Can YouTube take on Spotify on the podcast front?
Marketing Interactive‘s Deepa Chevi interviewed me alongside industry peers including Partha Kabi, Hari Shankar, Julian Chow and Richard Bleasdale on this topic. Below are excerpts of my comments:
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1. Given Alphabet (parent company to Google and YouTube) is a listed company, its hunt for constant growth opportunities is expected. While podcast has been increasing its popularity recently and other players such as Spotify have emerged as prominent players in this field, it’s a logical step for YouTube to get into podcast aggressively – which is similar to its move to launch YouTube Music a few years back, explained Serm Teck Choon, co-founder and CEO of Antsomi. “With more audio advertising moving away from radio to podcast, Google and YouTube can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity to grab a piece of the cake in terms of audio advertising.”
2. (T)here is a potential of YouTube winning in this space – despite YouTube being a late entrant. This is because YouTube owns one of the largest bases of audience in the world. If YouTube can aggregate tons of great podcast content, and work on a very great UI/UX to seamlessly integrate the video, music and audio content, it can definitely slice a huge part of the pie for itself.
3. Adding on Serm said, what YouTube might need to be wary of is its reputation in the video space. “YouTube Music is a natural fit for product evolution as many audiences watch music videos on the platform hence they can move on to use YouTube Music. However, the strength sometimes may limit its development in terms of getting into new fields such as podcasts as now you are dealing with different kinds of needs and requirements,” he said.
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