‍The Challenge

Podcast creators often rely on organic reach and word of mouth to grow their audience, but are paid social ads a viable growth strategy? This research explored how potential listeners perceive targeted ads for podcasts on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, using SUP Podcast as a reference point.

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My Role

I independently designed and led this research project from scoping to synthesis and stakeholder presentation.

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Conducted 8 qualitative interviews and a survey (n=34) to identify trends in listener behaviors and perceptions

Synthesized findings into themes and behavioral insights.

Presented research to the creator of SUP Podcast (Lara Schoenhals), which led to further collaboration.

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Research Goals

Understand how podcast listeners discover and try new shows.

Evaluate how people respond to targeted social ads for podcasts.

Identify opportunities and risks for independent creators using paid ads.

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Process

The design process began by defining the categorical, perception, and behavioral elements of SUP listeners to understand how the use of targeted advertising on social platforms will affect listeners and the SUP podcast.

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The perception, category, and behavior items defined in the conceptual model became the survey questions. The final survey contained ten questions. All participants received the same survey with a mixture of perception, behavior, and category-themed questions. Friends, family, and colleagues of various ages, personal, academic, and professional backgrounds participated in the survey. Some colleagues also posted the link to the survey on their social platforms to boost reach.

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Key Findings

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Special interest was the most selected genre that participants listened to (43), followed by news (35) and entertainment (32). SUP falls in the entertainment category but is also a special interest podcast because Schoenhals does not solely focus on currently airing reality shows.
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43% of participants listen to podcasts more than three times per week, and 85% of participants are active social media users, which are the primary opportunity areas. These users would most likely see a targeted advertisement because they spend a lot of time on social apps.
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The data showed that while users are likely to listen to podcasts based on a recommendation from a friend (3.86), they are significantly less interested if the offer appears via a targeted ad (2.61) based on a 5-point scale.

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Figure 1 (below) shows that even users who browse social media multiple times a day are overwhelmingly unlikely to listen to a podcast based on a targeted ad.

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Figure 2 (below) tells a different story: active participants on social media are very likely to listen to a podcast based on a recommendation from a friend. The data suggests that while people do not want to be “advertised,” they are still open to listening to a podcast if the recommendation feels organic.

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Figure 3 (below) shows that users online once or multiple times a day are likely to purchase a product from a targeted advertisement. The findings from Figure 3 are in direct contrast with the disinterest towards targeted podcast ads shown in Figure 1. While users know they will be advertised as tangible goods on social media, a recommendation for something as personal as a podcast may feel like an infringement of their privacy.

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Discussion

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Trust is a barrier  
Most participants said that podcast ads on social media felt “try-hard,” “inauthentic,” or not how they discover podcasts.

Word of mouth wins  
The most trusted discovery methods were personal recommendations, platform suggestions (e.g., Spotify), and creator cross-promotion rather than paid ads.

Scroll behavior is unforgiving  
Unless an ad featured a host the user already recognized or presented a compelling connection, most survey participants said they would scroll past within seconds.

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After presenting my findings to Lara, the creator of SUP Podcast, she opted not to invest in paid social media ads. Instead, we discussed growth strategies rooted in community engagement, authenticity, and collaboration with other podcasts. This initial study led to a larger capstone project where we explored the deeper dynamics of being a podcast creator and listener and created a roadmap of strategies to improve both.

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