Follow the Audience & Win: Responding to Listener Behavior with Steven Goldstein (Amplifi Media) & Jay Nachlis (Coleman Insights)

CAOs, the most important thing to remember is this: chase your audience and success will follow.

This week on the Media Roundtable: Special Edition, Dan Granger (CEO, Oxford Road & Veritone One) welcomes audio heavyweights Steven Goldstein (Founder & CEO, Amplifi Media) and Jay Nachlis (Vice President, Coleman Insights). This episode is sponsored by our friends at Libsyn.

The team is talking: Listener Behaviors by the Numbers, The Audio-Only Lane, and Growing Pains. Let’s jump in.

 ”You have to chase the audience. That's what the big media companies are learning how to do. And that's what podcasting has to learn how to do.”

The Numbers Don’t Lie 💯 - The people have spoken. 85% of consumers agree podcasts can be audio or video. And the definition matters. Owl & Co.’s recent industry valuation hit $7.3B, helped by video’s inclusion. The insight is two-fold: 

  1. Video fuels growth through short-form discovery.

  2. Calling video podcasts “podcasts” ensures the industry gets credit for that growth (plus the increased investments that follow).

Driving Audio-Only Growth 🚗 - We’ve seen a huge shift to video podcasts, but where does audio-only still win? Driving, commuting, and exercising all show audio-only growth. And several formats could (or should) remain audio-only: news, fiction/storytelling, and sports. When creators cite video production challenges, a strong audio-only lane is good news for ensuring a healthy creator ecosystem.

Growing Industry = Growing Pains 💸 - 77% of podcast consumers switch seamlessly from audio to video. But for advertisers, metrics don’t follow across platforms (Dan cites clients who won’t touch simulcast because of the measurement headache). If we want to keep growing past $7.3B, we need open, unified measurement across platforms (Agree? Check out our petition and join us.) 


For better clarity on the consumer trends shaping the industry, tune into the full episode below.

Bianca Gorodinsky