Podcasts have risen to prominence as an entertainment medium over the course of the last decade and a half, but it is only within the past few years that they have truly entered the mainstream and become a viable platform for advertisers to harness.

Now the Digital Marketing Association has found that over half of UK households where occupants collectively make at least £75K annually are listening to podcasts on a monthly basis at minimum. This means that targeted promotions can really pay dividends while also reshaping shopping trends and driving brand recognition.

DMA spokesperson Tim Bond said that podcasts offer a unique opportunity for brands to engage with prospective customers, in part because storytelling is already baked into this medium and so this can be echoed by the marketing efforts of the businesses that support the most popular shows.

This in turn means that when people go to carry out safe shopping online, they will fall back on information relayed to them in the podcasts they listen to in order to inform their spending decisions.

While more affluent listeners are clearly an ideal target for advertisers, it is also clear from the report that youngsters spend more time listening than their older counterparts.

The under-35s questioned in the study were especially interested in podcast-based content, with close to a third saying that they consume more than one podcast each week, while 14 per cent singled themselves out as daily listeners.

There has been something of an explosion of podcasts with promotional tie-ins used to provide financial support for their creation, with platforms like Acast making it easier for up and coming shows to both get the audiences they deserve and also secure sponsorship, whereas in the past this would have been much more difficult.