Podcast Growth & Monetization
Client
Simplecast
Services
Research, UX, Ui
2023
Introduction & Research overview
Simplecast aimed to enhance the integration of its podcasting technology with growth and ad tools, leveraging its hosting audience of over 60 million listeners. This case study outlines our research plan and highlights one of the many opportunities we identified.
To better understand podcast creators and their approach, our research focused on two key areas: stakeholder insights and direct user research. I conducted stakeholder interviews to gather business knowledge and collaborated with our UXR team to gain a deeper understanding of creators’ needs. Our primary research goal was to uncover podcast creators’ workflows, pain points, and approaches to growth—both within Simplecast and across competitor platforms—to inform the development of advertising solutions tailored to them.
Key Research Findings
When it comes to monetization, we see a split in the ways that podcast creators can choose to monetize. While creators with a large audience may want to insert ads into their podcast, they need help finding sponsors. Also, these established podcast creators are not advertisers and ad technology is difficult for them to understand. New podcasters are not focused on advertising. They see growth as the only pathway to making money.
Solution
In this case study, I’ll focus on the solution we developed for new podcasters looking to grow their audience. Our research revealed that creators often feel overwhelmed by the technical side of episode editing and need better tools for managing audio. For example, they frequently use the beginning and end of episodes to promote partnerships, share event info, and provide show notes. Some even manually insert new promotional audio into their entire back catalog of over 100 episodes.
To solve this, we created a dynamic insertion tool that automates the process. It allows users to place a marker in their audio where promotional content will be inserted, upload a single promotional file for all episodes, and easily manage or replace the promotional audio from one central location.
Collaborators
Sarah Frisk (Development)
Kristy Yeaton (Development)