With increasingly diverse, exciting, and inclusive subject matter on offer, CTA’s 2024 State of the U.S. Consumer Technology Software & Services Industry report estimates podcast and audiobook spending to grow to a $1.6 billion market in 2024. This growth is unsurprising. We all have our favorite audio streaming content – true crime, news, sports talk, popular culture, etc. – that we eagerly tune into when new episodes drop. But this “we” doesn’t capture all Americans, and the case can be made that podcast market potential is substantially underrealized. The older Americans age cohort has yet to embrace the power and popularity of the podcast, despite having listening preferences and hardware ownership rates that align perfectly with podcast adoption. The million-dollar question is, “Why?”

If we distill the formula for increasing older podcast listeners into three factors – listening preferences, hardware ownership, and effective advertising – it soon becomes obvious which factor is missing.

Listening Preferences & Podcast Familiarity

Despite paltry podcast listener rates amongst older Americans, a 2023 NPR and Edison Research report on podcasting’s future found that older Americans’ (those 99 million Americans age 55+) listening preferences and familiarity with the podcast concept supported future adoption:

• AM/FM radio (56%) and satellite radio (23%) were still more popular than podcast platforms (4%) in terms of the time older Americans spend listening to audio sources.
• Nearly 30% of older Americans’ audio listening time is spoken word content, and older Americans spend almost 3.5 hours per day listening to audio.
• 70% were familiar with the podcast concept, while only 5% reported listening to podcasts.

Hardware Ownership

The disconnect doesn’t end with listening preferences. The vast majority of older Americans own at least one of the requisite hardware devices for audio streaming and, in many cases, they own more than one. Smartphone (78%), smart TV (62%) and smart speaker (26%) ownership rates among older Americans support podcast adoption. CTA’s Exploring Tech Preferences Among Gen Z  also points out that many of the factors that influence older Americans when subscribing to a new streaming service (namely high-quality content and ease of use) are supported by the hardware that older Americans already own.

Effective Advertising

If older Americans are aware of podcasts, prefer the spoken word content that podcasts offer, and have the hardware needed to enjoy podcast content, why are they still not listening? The answer should be simple, and it all has to do with effective advertising by audio content creators and more direct instructions on how to access podcast content.

Based on the podcast listening rates, it’s abundantly clear that the standard “also available as a podcast” line is missing the mark with older Americans. To attract this untapped market, audio content creators must meet listeners where they are. NPR and Edison suggest harnessing the advertising power of older Americans’ preferred social media platforms, such as Facebook, to spur podcast adoption. Social media offers algorithm-driven, targeted advertising opportunities and links to content that traditional media cannot.

Older Americans are a natural fit for podcasts, and the podcast industry needs their support more than ever. After a tumultuous year that saw both Gimlet and Parcast gutted after their acquisition by Spotify and generally stagnating listener growth, podcast creators need to tap those 99 million older Americans to reinvigorate the podcast space. To borrow and tailor the famous line from 1989’s Field of Dreams, the message to podcast content creators is simple: “If you advertise, they will come.”

Want to learn about the streaming preferences for the other end of the age spectrum? Check out our research report: Exploring Tech Preferences Among Gen Z .