Gen Z has typically been associated with ephemeral attention spans—after all, this is the same generation that’s driven the rise of TikTok. But new data show Gen Z does have an appetite for some long-form content, especially podcasts. 

The demographic is driving a significant spike in podcast listening in the U.S., according to Spotify’s latest annual “Culture Next” report, which tracks trends across the streaming service’s Gen Z user base. In the first six months of 2023, Gen Z consumers (who currently fall between the ages of 11 and 26) generated almost 900 million podcast streams on Spotify—a 48% increase over the number of streams the cohort drove in the first half of 2022. 

That data stems from surveys of more than 11,000 Gen Z consumers, focus groups and in-depth interviews conducted in partnership with youth culture agency Archival, as well as Spotify’s own first-party data. 

Also read: Audio ads outperform video for attention and brand recall

“Gen Z is widely perceived to want really short, snackable content, and they’re sort of characterized as having this very firefly-like attention span,” said Jessica Levinsohn, global business brand marketing lead at Spotify. “But what we're actually seeing is that they’re streaming music and podcasts for up to two and a half hours a day, and they’re completing most of the podcast episodes that they're starting—and some of those episodes are 90 minutes to two hours long.” 

“All of that tells us that Gen Z actually does have an appetite for [long-form] content that they care about,” she added. For Gen Zers, “[podcasting] isn’t becoming a mainstream medium—it is a mainstream medium.”

Several other studies conducted this year have come to the same conclusion. An October study from youth market research firm YPulse found that 80% of consumers between the ages of 13 and 39 listen to podcasts, with those aged 18 to 24 generating the highest levels of listenership. In June, a joint study from Edison Research and SXM Media found nearly half (47%) of Gen Z consumers between ages 13 and 24 have listened to at least one podcast in the past month, compared to just 30% of those aged between 13 and 24 in 2018. 

Of those monthly podcast listeners from the June study, over one-third (39%) reported listening to podcasts for at least five hours per week, and 22% of those respondents spend more than 10 hours a week doing so. 

“After a notable dip in the number who listen in 2020 during the pandemic, young people are back to listening to podcasts as their lives have gotten a bit busier—calling for the need to multitask and listen while commuting [or] at the gym,” according to a YPulse blog post about its podcast report. The podcast industry as a whole is rapidly growing, too, with Grand View Research projecting the global podcast market to jump from its 2022 valuation of $18.5 billion to $23.7 billion by the end of 2023. The podcast industry will be worth more than $130 billion by 2030, according to projections from the intelligence firm’s projections.

Gen Zer’s increased interest in podcasts also partially has its roots in the same force driving the meteoric rise of the creator economy: the trust and sense of connection they feel toward the creators at the heart of the podcasts they’re tuning into on a weekly, or even daily, basis. In fact, many of the hosts of popular podcasts among Gen Z—which include Brittany Broski’s “The Broski Report,” and Mark “Markiplier” Fishbach’s “Distractible,” according to YPulse’s survey—began their careers as social media content creators.

And some creators who got their start in short-form social content, including former Vine stars Cody Kolodziejzyk, also known as Cody Ko, and Noel Miller, have shifted their attention from social media to turn podcasting into their primary source of income. 

“I feel like podcasts are just the new way [for creators]—they’re the way to reach your audience and to bring in a bigger audience,” Gen Z creator JoJo Siwa recently told Ad Age. Siwa herself launched a podcast, “JoJo Siwa Now,” with with iHeartMedia, in October.

Long-form influencer marketing 

With a growing number of Gen Z consumers spending hours each week tuning into podcasts hosted by their favorite creators or other influential figures, marketers can capitalize on the trust many of these consumers develop toward podcasters and turn to them as brand spokespeople, much like they would with influencers

“When it comes down to it, the reason why people like myself are so invested in certain podcasts is they build these relationships with the hosts,” said creator and brand consultant Robyn DelMonte, also known as Girlbosstown. “Some people spend more time listening to these podcasts than they do with their actual friends in real life. And because they build these relationships and build trust with the people who host these podcasts, when ads come along, it’s like listening to your friend on FaceTime rather than the guy at the kiosk in the mall who’s trying to sell you something.” 

Related: DTC brands experiment with programmatic podcast ads

Trust in podcast hosts is fairly equal across age cohorts, hovering at about 75% for Gen Z, millennial and Gen X consumers, according to Deloitte’s 2023 Digital Media Trends report. But for Gen Z, that trust translates directly into sales more than any other generation—53% of the Gen Z consumers surveyed reported they are “influenced by ads [they] hear while listening to podcasts more than ads in other places.” That number drops to 49% among millennials and to just over 30% for Gen X consumers.

“For a brand, it’s about figuring out how to really organically and naturally fold themselves into the [podcast] content that Gen Z is naturally seeking out in ways that don’t disrupt or interrupt what they're doing, but actually enrich the overall experience,” Spotify’s Levinsohn said. For podcasts, that often means brands turning over pre- or mid-roll ads to the hosts to read, allowing them the creative liberty to tweak them to match their natural speech patterns and personalities. 

When a brand’s messaging shows up in the “really trusted environment” created by a podcast host and is read in that host’s own voice, listeners tend to be more receptive to a brand’s messaging, Levinsohn said. Gen Z is also increasingly consuming video podcasts, or “vodcasts.” Eighty-four percent of Gen Z podcast listeners have tuned into at least one podcast with a video component, according to the Edison Research and SXM Media study, which opens up additional sponsorship opportunities to brands, such as product placement. Between March and the end of June, Spotify saw its number of video podcasts grow from 70,000 to more than 100,000. 

“I’ve always said that these vodcasts like ‘Call Her Daddy’ or ‘The Toast’ need to do a brand deal with a furniture company or a clothing company,” DelMonte said. Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy,” the second-most popular podcast on Spotify, focuses on relationship advice and feminism and often features celebrity guests, while “The Toast” shares daily roundups of celebrity and pop culture news.  

“[Guests] always sit in those big cozy chairs in every episode I’ve watched of ‘Call Her Daddy,’ and it would be so cool if every season a different furniture company came in and redesigned the set and you could actually buy the products that you’re seeing,” she said.

Spotify is currently looking to leverage the new ad opportunities introduced by video podcasts and “figuring out different ways that [it] can, at scale, integrate brands” into podcasts’ video components, Levinsohn said. Many podcasters share video clips from their episodes to social media to promote their shows, meaning a brand could also get in front of a creator’s following on platforms such as TikTok or Instagram if their sponsorship takes a visual form. 

Related: What brands are willing to pay Instagram influencers

Half of Gen Z consumers also turn to podcasts to “get them closer to the zeitgeist of culture than any other form of media,” according to Spotify’s report, making podcasts a valuable medium for brands seeking to stay relevant with young consumers through pop culture. “When a cultural moment happens in the world, they’re going in and typing it into the search bar on Spotify ... to listen to podcast episodes,” Levinsohn said. “So, for the Met Gala, the NBA Finals, the World Cup—all of these big moments—we see a huge surge in streaming right after they happen.” 

Despite their reputation for fleeting attention spans, the vast majority of Gen Z podcast listeners are streaming podcast episodes for nearly their entire runtime. Popular podcast genres such as true crime and comedy each have average completion rates of more than 80% even with their average episode lengths of 40 minutes and 50 minutes, respectively. This could partially be due to the fact that over one-third of Gen Z has listened to a sped-up podcast episode in the past year, per Spotify’s report. 

But even at that increased speed, Gen Z isn’t just passively consuming podcasts, Levinsohn added. 

“They’re consuming content faster so that they can consume more. It's not like they're just powering through it; they're really being thoughtful about how they’re doing that,” she said. “That’s a really cool opportunity for brands, where they can embed themselves into these really niche communities of Gen Zs who trust the host.”