Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Key takeaways
- Being present across every format and platform doesn’t compound – owning a destination does
- 78% of UK adults prefer human-driven content, according to the PPA x Enders Analysis report published last week; trust is a structural advantage, not just a brand value
- The publishers holding ground aren’t the ones with the widest distribution – they’re the ones with the deepest relationships with a defined audience
- Audio is distinctively suited to the moments when your most valuable audience has attention to give: on the go, multitasking, or away from a screen
- Private, segmented audio gives publishers a direct channel to their highest-value tiers – without algorithm dependency and with engagement data that email and social can’t produce
The pressure to be everywhere is real. Social, search, newsletters, video, audio, events – the list of formats that content publishers are expected to maintain keeps growing, and the resource to maintain them rarely does.
Auddy CEO and Co-founder Andrew Craissati recently joined Olivia Midgley, Editorial Director of Farmers Guardian, and Darren Styles OBE, CEO of Stream Publishing, on stage at the PPA Festival to discuss “Everything, everywhere” – the multi-format reality no one warned publishers about.
The discussion happened with some coincidental timing: The PPA’s annual report, produced with Enders Analysis, landed at the same event with a title that could almost be a sequel: Humans and machines: The everywhere equation.
What the PPA session made clear, and what the Enders report confirms, is that this pressure is being widely misread. Multi-format distribution is a necessity, but it is not a strategy.
The publishers who are growing – carefully, sustainably, in ways that compound – are not the ones with the most channels. They are the ones who have built somewhere worth coming back to.
The everywhere trap: reach without relationship is borrowed
Every channel a publisher doesn’t own is a channel someone else controls. Social reach is rented from platforms whose incentives don’t align with editorial quality. Search traffic depends on algorithms that can – and do – shift without warning. The Enders report is candid about what this means in practice: declining referral traffic, rising platform dependency, and a structural fragility that affects even established brands.
Being everywhere is necessary because that is where audiences are. But distribution alone doesn’t generate loyalty, and loyalty is what protects revenue when platform conditions change. The publishers most exposed to volatility are those who have optimised for reach at the expense of relationship – who have traded depth for breadth and are now dependent on borrowed audiences they don’t fully understand.
The everywhere equation, as the report frames it, is not simply about format volume. It is about what publishers own at the end of it.
What trust actually buys you
The Enders report finds that 78% of UK adults prefer human-driven content in online news. That figure is worth sitting with – not just as a reassuring statistic about the resilience of journalism, but as a signal about where structural advantage actually lives.
Trust is not a brand value: it is a competitive moat. And unlike reach, it cannot be replicated by a platform or eroded by an algorithm update overnight.
The case studies the report highlights bear this out. Credit Strategy’s events-membership-data flywheel. 50 Best’s community-led authority model. These are not publishing strategies built on maximising distribution. They are strategies built on serving a precisely defined community with enough depth and consistency that the community stays, pays, and brings others in. The result is compounding – data, loyalty, and commercial value that grows because the relationship grows.
What these publishers have in common is that they stopped optimising for reach and started optimising for return. Their audiences come back not because an algorithm surfaced the content, but because the content is worth coming back for.
Read: Growing a Subscription Community with Private Podcasts
Format is a strategic decision, not just a delivery choice
Most discussions about format treat it as a production question: which formats can we maintain, and at what quality? That is a legitimate operational concern. But it obscures the more important strategic question: which formats are best suited to the relationship you are trying to build with a specific audience?
Not all formats are equal in what they deliver. Some maximise discovery – short video, social posts, search-optimised articles. Others maximise depth – long reads, newsletters, events. And some do something different again: they reach an audience in the specific moments when that audience has genuine, undivided attention to give.
Audio sits in this third category. It is not a format that competes with video for screen time. It is a format that goes where screens cannot – the commute, the gym, the walk between meetings. Completion rates for audio content consistently outperform text and video. Listeners are not multitasking in the distracted sense; they are absorbing in motion, which is different.
For publishers with audiences who are time-scarce but deeply engaged – senior professionals, investors, executives, franchise owners, paying subscribers – audio isn’t an add-on to the content strategy. It is the format most aligned with how those audiences actually live.
Read: Private podcasting: a strategic research brief for marketing leaders
Where private podcasting fits in
Most publishers who have explored audio have done so publicly – a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, discoverable and indexed alongside millions of others. That model works well for audience building. It is less well suited to audience deepening.
Auddy’s podcasting solution Campfire, is built for the latter. Campfire is an end-to-end podcast solution with full-service creative and editorial support, built on a proprietary private distribution platform. Publishers use it to deliver secure, access-controlled audio directly to defined audience segments – paying subscribers, VIP members, franchise operators, partner networks – without going through a public platform.
The practical difference is significant. Because access is controlled, publishers can segment content by audience tier: a short briefing for the broad subscriber base, a deeper strategy conversation for premium members, an operational update for franchisees. Because distribution is direct, there is no algorithm between the publisher and the listener. And because analytics track named users rather than anonymous downloads, publishers can see who listened, how far they got, where engagement dropped – and use that data to improve content and demonstrate value to commercial partners.
Read: How to Make Your Podcast Attractive to Sponsors
For publishers building the kind of flywheel that Credit Strategy and 50 Best have built, private audio is the connective tissue between editorial authority and community depth. It is the format that reaches the most valuable audience in the moments when that audience is actually listening – and then tells you what happened.
Launching a private community podcast with Auddy: read the roadmap
Recap
- Multi-format distribution is necessary – but the publishers who are growing are those who have built owned destinations, not just wider reach
- The PPA/Enders report confirms that trust is a structural advantage: 78% of UK adults prefer human-driven content, and the strongest publishing businesses are those serving defined communities with depth
- Format matters strategically, not just operationally – audio is distinctively suited to high-attention, in-motion consumption, which is when time-scarce audiences are actually available
- Private, segmented audio lets publishers deepen relationships with their highest-value tiers, with direct distribution, engagement analytics, and no platform dependency
FAQ
Does private audio work for specialist B2B publishers, or is it better suited to consumer brands? It works particularly well for B2B publishers – arguably better. B2B audiences tend to be time-scarce, mobile, and professionally motivated to stay informed. A 10-minute audio briefing that a subscriber can absorb on the way to a meeting serves that audience more directly than a long read or a scheduled webinar.
How does a private podcast sit alongside a public podcast? They serve different purposes and different audience tiers. A public podcast builds discovery and top-of-funnel reach. A private podcast deepens relationship with an audience that has already opted in – paying subscribers, premium members, partners. Many publishers run both: the public show brings people in, the private show keeps the most valuable ones close.
What is the production lift for a private audio programme? It depends on cadence and format. A short, conversational briefing – 10 to 15 minutes, recorded remotely – is significantly lighter to produce than a long-form interview series. Auddy provides full creative and editorial support alongside the private podcast platform, which means publishers don’t need an in-house production team to maintain a consistent programme. The editorial team handles ideation, structure, coaching, and delivery.
How do the analytics compare to what publishers currently get from email or social? Substantially more useful for understanding genuine engagement. Email tells you who opened; it doesn’t tell you who read, or for how long. Social tells you who clicked; it doesn’t tell you who stayed. Audio analytics show completion rates, drop-off by timestamp, replays, and unique listener identity – which means publishers can see not just that someone accessed the content, but how much of it they absorbed and where their attention held.
