The Economist's Podcasts Have Fetched Over a Billion Downloads Since Launch

In 2019, U.K. subscription publisher The Economist released its daily news podcast, The Intelligence, three years after its first pursuit into audio. The goal of that audio push has been to drive ad revenue and—ultimately—subscribers. Today, the podcast show has fetched 400 million downloads since its start—and an average of 350,000 downloads per episode, about 3.9 million downloads per week, according to the publisher. The show has about 2.5 million uniques (or listeners) per month or 750,000 uniques (or listeners) per week. The Economist podcast network has had over a billion downloads since its start in 2016, across its network of five podcasts—and its overall advertising revenue for podcasting grew 30% year-on-year, according to the publisher. "It's a really good medium, for us and for the advertisers," The Economist's director of podcasts, John Prideaux, told Adweek. "We expect it to be X (revenue) and then it ends up being X plus a million dollars reliably." The Economist Is Chasing Enterprise Budgets With Its Latest Business Unit, Impact Other publishers have invested in audio and daily news podcast shows. The New York Times flagship show The Daily, launched in 2017, has nearly 2 million listeners each week and Vox's Today, Explained branched out to about 200 public radio stations last month to cover more ground across its audience. And there's a growing appetite to capture podcast ad dollars. According to a recent IAB podcast revenue report this week, podcast advertising increased 72% year-on-year to $1.4 billion and is forecasted to surpass $2 billion in 2022, a year ahead of its last prediction. Growth of The Economist's podcast ads The launch of The Intelligence in 2019 isn't the only shift its audio arm underwent. It's also when the Economist's ad sales team started selling podcasts directly to clients. Previously, it provided its inventory to audio vendors for dynamically inserted ads. Though the publisher is "picky" about who can run ads on its audio content, the number of advertisers for The Intelligence nearly doubled year-on-year for the show and includes key brands like Cisco, Workplace and Jaguar, according to the publisher. For its direct sales, clients mostly work with the publisher across platforms, with podcasts as a key part of the mix. "Considering the fact that many of our overall media clients repeat business with us (nearly 70%), we are confident we will increase repeat business in audio," said an Economist spokesperson. If an advertiser buys podcast spot ads, The Economist CPMs are between $21 and $30, in line with premium news audio, according to the spokesperson. It also charges a premium for fixed placements within its regularly scheduled shows. The publisher still taps networks like Acast to sell ads on its behalf. Its limited-edition podcast shows, which give clients an element of contextual alignment, are sold at an even higher premium and the publisher can create longer, custom audio ads and exclusive placements. These sponsorships are sold on a flat fee basis based on the average downloads per week, position and length of the client's audio asset. According to the publisher, Economist's podcast ad revenue accounts for roughly 11% of The Economist Group's media advertising revenue overall. To compare, the media group generated nearly $371 million (£310.3 million) in 2021, according to its earnings. The Economist also inks long-term and larger investments from clients through a partnership package via Economist Impact, which has a mix of its policy research, event and media, according to the publisher. Expansion plans Prideaux highlights that it's The Economist's answer to questions like "what's interesting, what's striking, what's new and what's important" in its journalism that brings subscribers. The Intelligence format spends between 20 and 40 minutes daily breaking down those pressing questions for three news topics. We've realized there's a big market for what we do.John Prideax, Director of Podcasts, The Economist There are currently about 30 people who work on its audio team, according to Prideaux, and it has plans to hire more to work on future shows and a long-form story-telling podcast, slated to launch in September 2022. "We discovered that the kind of journalism we do happens to work really well in this medium," Prideaux said. "We've realized there's a big market for what we do, which is great, but it's also just the enthusiasm of the journalists." An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that The Intelligence has on average 350,000 listeners per episode and 2.5 million listeners per week. It has on average 350,000 downloads per episode. The Economist Is Chasing Enterprise Budgets With Its Latest Business Unit, Impact