Podcasts present one of the biggest growth opportunities for UK media in 2023, according to a survey by market research and analytics firm Yougov.
Thirteen percent of respondents from the UK said they would increase their use of podcasts this year. This was behind only attending live in-person events (19%), streaming video (15%) and going to the cinema (15%) as the other areas in which UK media consumers said they would step up use in 2023.
Globally, “non-linear” media are driving growth in audio and visual said the report, with streaming video or music and listening to podcasts expected to grow faster than linear media such as listening to the radio and watching TV.
The findings in Yougov’s latest Global Media Outlook Report are based on a survey of 19,000 people in 18 countries, including over 2,000 respondents from the UK, carried out in August and September. The questionnaire asked people about their media consumption habits in the past year as well as which media they expected to use in 2023.
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Despite their potential for growth in the UK, podcasts remain relatively less popular. Globally, across the 18 markets in the report, 61% of respondents said they they had listened to a podcast in the last 12 months compared to 50% in the UK.
In the UK, while most respondents (58%) said they expected their level of consumption of newspapers and magazines to remain unchanged in the coming 12 months, the number of people planning to step up their readership (7%) is more than cancelled out by the 12% who said they were planning to read newspapers and magazines less in the coming year.
Globally, websites and apps were the most popular form of media in the past 12 months with 95% of global consumers reporting having visited a site or app in that period. Digital media also saw the largest increase in consumption in the past year with over three in ten people saying they spent more time on websites, apps, streaming video and on social media, although growth in 2023 is expected to be slower as a surge in use that began during the pandemic slows down.
While the survey found that globally the number of people saying they expected to increase their use of traditional media such as watching TV, reading newspapers and magazines was cancelled out by those planning to decrease consumption (17%), the majority (50%) of people are not planning on changing their consumption compared to the previous year.
When it comes to growth, consumers aged 18 to 24 were more likely to keep increasing their consumption of digital media in 2023. Almost half of young people who at least maintained their level of streaming music, accessing websites/apps, streaming video, and interacting with social media in 2022 said they would increase this in 2023, compared to less than a quarter of people aged over 55.
While younger consumers are more likely to switch up how they consume media than older generations who are more likely to persist with whatever media types they already consume, the group of young people aged 18 to 24 who maintained or increased their media consumption of each type in the last year were more likely to increase it further looking ahead.
This, said the report, suggests that "older consumers have established routines for the media types they consume and are more likely to maintain their media consumption patterns, and less likely to do more" and that "while younger consumers are less likely to stick around, if they can be attracted and retained by publishers and content providers, they are highly engaged, and their propensity to do more is significant, which is particularly true for digital media".
Elsewhere, the report found that consumers are increasingly concerned with the environmental and social impact of advertising, not only in print newspapers and magazines, but digitally as well. Over half (56%) of people surveyed in the UK said sustainability in advertising was very or somewhat important to them.
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