Brands have woken up to podcast but the medium still remains majorly urban: Sreeraman Thiagarajan of aawaz.com

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has been catastrophic for traditional mediums such as print and outdoor, has given a massive push in terms of user acquisition to the growing podcast industry.

"The pandemic has given the podcast industry a big push in terms of content demand and branded content opportunities. Having witnessed a 22% increase in its revenue (from last year) amid the pandemic, the pandemic was rather a blessing in disguise for aawaz.com, said Sreeraman Thiagarajan, CEO, aawaz.com.

The podcast platform stepped out of the physical studios as soon as the lockdown started and created content remotely by doing online interactions.

“We were able to make a new network of people that helped us grow. And since TV productions were shut, it acted as another opportunity; and because podcast was fresh, a lot of people started listening and it started doing well,” he said.

Despite the sudden growth of its consumption, there still exist major challenges for the industry and “marketers’ mindset” is one of them.

Thiagarajan said that brands’ apprehension towards the medium is not necessarily related to the measurement of ROI, but mostly the understanding of the medium itself.

“It is mostly to do with the understanding of the medium itself like how brands perceive it. It is not a pure play advertising medium as such but a storytelling medium and it has to be treated like that. So the ROI is always very different and brand managers are waking up to it,” he said.

He referred to the medium as a persuasion tool.

“Only avid listeners come as they want to get the whole scoop of it. So this medium is able to explain a lot more while connecting with audiences. Brands have to artfully tell their message since they can't run a 30-sec ad in this format. It is more of a persuasion tool,” he said.

The beauty of podcasts is its long format. And what marketers can do with video, they cannot do in audio and this mindset, he said, has to change.

He said that the term podcast still remains very urban and the first world.

“If we want it to be mass, a lot of evangelisation requests have to be made. We are doing a lot it by educating the masses and talking to CXOs, making them understand how to better utilise the medium,” he said.

However, this year will witness more opportunities for the podcast industry in terms of monetisation, he said.

Discussing various ways how brands can monetise it, he said more brands have come online to create podcasts now and independent podcast creators are only making the space better.

“Licensing is a great opportunity for IP owners and content owners. We have a licensing deal with Spotify. Advertiser-funded programmes or brand solutions is another way. For instance, Coke Studio, where the brand comes as a sponsor to create audio experience stories. And then classic sponsorships such as ad insertions. Those are all existing avenues. Some interesting ones are also emerging such as fans directly paying content creators,” he said.

Asked if the subscription model can be another way for the monetisation of podcast content, he said the Indian audience is slow in adopting the subscription model.

“I do believe that it is true—if you wish to consume good content, you have to pay for it. But people are used to consuming it otherwise. However, slowly and steadily, things are improving. It might be smaller today but yes, as the income potential is definitely growing, we are hopeful,” he said.

One question that arises is whether radio will lose out if podcasts continue to grow since the medium is becoming more and more popular. Answering this, Thiagarajan said both formats will continue to co-exist just like the TV and movie industry is doing so.

“Each one is fairly dependent on the other and there are a lot of synergies. For example, we have Big FM online, live stream inside our app. I see each other, both radio and podcast, as collaborators because there is very strong terrestrial in radio which is hyper-local and what RJs bring to the table is incredible. So both will co-exist and will continue to have a great sense of interdependence,” he said.

Explaining how there is no dearth of opportunities in the industry, he said the platform has added a bunch of new brands, including IBM, Google, Tata Mutual Fund, etc., and is seeing better traction in that sense.

The platform recently introduced its Urdu edition of audio originals and podcasts. Live since January 2019 with Hindi, English and Marathi audio programming, the audio network has now expanded, hosting a total of 1000+ hours of audio content.

“The idea is to launch two languages every year,” he said.