Broadcast Sport spoke to YouTube’s product lead for podcasting, Steve McLendon, about its plans for podcasts after hitting 1bn monthly podcast users
YouTube has revealed that it now has over one billion monthly active viewers of podcast content on its platform.
It also claims to be the most frequently used service for listening to podcasts in the US, and that viewers watched over 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices last year.
Speaking to Broadcast Sport, YouTube’s product lead for podcasting, Steve McLendon, revealed that the next step for the platform could be further help with watching the same content across various devices. He said: “There are a lot of touchpoints for a podcast, for example listening in a car and then getting home and listening through a TV. We can still improve that user journey, where, unlike other YouTube content, you may not finish a podcast in one session.”
Of course, the company is also looking at AI, with experiments set to take place on the consumer side. They will only bring in a feature, “if it’s beneficial to the user. There are a lot of interesting things currently, but I’m still unsure if they’re useful.”
YouTube also wants to, “Make podcasts less opaque, allowing users to see what’s inside and to really find the right podcast for them.” McLendon added, “You can imagine searchable podcast content,” in the future.
Meanwhile, for podcasters and creators, YouTube has a, “tonne of options,” according to McLendon. Its recent addition of automated multi-lingual captioning has been received well, he says, and future additions will also focus on non-creative aspects, “We aren’t out there telling creatives how to be creative.”
Overall, the streaming giant sees podcasters and creators as extremely similar. McLendon explained, “They’re the new media startups. Both are user generated content, looking to build audiences, and generally using an ads-based or subscription monetisation plan. They also both publish on demand content.”
No comments yet