Audio Vs Video Podcasting

Apr 29

To audio podcast or video podcast…that is the question.

It is in fact, the question that I get the most during consultations with potential (or existing) clients.

They’re trying to make a decision as to whether an audio only podcast fits their needs, or whether they need to invest in video and it’s all a bit confusing.

I will say straight up - there is no one size fits all answer to this as every show is different, and their goals are different. But there are a few key points that are worth taking into consideration when you’re trying to make this decision for yourself.

Audio Podcasting Is Easier

Let's start with the wonderful truth about audio podcasting: it's cheaper, faster, and simpler to produce. You need a quality microphone, a decent boom arm, and the edit is less intense as a general rule. That's it. No lighting setups, no camera anxiety, no visual post-production headaches and you could record it in your bed looking like a hot mess. No one needs to know!

At Bamby Media, we've seen countless successful podcasts thrive with audio-only formats. The intimacy of audio allows for authentic connection without the pressure of visual perfection. Your audience can consume your content while driving, working out, or doing household chores - something video can't match.

Consumption Rates

The other great thing about audio only is that the consumption rate is generally quite high. If your listener has switched on an episode from you - they’re more likely to listen to the whole thing or at least about 80%. That means the depth of the connection that they feel with you is potentially far greater than when they watch a YouTube video. There are a lot of distractions when viewers consume. You’re lucky if you get a consumption rate of 20 - 30%.

This should technically mean that the listener will trust you quicker than the viewer will. They get to know you on a deeper level in audio, and if you’re trying to sell to this listener in some way, they’re more likely to buy from you (or your sponsors).

Video Podcasts Are More Complex

It’s true. Video podcasting is a lot more complicated than audio only and a lot more expensive. You’re dealing with professional lighting setups, set design considerations and potentially multiple camera angles. There is also significantly more post-production editing involved and those all important thumbnails to design.

Though it is more complex to produce, you are opening yourself up to the world of “search” which I find to be one of the most important parts of podcasting.

So I pose this question to you next:

How are you going to find listeners?

If you’re audio only, word of mouth is actually the most effective way to grow your show. You can also produce snippets that you share on social media (video plays into the fold here because video snippets perform better than audiogram snippets). Promoting on social media via those snippets can help you grab more listeners - but it’s also very slow going unless you already have a sizeable audience.

Yes, you can also guest on other people’s shows, ad swap and a host of other things, but the real issue I have with audio only if we’re talking about growth is the search features.

It’s becoming increasingly rare that someone goes to their favourite podcast app, types in a search keyword and your show appears. The podcast apps aren’t algorithm based. They don’t know what you’d like to potentially listen to (though Spotify has been doing some work in this space). The search alone won’t bring you a huge amount of growth.

Video on the other hand is full of growth opportunities from search. When you think about the way you use YouTube - there are two things that seem to be the most common. You either search for something specific that you want to know more about, or you have the YouTube algorithm present you with videos that it thinks you might like.

Now, in order for YouTube to establish what you might like, you need to obviously watch some videos first to help it understand, but within a few days, you’re being served things that you actually want to watch.

This is where the beauty of the smaller creators and podcasters comes in. If you have a video podcast and you’ve done the work with a great title (using searchable keywords), great thumbnail (because we all judge a video by its cover) and a solid keyworded video description with chapter markers - you have a much higher chance of being shown to more people.

If your video quality is great, you know what you’re talking about and you’re delivering in a unique way - the potential for a wider audience and in fact a more targeted audience is far greater than audio only.

Making the Decision

I believe that your choice should depend on three factors:

1. Resources

What's your actual budget and time availability? Video production can require at least triple the investment of audio-only podcasting. I’ve seen a higher ROI on Video Podcasting personally, but we also have high production value.

2. Content Type

Does your content benefit from visual elements? Interview-based shows often do, while narrative podcasts might not need video at all. If you’re trying to educate your listeners/viewers - it can often make a lot more sense to incorporate video as a high percentage of people are visual learners. You can demonstrate more effectively. If you’re more vulnerable in your podcast episodes - the audio experience may feel more genuine.

3. Growth Strategy

Are you building a personal brand that needs face recognition, or is your focus on delivering valuable audio content? I would argue that personal branding is more easily established in video format. You can also spread your podcast in more ways if you have a video and this increases the chance of virality too.

The Hybrid Approach

At Bamby Media, we've found success with a hybrid model for many clients. Start with audio excellence, then gradually integrate video elements as your audience and resources grow. This approach allows you to:

- Build a solid content foundation

- Test video elements (like short snippets) without a full commitment

- Scale production based on actual audience demand or when the focus switches to a larger swing into personal branding.

If you're just starting a lot of podcasters go for audio only at first. They’re nervous to get behind the mic, and until they feel comfortable delivering their content - adding video can feel too overwhelming. Once you've established your voice and audience, video integration becomes a natural evolution rather than a desperate leap.

For established podcasters, video isn't optional anymore - it's a growth accelerator in my opinion. But only if you can maintain the same quality standards you've set with your audio content. If you can’t commit to high quality video, I would delay the move to video podcasting. Your personal brand is at stake here, and if your video quality isn’t great, this will damage the overall feel of your brand.

Questions about scaling your podcast production? Drop them below or book in for a consultation with us here at Bamby Media.

Transcript:

Brianna: [00:00:00] To audio podcast or to video podcast. That is the question. There is so much discussion about this topic of which is superior audio or video. Can a video podcast even be called a video podcast? Isn't it just a video for YouTube? Why is it called a podcast? You know, there's so much. Debate, which I thought would be interesting for me to give my take on because I've been doing this for over a decade and mostly in the audio space, but more recently moving into the video space probably a couple of years ago now.
So let's get straight into it. First of all, audio is easier. Number one, audio is easier. Okay? If you are going to start a podcast and you are already overwhelmed with the fact that you have to have a microphone and you have to record it somehow, then [00:01:00] adding video into that is a extra layer of complexity, which is going to probably blow your brain.
If that's something that feels like it's a barrier for you to get going because you feel like, oh man, video is an extra thing. Now I need some sort of fancy webcam. Am or I need a camera or like, I need all this extra stuff. Don't do it then. Okay. Just start with audio. Just have an audio podcast. That is fine.
If the tech is overwhelming, just do audio. The other benefit of. Doing audio only, other than its simplicity, is the fact that you can really then record whenever you want because you don't have to look a certain way. So what I'm saying here is you can be in your pajamas, it can be 10:00 PM and you can decide that you wanna record a podcast episode.
You don't have to be fancy, you don't have to look good. You don't have to be camera ready. You can just be in your pajamas, like in your bed. And just recording. Although, you know, Emma Chamberlain does that [00:02:00] anyway and she does it with video. You don't have to look super fancy to record a video version, but that is a barrier for a lot of people, especially in podcasting in the B2B space, because you know, they're wanting to present a certain way, they wanna look a certain way.
And if they are presenting themselves on video, then they want to present that image. They're building a personal brand. If you are. Audio only, no one can see what you look like. So you could just have got outta the shower and looked like an absolute mess. Won't matter. Number three, why audio is really a nice option is that connection that you can get and actually the way you speak is often different when you're presenting in video versus audio.
Only when you are audio only. There's something about it where you just put the headphones on and you can even just close your eyes and you're just talking to yourself. It feels really. Cathartic to just be talking to yourself and be audio only and have [00:03:00] the lights off and just present. You can just do that.
And so it feels like that connection is really nice. And from a listener perspective, they can also sense that. So depending on the content that you're delivering, it could be nice to just be audio only because you want to build that. Different sort of feeling into your show, which often only comes when you don't have to also worry about how you're looking or how close you are or whatever for your video.
So that's definitely something to think about. Why else you might wanna just do audio only is it, again, is cheaper because there's less going on from a production standpoint. Let me caveat that first. It depends on what kind of audio show you're doing. If you're doing narrative style show where you've got, you know, multiple different tracks and that you've been interviewing people on the street or there's folly, there's all this stuff.
Obviously that's still going to take considerable time and budget. But for a show where you don't have [00:04:00] all that going on, where maybe it's just like I am now, me in front of my microphone, uh, in my studio, the amount of money that it takes to actually make that happen is. Fairly limited. You can just do, uh, one podcast microphone, one podcast, boom arm, and a pair of headphones so that you can monitor yourself.
Maybe a budget of like $400. You could get it done for that much. And then in the editing side, the editing will cost you less because you are not having the complexity of video. As soon as you introduce video, even video snippets, that's going to cost you more. The budget is often a constraint for people that we speak to as far as you know, they're interested in, in our production packages.
If they can't afford the video, then that's a rate limiting step to do video. It costs more to do a production like that. Not only does video cost more from an editing perspective, but of course it costs more in the actual [00:05:00] setup. Phase two, because you need lighting. You need cameras, you need like a setup that makes sense for video, that has good stuff in the background.
Maybe you have a couch or whatever. You know, all this Lego in the background here is thousands of dollars that I didn't buy it to have the backdrop like that I. I love building Lego, and so that to me is like an added bonus that I can have this be part of my setup, but whatever you do from a video perspective is going to cost you money.
More money than an audio only show would. They're probably the main ones with audio being like a bonus. If you really wanna start figuring out whether you are interested in doing podcasting, then audio only is, is a simple way to do it. It's also how the medium started. And so there's kind of like a, a romantic feeling about that.
'cause that's where I started in audio production as well, where everything feels simple and easy and [00:06:00] beautiful in an audio-only space. You don't have to think about the complexities of video and that is a nice place to play in saying that video has a lot of things that make it. More appealing to me personally and to a lot of the clients that we work with.
I still think it's a podcast if it's video. So I, you know, I might ruffle some feather feathers saying that if we look at the huge ones like Chris Williamson for example, or diary of a CEO, let's focus on Chris Williamson for a second, because I think he has one of the best, uh, production value setups in podcasting that I've seen.
Chris Williamson has these beautiful shots. It is like this cinematic experience sitting down to watch an episode of his. The lighting is beautiful. The sets are different. He goes to different locations. It's just like there's an experience in that. Yes. When [00:07:00] you're listening to it, it's still an experience, but having the video version of it when you're watching it is like.
This is next level. This feels expensive. This feels luxurious. This feels like he's, he's so invested in the outcome of this podcast. He's building a brand around this podcast. This podcast would do really well on streaming channels, and I'm sure that's coming next as far as like Netflix and, and I, in fact, I read an article that was talking about that video podcasts are going to be available on streaming services, so there's like another level.
That opens up when you allow yourself to spend money on the video production. Chris Williamson is a really good example, even me here at Bamboo Media. So I've obviously spent money to set this production. Up, not a huge amount because again, it's a space that I'm not gonna be in forever. This is a, a sort of transient [00:08:00] space.
This is not the studio I will settle into for a long time, but this has brought me into a different level. When you look at other videos, other podcasts on YouTube, the quality makes a difference. To have someone actually stick around on a video, that's gonna be something to think about that the production value, what it allows for you to do, if you can spend money on video and have a video version of your podcast on there, that is great quality.
You're getting a whole new audience that wants to experience you in a whole new way. It's really important to think about it like that. The other thing I'll say on that is that I used to just have the audio only version of the podcast on podcast platforms, and that was fine. It was doing its job. The whole show exists to talk about podcasting, to help fellow podcasters get better at podcast production and podcast in general.
That was fine. I was [00:09:00] getting, you know, fine amount of downloads, not a huge amount. It's a, it's a niche audience and I'm not big on other social media channels and that was just trugging along and it was there for our clients more than anything else to help educate them as they go along. Then I.
Introduced video and I started putting video on YouTube and that made a massive difference to the listenership, to the viewership of the show. What used to be a small amount of downloads has turned into a large amount of views, and then corresponding, you get actually more audio downloads as well, because sometimes.
They come to you, they find you on YouTube, they engage with you there. They start watching you on YouTube because the SEO, like the actual search ability for them to be able to find you is so much easier on YouTube, but they can't always watch. So now they've become a fan because of YouTube, but they're also listening to you on [00:10:00] audio channels.
That is definitely a thing that happens if you present yourself well on YouTube, if you have good quality audio, if you have. Good quality video. They find you there, they engage with you there, and then they engage with you elsewhere with audio only shows, in my experience over the decade that I've been doing this from my experience.
There is a little bit of a cap to the audio listenership. Again, I'm, I'm talking mostly about B2B podcast, not so much about shows that are, um, you know, more influencer based or like comedy shows, or they're just trying to sell merch, like entertainment based podcast. We're talking about things that are a little bit more niched.
There's kind of a ceiling with the audio because. It can be reliant on from an audio perspective, the size of your existing following elsewhere. And how that feeds into your audio. You don't get searched and found as often as easily on podcast platforms as [00:11:00] you do on YouTube. So if you are trying to draw people in to your like funnel, which is your podcast, the podcast is the top of your funnel, let's say.
You gotta get as many people in there. You gotta get as many people to find you as possible. The best way to do that, that I've found so far is. With YouTube, with video versions of your podcast, if you can have that high level of production to match. What you don't wanna do is have the video version of your show be bad quality video, bad lighting, just a webcam that comes with your laptop or with your computer that diminishes your brand.
Almost immediately. Maybe they listen to you on audio platforms, then they go over to video and they're like, Ugh, this looks rubbish. You know, that cheapens it. It does. It cheapens the experience of what they think of your brand, of working with you, of how much you can charge based off of how you're presenting [00:12:00] on video.
So really think about that. If you wanna step into video, can you level up your production so that you match? The way you're presented elsewhere. Getting back to that like audio and having a bit of a ceiling, you do kind of spread yourself obviously across your, your social media following followings and you're sharing about your show and you're putting it out there on, on those platforms.
Unless you are guesting on a bunch of other shows and you're getting out there and you're doing that for new people to find you with audio only is. A lot harder if you're not doing the marketing around it, around the audio show with video. Using the fact as well, now that chat, GPT is indexing video. I had someone reach out to me the other day on my YouTube channel saying they searched for something and my video came up in chat, GPT.
So that's another level. It's not just YouTube like. Google. We're also getting index [00:13:00] indexed on AI chatbot things as well now. So there's a whole audience that you are not currently. Exposing yourself to, because you're not doing video. Because it's harder. Because it's more expensive. I get it. But also I've seen the benefits of doing it this way of having video.
The thing with video and audio from a sort of consumption rate point of view, that's gonna be something else. That's interesting because if you look at your consumption rate on podcast platforms. And you look at the backend and you look at per episode basis, you might be getting like a consumption rate of 70, 80%.
That means that a person is listening to your show for at least 80% of the actual episode length. So if you have a 20 minute episode, they're listening to like 18 minutes of it. So May, maybe it's just the last little sign off bit that they're not really that interested in. If you go to that same episode on YouTube, I [00:14:00] bet you that you are not getting an 80% consumption rate on your video for a 20 minute video.
Maybe you're getting like four minutes. And that's pretty good, you know, so they're not staying with you potentially for as long on video. The reason for that being video has a lot more distractions. Unless they're watching it on tv, then they're probably more likely to watch through the whole thing. But, you know, if they're on YouTube, they've got other tabs open, they're checking the emails, they're, they're sort of watching you as they're doing other things.
Maybe they're playing a game at the same time. They're not consuming in the same way as they are with. Audio, so it makes sense that the audio experience will be something that has a higher consumption because they're doing the cleaning. They're out for a walk, they're in their car, they consume, and they don't really turn it off because oftentimes they can't even, you know, they've, they've, they've got nothing to press on.
It's, it's, it's in a place where they can't get to, so they will listen all the way through, or very close to the end. [00:15:00] In saying that, though. Does that matter? This is my other thing that I think about, especially with B2B. If someone isn't viewing you all the way through, but they're getting what they need, is that a problem?
I mean, I know it's annoying because you're like, I've just produced this 20 minute long video and I've paid an editor to produce the 20 minutes. Of the video and they're only watching four minutes of it, like, ah, what's the point? The point is, they've come to you, they've listened to you, they've watched you, they've engaged with you.
They've got a feeling for you. They've got a feel for who you are from seeing the video. They've found you happened across you, and they only need a couple minutes. They can scrub through to the bit that they actually really wanna know, and then. If your production value's good, then they're like, I like this person.
I will come back and watch four minutes of the next one. That's okay. You've also got links [00:16:00] in the bottom of your YouTube video. You've also got comments. People are commenting that they aren't commenting in the same way, even on Spotify for podcasters. Now you can, you can leave comments. They're not commenting in the same way.
YouTube people are. I love you YouTube commenters. I just appreciate that so much, and it feels like I'm building a community here on YouTube that I'm not building on my audio platform. I love the audio platform because I feel like I'm serving the person that just really wants to engage with that audio, that just wants to listen to me as they're doing something else.
That's, that's fantastic. But the video person, the community on YouTube is a lot more engaged, so. Even if you are not watching me all the way through to the end, I'm okay with that. You're getting what you need. You're getting to know me in a format that makes sense for you in the middle of all the other things that you're doing in your day, and maybe you'll click through and you'll find out some other ways to work with us.
So whether that's our customer [00:17:00] reviews of your edits, whether that's consultations you can book, whether that's our production services, you know, we get a lot more traffic to our website off the back of YouTube. We have monetized our. YouTube without being monetized yet. Like when we were not monetized, we had made thousands of dollars off the back of YouTube without being monetized.
In the traditional sense, doing that on audio only is a lot more difficult and it takes a lot longer to do and it takes a lot longer to build potentially an audience. All that to say, although I flipping love. The audio only experience and as an editor as well, like a, a podcast editor. Oh my God. I love it when I get.
A show that it's audio only that I'm editing, and it's just so simple. It's so simple. It's so calming, you know? It's so nice. I love that. I love the audio only experience. I will always love [00:18:00] the audio in the experience, but if I'm thinking about the B2B person or someone that's really trying to grab new audiences and isn't guesting on a bunch of different shows, then YouTube.
Video podcasting. It's so good. I can't recommend it highly enough. You won't be a purist. This is my audio only podcast. You know, you're gonna get kicked back from people being like, that's not a podcast. It's still a podcast. Okay. I. Let's just chill. It's still a podcast. It's just delivered in a different method.
And if you want to explore that a little bit more, go and watch Modern Wisdom, which I spoke about at the top of this on YouTube. You don't have to watch all the way through. 'cause these long episodes that he does go and watch like a couple of minutes of a few different ones and see how he changes locations.
See the time and the effort and the money that he puts into the video production side. Then go listen to that same show in audio. You will have a [00:19:00] beautiful experience both ways. You will have a lovely time listening to both aspects, to both avenues, and they are both podcasts. I would definitely still call both of those things.
Podcasts, it's a video version and there's an audio version of a podcast. I hope that that has given you something to think about. If you are a person that's trying to build your personal brand and you feel like Podcasting's gonna be the way to do it, I would challenge you on what's your budget. If you can increase that budget to include video and then have content that is good.
This is a match made in heaven for me. As someone that comes to us and then they've got this stuff set, we can go, boom, let's blow this thing up. Like let's really. Go for it and put it out on audio and video. You're still gonna take a while. You are not gonna get a bunch of subscribers all at once. Okay?
Know that you still are [00:20:00] starting from the base of anything that you're doing and that. Everything takes time to build in the way, but having the video version, I think is a very smart move for podcasters for B2B podcasters that are trying to increase the reach and increase the listenership and their overall market as well.
I hope you've enjoyed this. I'm using a different microphone today, so if you've noticed the difference there, then that would be cool. I'm gonna be reviewing this one shortly. This is the shore MV seven plus, and yet I am using it in the XLR format, and there are links to things that you can click on if you want to under this video and if you're on audio only as well.
Thank you so much. Have a great day. [00:21:00]