Big listener numbers make podcasts attractive commercially, but a podcast with the right listeners can still see great commercial success with the right combination of editorial expertise and marketing, as Energy Voice Out Loud has shown. It’s a thriving B2B brand launched six years ago by DC Thomson, the 278-year-old Scotland-based, family-owned publisher. The £160mn-revenue company is best known for its regional newspapers, magazines and children’s comics (including the legendary Beano and Dandy).
Energy Voice Out Loud has seen consistent commercial success, making six figures from listener numbers in the hundreds. Senior Marketing Manager Emma Lamont and News Editor Erikka Askeland joined us in London at The Publisher Summit to talk about how the editorial team work with clients to craft episodes that perform well with listeners, how they make podcasts an attractive proposition for sponsors, and how taking the podcast on the road with Energy Voice Live has created high-impact moments for their audience.
Listen below or search for MediaVoices’ The Publisher Podcast wherever you find podcasts.
Energy Voice started off as a monthly print publication in the early 2000’s, before launching online in 2013. It covers the entire UK energy sector, from oil and gas and North Sea energy to offshore wind, hydrogen and nuclear. It’s primarily a B2B brand, but Askeland noted that as energy becomes increasingly important as a personal and political issue, consumers are turning to the publication to understand the mechanics of the industry.
The podcast, Energy Voice Out Loud, was launched in early 2020 as Covid lockdowns began. Each week, three of Energy Voice’s reporters give updates and opinions on the headlines, and occasionally interviews with energy industry leaders.
Packaging podcasts for sponsorship
Listener numbers for the average EVOL podcast are usually in the high hundreds. Although this is enough to put them in the top 10% of podcasts worldwide, it’s usually tougher to convince commercial clients to come on board as the value of podcast listeners is still widely misunderstood. Monetising through dynamic ad insertion simply isn’t an option for most podcasts below four figures.
This hasn’t stopped EVOL from making six figures of revenue annually from the podcast. The team used to offer one-off sponsored episodes, but has moved towards a ‘box set’ offering. Commercial partners can choose series of between 3 to 10 episodes, which are released in addition to the weekly episode.
Rather than being tied to the news agenda, commercial episodes tend to be focused on more evergreen themes. Lamont explained that the team works with the sponsor on the broad strokes of a theme, for example energy market transitions, then finalises the detail with the editorial team.
“I think this is why they’re so successful,” said Lamont. “To shape that theme and the talking points into a narrative that is not only good for the partner but also really compelling for our listeners as well. It’s thanks to our reporters that our clients really trust us to produce for them an absolutely stonking bit of content at the end of it.”
It’s a strategy which is paying off with listeners as well as partners, with some box sets performing 115% better than an average episode. “Those box sets are actually our best performers generally,” Lamont explained. “Often our weekly podcasts will get good listenership if there’s something big in the world going on, but you can rely on the commercial box sets to perform well.”
Sponsored episodes once published become the property of the partner brand, which Askeland says adds extra value as it’s quality editorial content which can be repurposed and republished. “Those [episodes] will be on our website, they’ll be linked from our newsletter, pushed out on our social channels, and then they’ll also be handed over to [the sponsor] to snippet and push out on their channels, give to their MP, give to the people they want to platform.”
“[Sponsors] like us, they like our brand, they like our mode of questioning, us shaking them down a little bit,” she added. “We’re not pushovers, and we’re happy to interrogate the subject matter.”
So far, the size of the audience hasn’t put potential partners off. Askeland noted that people listening are choosing to engage with Energy Voice for more than 30 minutes at a time, which is a powerful proposition for sponsors. “Niche is valuable – the people who are engaging with that content matter,” she said.
DC Thomson is careful to have podcasts at the centre of Energy Voice’s commercial proposition, not as an add-on. “It’s an opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty and talk about an important issue to the energy industry,” Lamont pointed out. “As marketers, you can’t really do that with a banner ad.”
When it comes to building a picture of who is listening, podcast statistics are still very basic. But Energy Voice’s niche audience makes it easier to tell who is likely to be tuning in. “We have a really successful newsletter that tells us a lot about our demographic,” Lamont explained. “Then with every podcast, we’ll publish an article as well, and the reporting on Google Analytics is a lot more advanced than a podcast platform, so we build up a bit of a picture of who these people tend to be.”
EVOL also creates a wrap-up report for each client which breaks down newsletter interactions, article page views, podcast downloads, video views and watch time to showcase how content has performed across the board.
Live events for a niche podcast
Live podcast recordings may not be an obvious extension for podcasts with smaller listener numbers. But when EVOL was approached by a partner who floated the idea of an event series, they decided to give it a shot.
Energy Voice Live, sponsored by D2Zero, took place across four dates in 2025 at venues in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Hull. Askeland said that there were usually 150 people in the room at each recording, with venues deliberately chosen to be intimate and more informal.
“The events themselves were an opportunity – these people love talking to each other, they really want to see each other… and share that space,” she outlined. “But then we give them the opportunity to platform their views, their expertise, and a few drinks and canapes along the way make it really useful.”
Taking the podcast on the road also provided opportunities to bring Energy Voice’s brand and personalities out in real life, to deepen trust and relationships with audiences.
The events have been successful for EVOL as on-demand podcast recordings too. “Our very first one hit 50% over the average listenership,” Lamont shared, theorising that this was partly due to attendees listening again, and sharing with colleagues, as well as regular listeners who didn’t attend.
EVOL has gone on to do further live podcast recordings. An upcoming recording in Aberdeen on 22nd October, sponsored by DNV, is already sold out.
Expanding into video
EVOL started out as an audio-only podcast, and has been slowly experimenting with video elements. At The Publisher Summit, Lamont and Askeland said that they were now shifting to video-first, and were investing in lighting kits for the homes of editors and journalists to improve visual quality.
“Over the last 12 months, we’ve had something like 700,000 video views, and the click-through rate is substantially higher when we do video-first in terms of ads on the podcast,” said Lamont, highlighting the demand for video from their audience.
Askeland added that Energy Voice is supported by a “crack team that can really produce great social snippets, or walk-and-talks, or a variety of formats that can go out on socials or articles.” This supports the investment in video as it can be used widely elsewhere.
EVOL’s success shows that for podcasts with a clearly defined audience, sustainable revenue can come if packaged smartly and sold with confidence in the value of those listening.
Listen above, or search for MediaVoices ‘The Publisher Podcast’ on your podcast app.
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