Nearly three-quarters of podcast consumers play the video as they listen along, even though it’s pretty mucho just two people sitting at microphones chatting most of the time, according to a survey cited in a Saturday report in the New York Times.
Often the videos are minimized on the listeners’ screens – and they’re not missing much, as they rarely contain any actual visual aids. But only about a quarter listen to the audio only.
The research, from an April survey by Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights, was the center of a Saturday deep-dive on the behavior by the New York Times, which spoke to several people who gave anecdotal reasons for the habit.
About 30% of podcast listeners just have the video playing in the background, or minimized on their device while listening, according to the Signal Hill survey. But that still leaves a significant portion who are watching … talking heads.
Signal Hill said the behavior holds across age groups, suggesting it’s not just a trend among Gen Z-and-younger, whose taste for video is virtually a pillar of their consumer identity.
The survey found another strange anomaly – a paradox, even – among people who consume podcasts on YouTube, where 58 percent listen to audio only, or with the video minimized in the background. YouTube is the largest single platform for podcast intake, though a large majority of consumers use other platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, the Times reported.
“I don’t have the ability to watch the entire thing through, but I do my glance-downs if I hear something funny,” 31-year-old Zoë McDermott, a title insurance producer from Pennsylvania, told the Times. “It’s passive a little bit.”
Many ad deals require podcasters to have a video component, as consumers have come to expect it, the Times reported.
“It feels a little more personal, like somebody is there with you,” McDermott said. “I live alone with my two cats and I’m kind of in a rural area in Pennsylvania, so it’s just a little bit of company almost.”
