~ New research shows UK podcast audiences reaching record numbers, but technical marketing programmes have barely begun to use the format ~
UK podcast listening reached a new weekly record in early 2026, according to Ofcom, with reach climbing from 23 per cent to 27 per cent of adults in a year. For engineering, science and technology marketing teams built around email and written content, the format remains largely unexploited. Here, Richard Stone, founder of technical PR and B2B podcast agency Stone Junction, explains what the growth means for technical marketing programmes.
Reach is only part of the picture. RAJAR, the UK’s audio audience measurement body, found in its MIDAS survey that 88 per cent of UK weekly podcast listeners complete all or most of an episode once they start it. Blog posts and video content rarely hold an audience for anywhere close to that long.
For marketing teams used to measuring content in click-through rates and page views, that completion figure is a different kind of attention. A listener who finishes a 30-minute episode on an industrial application challenge has spent longer with a brand than almost any other content format achieves.
A natural fit for technical audiences
UK weekly podcast reach has grown by four percentage points in a single year, and the audience skews toward people who already seek out specialist information. Engineers and technical specialists read trade publications and attend conferences because they want depth on a subject. A long-form conversation gives them that in a format they already use in other parts of their working day.
It is this preference for depth that tells us what a podcast for this audience should contain in terms of a specific technical problem, with the evidence and caveats included.
The subject matter for that content already exists inside most engineering, science and technology companies. Application knowledge and sector insight is already with the engineers and technical members of the board. Producing a podcast turns that knowledge into content through conversation, without asking the specialist to draft a written piece is straightforward.
Production is simpler than assumed
Most companies in this sector that have not started a podcast are held back by a single practical concern: production seems more complicated than it actually is. In fact, recording a conversation and scheduling a guest often takes less time than producing a polished bylined article, and the review process is often lighter too.
A single recorded conversation produces more than one piece of content. A 30-minute discussion becomes a podcast episode and a written article, with newsletter and social clips drawn from the same recording afterwards.
The format also solves a recurring problem in technical marketing: getting expertise in front of an audience without asking engineers to write long articles. A recorded conversation with a technical director takes less of their time than a written piece, and it often reads as more credible once it is written up as an article.
Reaching decision makers through podcast content
The specialists and managers with enough seniority to set technical direction are also the ones most likely to sit through a detailed technical conversation in full. That combination of authority and sustained attention is difficult to reach through other methods, and it is exactly the audience most technical marketing content is trying to reach in the first place.
The growth in podcast listening and the completion figures point to the same conclusion: this audience is out there, and once a conversation earns their attention, they stay with it. For most engineering, science and technology marketing programmes, the gap is not demand. It is a format built to meet it.
We get that it’s hard to keep up with the latest thinking in PR and marketing. Subscribe to our twice weekly blog, direct to your inbox, for the answers to all the burning questions your board ask – from using AI in marketing to how to spend your budget against a backdrop of constantly multiplying channels.
