Evidence that Podcasting is Being Accepted

Like you needed to be convinced? PodcastingNews reports that Edison Media Research is about to release a report on statistics related to podcast audience numbers, and it's good news. There's still a way to go, but it's reassuring to see the trends at play. Here are some quick takeaways:

• There is an 18% increase in audience growth over the last year: from 11% in 2006 to 13% in 2007
• Awareness of podcasting grew from 22% to 37% - that's 70% growth!
• But there is still difficulty with the term "podcasting," much like the term "blogging" before it
  

Some demographics:

• The audience is a fairly even split: 49% female, 51% male
• All ages, with - get this - more listeners in the 55+ range than the 18-24 range
• Well-to-do. Podcast users are twice as likely to have incomes over 100K and nearly twice as likely to have incomes between 75K and 100K
• Podcast users are twice as likely to have clicked on a banner ad

Check out the release by PodcastingNews - it's got a much more in-depth analysis and summary than I'll provide here.

Props to CC Chapman for the Twittered link.