We we surveyed 65,000 podcast consumers globally last year.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Paul Riismandel: So that means we have a lot of stuff that we can pull from-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Paul Riismandel: that we might be able to answer the question, you're saying, "Well, is there any opportunity in, in this niche? Is there any opportunity in this other niche?" Or, "If I'm looking to get to this audience what, what do they like?

What are they into, and what are their shopping habits?" We can tell you some of that stuff. The other half is we do ad effectiveness, so do the ads work. Yeah. And we work with something that's called Brand Lift, which is really all about hearts and minds. So there's a type of ad measurement called attribution that basically is like, did you visit the website?

Did you buy something?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: What we measure is did a podcast ad influence people and their perception of a brand?

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Paul Riismandel: At the very top, are they more aware of this brand because of this podcast ad? Do they, do they have better opinion of it? Are they considering it the next time they're in the market?

Let's say it's a car brand. Next time they're- Yeah ... in the market for a car, are they considering this car, or are they maybe even gonna make a purchase? Do they remember things about it? Do they take away things from the ad itself? And that's what we work on, brand lift. We work both with the advertisers themselves, and we work with podcast networks to help them demonstrate the effectiveness of their, of their podcasts.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. You know, one of the... I knew that you did that, but one of the things that I wasn't aware of is just some of the information you might be able to help a company understand before they launch shows, because you're actually seeing a lot of big brands now, obviously, like the banks have been doing it for a long time, but you're seeing a lot of big brands recognizing that launching a show could actually be pretty good for them.

But I think potentially consulting with a company like Signal Hill could give them a lot of insight onto how to be more effective before they start that path in the first place.

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, I, I wish more podcast networks w- did that, and I worked inside of a podcast network. You know, a lot of these decisions still get made by by gut.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean that people's guts are wrong, but often, you know, there might be a slightly different reality out there. Or you'll make a podcast and, and maybe there's a different audience for it than you think.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Paul Riismandel: Which is something that I've experienced and, and also help producers with, and sort of saying, "Maybe there's a broader target.

Maybe you should broaden your marketing Beyond what your narrow kind of view of this is and its appeal. Wow. And that, that is something often we can help with as well.

Kelly Kennedy: I've never once had a bunch of the right data a- and made a bad decision with it. There's this thing about data, it's just pretty great.

Paul Riismandel: Y- you know, I mean, it, it, it's, it's data, but it's the insights behind it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: You know? Data on its own, I mean, you, we, I mean, we can throw, I can throw a lot of data at you. Sure. I can throw a ton of data at you. Eh, but it's the story that's gonna matter. Yeah. It's why is this important? Yeah. What does it mean?

How is it,

Kelly Kennedy: how do you interpret that data?

Paul Riismandel: It's the question that you ask of it, right? Yeah. And that's why I think where people, you know, th- they can log into their dashboard sometimes and they look at this and they're like, "Okay, well, that's good to know, but w- what do I do with it," right? Yeah. And it's, it's tough, right?

It's it, you know, that's why w- why we exist is people who've been looking at this and trying to make, find the story in there over and over and over again. And believe me, there are times when we do a study, and we've asked a new question, and we come back and we look at this data and we're like, "I don't know what this means."

Yeah. Like, it's not what I thought it would be. Did I ask the wrong question? Do, are we, are we detecting, is it just noise? And, and, and there are times, honestly, we will do a study and we won't release some of the data because we, we can't in good faith put it out there because we can't help to explain it, right?

Yeah. And, and, and we can't also assume that maybe we didn't make a mistake you know, in some way in our design or, or, or, or, you know, the way we went about it. And we, you know, sometimes we leave it at that or we rinse and repeat. We take another shot at it. Yeah. And we see, like, maybe there's something underlying this we didn't even think was there, and it's gonna take us a little while to uncover it.

Kelly Kennedy: I know that a lot of our listeners love data, love insights. And obviously you have a lot of insights on podcasting, probably the most insights in podcasting, nearly in all of Canada, at least, if not North America. You offer newsletters and reports, like you said, a few times a year. Is there a way for our listeners to get ahold of those things?

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, absolutely. So, go to our website, signalhillinsights .com and you can sign up for our newsletter. We come out every other week, and so what we usually have is a biweekly blog post where we dig into some particular topic of interest in podcasting or digital audio. The most recent one was about this smart TV study.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Paul Riismandel: And both getting not just into the data itself, but getting into the why. Like, what, why did we even think to, to explore this question, and exploring some of the implications behind it. And we may take up other, different questions that are kind of in the air, in the zeitgeist around podcasting to help people, give them a frame of reference.

And we hope maybe sometimes fill in some gaps in understanding, you know, what is, what does this all mean?

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And if people wanna get ahold of you directly, Paul, they're resonating with this, they wanna chat more they might actually have some opportunities that they wanna chat with you about with Signal Hill, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

Paul Riismandel: Yeah, ag- go to our website. Just click on the menu, go to our contact page. Right now, that still goes right to me. Okay. So, I will, I will see your, I will see your email, and I will respond. And I'd love to hear from you.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. I'll also link your LinkedIn as well, Paul. Great, yes. I'll send a few followers your way.

This has been incredible. If you've enjoyed this episode, I'm gonna take Paul's advice. Listen to this show anywhere anywhere you want to. Also please do follow us wherever you're listening. Paul, incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for the hard work you've done, and thank you for pioneering this industry, which I love so much.

Paul Riismandel: Well th- well, thank you, Kelly. Thank you for your kind words, but also really thank you for the fun, fun conversation.

Kelly Kennedy: Likewise. Looking forward to the next one. Until the next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website@ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.