Barrett Media's feature: Digging Through Data with Daryl Battaglia

Barrett Media is speaking with some of the top media researchers in the field to see what trends stood out in 2024 and what matters most in research for 2025.

With the calendar turning over to 2025, Barrett Media is sitting down with some of the best and brightest media researchers in the industry for a weeklong series, “Digging Through Data.” In the fourth installment of the series, we spoke with Daryl Battaglia of Triton Digital.

The conversation with Daryl Battaglia — the Senior Vice President of Measurement Products & Strategy at Triton Digital — came just after the company announced its findings in the 2024 U.S. Podcast Report. And in that report, there were encouraging signs for the news genre, with listening growing from 22% of the overall podcast total to 25% in 2024.

Battaglia explained the advantages the news genre has compared to others in the space.

“It’s a great medium to be able to talk in-depth about issues,” he shared. “Podcasting has proven to be a great fit for news, for politics, for world affairs, all things like that. When we used our Sounder capability, which is focused on brand suitability and contextual information in podcasting, we see that all the top five named entities within the podcast space — the top podcasts that we track — all of them were either related to politics or world affairs. So there’s clearly a lot of interest from listeners to consume their content in podcast form. 2024 proved that.”

Overall, podcast listening grew 10% in 2024, according to the data collected by Triton Digital. Battaglia added that the increases came from every sector — from RSS feeds and Apple Podcasts to YouTube — and the figure is even greater in older demographics.

“We’re really seeing across-the-board growth as far as all demographics. Podcasting is known for having an appealing demographic for advertisers. Younger, more educated, higher income, diverse audiences,” Battaglia shared. “While 44% of Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis, it’s over 50% for Americans under the age of 55. But we saw the 55-plus audience — it’s grown in years past — it grew 26% this year. So there’s really something for everyone in podcasting.”

Included in the 2024 U.S. Podcast Report from Triton Digital was data that showed 52% of all podcast downloads on smart speakers came from the news genre. However, smart speaker usage only accounted for 2.9% of all podcast downloads, while 92% happened on mobile devices. And that mobile domination wasn’t surprising to Daryl Battaglia.

“It is a personal medium. It is an audio-first medium that you can consume while you’re doing other activities, while you’re on the go. So the fact that mobile is dominant makes sense,” he said.

That small figure for smart speakers shows there’s room for growth in that realm, he continued.

“I do think there’s more opportunity that exists with smart speakers, but we’re still seeing a lot of like news briefings, short duration podcasts … but 2 to 3% is low. So I still believe there’s opportunity. When you look at streaming radio listening on smart speakers, it’s about a quarter of all digital listening to radio, but it’s only less than 3% for podcasting, so it will remain a mobile-first medium, but there’s still, I think, opportunity for smart speakers.”

In 2025, Battaglia said the company hopes to learn more about where podcast listeners enter the medium, and what entices them to remain consumers.

“I want to study more about where these new listeners are coming from, how they come to podcasting, what content brings them in, what listening platforms bring them in, and what their path is moving forward,” he said. “Do they stick with it? Do they migrate to different platforms or do they begin to consume additional types of content?

“We’ve seen the more exposed they are, the more they listen, but really understanding that journey better, because I think the appeal of this medium still exceeds the amount of listening and adoption that exists. I still think that there’s more untapped opportunity. And I think the more we can understand about people and why they come to podcasts, why they haven’t yet come to podcasts, and once they have, how you continue to grow is an area of focus. I mentioned, you know, more seamlessly connecting research and data to the advertising platforms, including the ones that the train operates. Those are all areas that I want to see continue to grow.”