In an era where short videos dominate attention, why are more and more brands and platforms starting to value “slow-paced” podcasts? What exactly can podcasts bring to marketing? This article will combine the trends of Bilibili to talk about some of my observations and thoughts on the value of podcast marketing, which may open up a new perspective on content marketing for you.
Yesterday, according to a report by tech planet, Bilibili is developing its video podcast business and is about to launch a series of support policies. “The company will be poaching podcast creators aggressively this summer,” the insider said.
Indeed, the trend of “video” podcasts is accelerating. Morning Consult conducted a survey in August 2024 and found that 42% of American adults prefer podcasts with video, compared to only 32% in 2022.
YouTube got the first step. In March 2025, YouTube’s official blog announced that the monthly podcast active audience exceeded 1 billion, and began internal testing of anchor oral advertising space that can be dynamically inserted, and Shorts traffic will also feed back long programs.
Spotify is also catching up. The Partner Program, which was updated in February, announced the opening of video sharing to eligible creators and an ad-free experience for Premium members, with the goal of retaining top shows with better CPMs. However, YouTube still has a first-mover advantage in terms of audience size and discovery.
Video podcast or podcast?
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I think so. The essence of podcasting is to build companionship and depth of thought through long, sound-driven conversations – a sound-based experience that never changes, whether the picture is present or not. The addition of video is only on the premise of retaining the main body of sound, adding expressions and scenes to the content, so that the accumulation of trust is more three-dimensional, and the core of “sound first, opinion-based” is still the same.
Podcasts have grown extremely rapidly, driven by internet giants. In the past six months, I have been asked by several friends who do marketing: “Is podcasting the next traffic depression that must be grabbed?” ”
The lineup of questioners is interesting: doing DTC brands, digital marketing departments of listed banks, and an established 4A. I found that many people are ready to move and a little hesitant, and seem to not see the value and minefield of podcasting as a medium, so I will talk about my observations today.
1. Podcasts are a slow medium
A podcast salon in Beijing last December. When it comes to podcast marketing models, I put forward a point:Podcast marketing is a slow spread.
I use the expression “slow spread” because in the world of audio, podcasts are naturally a “slow medium”.
The purchasing process in these areas often involves information gathering, scenario comparison, and internal decision-making, requiring more in-depth and systematic content to support the audience’s rational judgment. With long-form discussions and professional interviews, podcasts can gradually answer audience questions, convey trust and establish authority, thereby effectively promoting complex decision-making.
A program often lasts twenty or thirty minutes or even hours, which is a very linear and difficult to accelerate or effect listening, and the communication therefore presents a “drip irrigation” logic: the audience’s breaking of the circle depends on the layers of word-of-mouth and interest communities, rather than the explosive diffusion recommended by an algorithm.
The direct consequence of slow speed is that the ceiling of commercial scale is higher but farther away.
Compared with the funnel of “click-exposure-conversion” on short video platforms, the commercial conversion of podcasts is more like a tortuous dialectical curve: high loyalty and strong trust, but slow expansion of the crowd base.
As a result, ad inventory is scarce and fragmented, CTR doesn’t increase instantaneously, and ROI has to be longer. For Party A or the capital that wants to tell stories in pursuit of quarterly performance, this “slow heating” means that it is impossible to pile up enough GMV or CPV in a short period of time, and it is difficult to use scale and quick success to support the explosive power of the business model.
Therefore, podcasts can develop deep brand equity, and it is more suitable for products that are willing to grow slowly with users – consumer durables, subscription services, knowledge payment – rather than FMCG offensives with promotional countdowns.
In my observation, “high-order-long decision-making” industries such as financial management, B2B products and services, education and training, and health care are most inclined to adopt podcast marketing.
2. The value of podcasts is deep trust, which has the same ecological niche as Bilibili
Let’s try to get into two scenarios:
Scene 1: You open a podcast, and the anchor spends 30 minutes talking about “how consumerism infiltrates our daily lives”, quoting Baudrillard, talking about his experience of shopping addiction, and adding a letter from a listener. At this time, you listen and think: Do I have a similar experience? Is the anchor’s point of view reasonable?
Scene 2: At the same time, you have listened to this anchor several times, familiar with her tone, background music, opening credits, and even agree with her “a little twisted but sincere” personality. Even if you don’t listen too carefully today, you may give it a try as soon as you hear her recommend a consumer brand.
Behind the two different scenarios are two different paths of persuasion. There is a theory in this – the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).
This theory suggests that people’s attitudes change depending on the depth of information processing: when a person has high motivation and ability (as in scenario 1), it will passCenter pathin-depth analysis of information content to produce lasting and rational attitude change;
Conversely, as in Scenario 2, it will dependEdge path, the influence of peripheral cues such as source attraction and emotional resonance forms a short-term and changeable attitude.
The two paths are not separate – they may coexist in the same situation, but the dominant path is determined by the audience’s cognitive engagement, which is regulated by factors such as topic relevance and distraction.
The persuasiveness of podcasts is precisely the result of the superposition of these two paths. It can both capture those who are willing to think deeply and not let go of listeners who are just emotionally “fallen”. This is itFine machining possibility theoryAuthentic rendition in podcasts.
The fine processing possibility model tells us that the audience will automatically weigh inputs and outputs when faced with information, and if the content complexity is high enough to be considered, they will enter the central path;
If the amount of information is not enough to stimulate deep processing, or if attention is diverted by other stimuli, it will take a peripheral path and quickly judge by emotional cues, social endorsements, or authoritative labels.
Understanding this theory, we can understand the marketing value of many APPs. For example, the official accountOne of the platforms that is closest to the “central path”. Users click on a long article and are willing to spend a few minutes or even ten minutes reading it carefully, indicating that they have entered a state of deep processing in cognition.
Also graphic and textual, Weibo and Xiaohongshu are platforms with more obvious “peripheral paths”. The pace of information is extremely fast, and the peripheral clues are very “soft”, mainlySocial identity + atmospheric rendering。
Weibo users are more likely to be attracted by hot searches, celebrity retweets, emotional words, and emoticons, and Xiaohongshu’s community context also emphasizes “real”, “recommended”, and “I have tried”, which are all peripheral clues.
PodcastTwo paths are frequentStacked。 Because the audio rhythm is slow and the content structure is long, it is easy to stimulate listeners to follow the anchor’s logic and think deeply, which is a good soil for the central path; On the other hand, the voice itself has a sense of personality and companionship, and the anchor’s tone, speech recognition, and familiarity are very easy to trigger the trust of the peripheral path. Therefore, the persuasiveness of podcasts is often “double-tracked” – first rely on trust to impress and then rely on content to persuade.
In fact, Bilibili is also this kind of two-line parallel platform. Bilibili and podcasts occupy almost the waist of the marketing funnel side by side: in the gap when users have been “seen” but have not yet “placed an order”, what brands need most is to turn sporadic curiosity into sustained interest and subtly superimpose trust.
Bilibili relies on rich picture narratives, barrage co-creation and secondary creation atmosphere, allowing users to gradually identify with the value behind the content in visual impact and community interaction.
Podcasts use long audio, dialogue and storytelling to inject “companionship credibility” into the brand, and use voice to establish a one-on-one private connection.
Their common role is to “stick” the originally distracted attention to the brand, accumulate momentum for subsequent search and e-commerce scenarios, and make the purchase no longer an impulse, but a natural decision.
From this perspective, deep trust is used to deepen the long-term value of the brand and audience, while shallow trust is more efficient in terms of quick attraction and short-term conversion.
3. It is more like a public relations medium, not an advertising medium
Of course, podcasts have the advantage of building deep trust, but this“Slow media” cannot independently support the different needs of brands at all stages, and its adaptability to brand marketing needs is not high.
- Incubation periodNew brands need to quickly validate concepts and market demands, and short videos and social ads can bring instant feedback and help build initial voice. Podcasts struggle to provide enough traffic and user insights at this stage due to their slow buildup of trust.
- Growth period: Brands enter a period of volume and need to promote sales growth through intensive exposure. At this time, high-frequency short video delivery and in-feed advertising can quickly reach a large number of potential users, while podcasts can deepen loyalty, but they cannot solve conversion bottlenecks alone.
- maturity: When the brand has a stable customer base and sufficient awareness, podcasts can be used to deepen the brand story and core values, further increasing the repurchase rate and word-of-mouth voice. At this time, podcasts can collaborate with other channels to not only maintain old customers, but also to promote innovative gameplay.
To put it simply, podcasts can only play the greatest value during the maturity of the brand strategy, rather than playing a major role in the growth period of detonating sales. It’s more of a long-line layout that is suitable as an auxiliary tool for brand reputation and deep linking.
So my point of view is that podcasts are more like a public relations medium than an advertising medium in terms of marketing attributes.
Because the core role of PR media is to shape the brand image and tell the brand story, and establish a deep emotional connection with the core audience. Podcasts are a great fit for these needs.
In contrast, advertising media pursues high-frequency exposure and instant response, and is good at creating short-term conversions, but it is difficult to reach the user’s heart.
Therefore, brands should regard podcasts as an important position to build reputation and values, and let listeners subtly identify with the brand concept through regular serialization, in-depth interviews and behind-the-scenes revelations, rather than simply treating it as an extension of performance advertising.
Some of the technology and business podcasts I come into contact with are connected to public relations companies and corporate public relations departments, and rarely have advertising departments. But this actually limits the development of podcast commercialization, and the ceiling of public relations is very low compared to advertising.
A company’s annual public relations expenses may not be as much as the budget of the marketing department for a conference. Share a data: the global public relations market is more than $10 billion, and the size of the advertising market has exceeded $1 trillion this year.
4. Some suggestions
Finally, some advice for brands that want to do podcasting.
Treating podcasts as “trust engineering” is more suitable for long-term context construction. It is suitable for supporting the brand’s deep strategy, such as category education, brand concept reshaping, B2B trust building and other scenarios, rather than high-frequency channels that directly drive sales.
Brands should abandon the “CPC/CPM perspective” and instead evaluate the value of podcasts around “brand awareness precipitation” and “audience mind building”.
For brands that are willing to grow slowly with their users, podcasts are a natural position.
In addition, in terms of implantation, we are used to seeing implantation in short videos, but this is not suitable for podcasts.
Topic selection and content co-creation is the right method, and the cooperative content is polished into a “co-construction column” or “brand topic” with brand tone. However, this means that brands need to invest more effort and costs, and the threshold is higher.
Podcasts can be used as the content mother, not the end point of communication. A high-quality podcast program can be systematically split and redistributed as the “parent material” of multi-platform content. The 60-minute interview can be derived into Bilibili, Douyin short videos, Xiaohongshu graphic dry goods, long articles on official accounts, golden sentences on Weibo topics, and Zhihu professional Q&A. This content ecological approach not only increases ROI, but also maximizes the emotional value and professional insights accumulated in podcasts. Branded content teams should include podcasts in their content asset system, not single placements.
So, is podcasting the next “traffic harvester”?
I think: it’s more like a marathon. The boundaries between audio, video, and live streaming are constantly blurring, and the rules of the platform may be rewritten at any time, but as long as there are still people willing to take half an hour to listen to a sincere conversation in a fragmented world, podcasts have meaning.
