What are the key takeaways from this Build Your SaaS episode?

Key insights include: **Female listener growth:** New podcast listeners in the past six months are 53% women versus 47% men, reversing the previous trend where 63% of long-term listeners were male, with Spotify's bundled app driving discovery among women.; **Purchasing power disconnect:** Women make 70-80% of all consumer purchases and 50% of men's purchases, yet 91% feel misunderstood by advertisers. Podcast ads currently target male audiences despite women controlling most household buying decisions including 75% of car purchases.; **Effective ad format:** Host-read ads with personal storytelling and emotional connection outperform scripted spots. Authentic testimonials from regular people across different backgrounds, similar to TikTok-style content, create empathy and drive higher purchase intent and product recall among female listeners.

What did Justin's Daughter discuss on Build Your SaaS?

Justin interviews his 18-year-old daughter about her Gen Z podcast research, revealing that 53% of new podcast listeners are now women, creating major implications for advertisers and the industry's future direction. Key topics include: **Female listener growth:** New podcast listeners in the past six months are 53% women versus 47% men, reversing the previous trend where 63% of long-term listeners were male, with Spotify's bundled app driving discovery among women.; **Purchasing power disconnect:** Women make 70-80% of all consumer purchases and 50% of men's purchases, yet 91% feel misunderstood by advertisers. Podcast ads currently target male audiences despite women controlling most household buying decisions including 75% of car purchases..

How long is this episode of Build Your SaaS?

This episode is 28 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Build Your SaaS

What does my daughter think of the podcast industry?

November 26, 2021

28 min episode · 2 min read

Justin's Daughter

Episode

28 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Marketing

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓Female listener growth: New podcast listeners in the past six months are 53% women versus 47% men, reversing the previous trend where 63% of long-term listeners were male, with Spotify's bundled app driving discovery among women.
✓Purchasing power disconnect: Women make 70-80% of all consumer purchases and 50% of men's purchases, yet 91% feel misunderstood by advertisers. Podcast ads currently target male audiences despite women controlling most household buying decisions including 75% of car purchases.
✓Effective ad format: Host-read ads with personal storytelling and emotional connection outperform scripted spots. Authentic testimonials from regular people across different backgrounds, similar to TikTok-style content, create empathy and drive higher purchase intent and product recall among female listeners.
✓Discovery barriers: Women report feeling overwhelmed by podcast choices and lack clear pathways to find relevant shows. Solutions include visual elements with faces, female-focused case studies, social media advertising where women spend 2+ hours daily, and cross-promotion in music apps.

What It Covers

Justin interviews his 18-year-old daughter about her Gen Z podcast research, revealing that 53% of new podcast listeners are now women, creating major implications for advertisers and the industry's future direction.

Key Questions Answered

•Female listener growth: New podcast listeners in the past six months are 53% women versus 47% men, reversing the previous trend where 63% of long-term listeners were male, with Spotify's bundled app driving discovery among women.
•Purchasing power disconnect: Women make 70-80% of all consumer purchases and 50% of men's purchases, yet 91% feel misunderstood by advertisers. Podcast ads currently target male audiences despite women controlling most household buying decisions including 75% of car purchases.
•Effective ad format: Host-read ads with personal storytelling and emotional connection outperform scripted spots. Authentic testimonials from regular people across different backgrounds, similar to TikTok-style content, create empathy and drive higher purchase intent and product recall among female listeners.
•Discovery barriers: Women report feeling overwhelmed by podcast choices and lack clear pathways to find relevant shows. Solutions include visual elements with faces, female-focused case studies, social media advertising where women spend 2+ hours daily, and cross-promotion in music apps.

Notable Moment

The revelation that women purchase three-quarters of all vehicles despite the automotive industry's masculine focus and dealership culture that treats female buyers as less knowledgeable, creating a massive untapped advertising opportunity for podcast sponsors.

Know someone who'd find this useful?

Episode Transcript

This podcast is hosted by transistor dot f m. Hey, everybody. Justin here. I've got a treat for you today. Some of you know, my daughter did a podcast research report. It's on the transistor blog called, gen Z and podcasting and her and I sat down to discuss her thoughts on the podcast industry based on some of the research she's been doing. She's 18. So she's firmly in that gen Z demographic. And it's interesting. It's interesting to see what the next generation is thinking about in terms of podcasting, audio, audio ads, Spotify. We get into all of that stuff. I think you're going to enjoy it. Let's get into it. You were telling me the other day, you were doing some research on podcasting, and you said, women are the future of podcasting. What did you find that made you say that? Well, the main reason why I said that is because, reading an article done by Edison Research, they did mostly on women listeners, and it showed that the new women listeners, so people who have been listening to podcasts for six months, were women. It was fifty three percent of women and only 47% men, whereas men before dominated within, like, the past three years. Oh, I see. So Edison was looking at who has started listening to podcasts in the last six months. Mhmm. And what percentage was women? 53% were women Okay. Of all the time. Percent of the folks who started listening in the past six months were women. And in the past, this would have been mostly men. Yes. In the past, it was 63% of men. They're considered super listeners, I think. Those who were listening for three or more years, who started listening for three or plus years. Got it. So the trend is going the other way now. If it started off mostly men, now increasingly, we're seeing mostly women who are starting to listen to podcasts. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it's changing now? It could be for a bunch of different reasons. I think one of them was actually COVID. Okay. More women, were reported to stay at home. More women are reported to be working also. So the combination of work and home, because that's where most podcast listening gets done is at home or at work. Yeah. And also on that same article, they interviewed a lot of women and they said, how did you get into podcasting? How are you introduced to it? And most of them said Spotify, actually. They're like, oh, I I was just on Spotify, and I just happened to stumble upon that they have some podcast now. Or, oh, I Interesting. See an ad about it. And yeah. They opened up the Spotify app. They see podcasts in there, and that was enough to get them interested to to listen for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think this …

Get the full transcript (4,396 words) + summary by email — free

One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.

One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.

Browse all Build Your SaaS transcripts →