Friday 4th April, 2025
Over three quarters of all adults age 16+ listen to digital audio according to new Irish Digital Audio Research
Digital Audio Listeners tend to be younger, from higher social grades and are more likely to be working full time
IAB Ireland’s Digital Audio Council commissioned Red C Research to conduct a sixth wave of ‘Listen Up Ireland’ – a deep-dive into Digital Audio in Ireland.
The research, which has tracked Digital Audio since 2019, specifically looked at: the Incidence & demographics of using Digital Audio, the channels used, time spent listening, devices used, reasons to engage with and attitudes towards Digital Audio.
The key findings are:
- 76% of all 16+ adults in Ireland are consuming digital audio each week. That equates to almost 3.1M adults. This rises to 91% among 16-34 year olds.
- 35% of digital audio listeners or almost 1.1M adults are listening daily, with 87% listening weekly.
- FM radio plus Digital Audio together have a combined reach of 94% of all adults 16+.
- Digital Audio ‘only’ listeners extend FM and Digital Audio combined reach by 10%
- For 16-24s, this incremental reach is 30%.
- The Demographic profile of digital audio users remains similar to that in 2024, with digital audio listeners differing from the national population in the following ways: they are considerably more likely to be 18-34 (+6%), in full time employment (+5%) and ABC1 (+4%).
- Digital Audio is very strong vs other media for time spent per week among all adults (16+) with 11.8 hours – this puts Digital Audio in second place with only Live TV ahead at 12.6 hours.
- In terms of engaging with digital audio, the smartphone continues to dominate with listening via connected cars and Smart TVs growing.
- 41% of people are now willing to listen to ads in exchange for great free content – up 5 points from the position in February 2024.
- Digital audio ads command more attention and are more trusted than ads running on all other digital channels analysed.
On publication of the report, Lee Thompson, co-chair of the IAB Audio Council said,
“This new expanded report is very positive news for brand marketers considering digital audio. It confirms digital audio’s position as a primary media channel with the weekly listener universe increasing to almost 3.1 million. Time spent has ticked up with digital audio only trailing Live TV in terms of total time spent. Encouragingly, digital audio is helping large numbers of people discover new content and learn and the willingness to listen to ads on digital audio has also grown significantly – this indicates a positive shift in attitudes towards growing acceptance of free content being supported by ads.’
Maeve O’Meara, Programme Director, IAB Ireland commented:
“We included some new questions this year to look at levels of Attention and Trust in Digital Audio and were pleased to see Digital audio score high on both metrics. In terms of Attention, ads on podcasts came in joint second place with TV ads, second only to cinema advertising. With three quarters of all adults listening to digital audio in an average week and the profile of digital audio listeners skewing younger, from higher social grade and those working full time, the growth of digital audio shows no signs of slowing.”