The Italian Podcast Market - Co-founder of the Largest Italian Podcast Media Company Offers Insights into the Podcasting Industry in Italy
5/6/202650 min
Get the inside scoop on the Italian podcast market, like what podcast genres are popular (or not) in Italy, how the non-verbal in Italian culture - like Italian hand gestures - affects podcast listening, and growth and monetization techniques.
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Francesco Tassi, co-founder and CEO of VOIS, the Milan-based podcast creators network achieving 6M monthly listens, and host Catrin Skaperdas sit down at the VOIS studios (on March 3, 2026) to navigate the evolution of the Italian podcast industry from 2019 to today, bringing you an entertaining and educational episode about Italian media culture inclusive of:
- The Italian podcast market in 2019 and why VOIS only worked because of where in Italy it was launched
- Francesco gives a podcast 101 lesson about the two waves of podcasting (2004 and 2014)
- The reaction of Francesco telling his Italian friends and family that he was starting a podcast company in 2019
- How the podcast market in Italy has changed from 2019 to now and how VOIS has changed from then until now
- Cross-promotion and monetization techniques in Italy, including dynamic ad insertion (DAI)
- How podcasts moving toward video has affected the Italian podcast market
- How other forms of media perceive podcasts (e.g. how radio stations see podcasts)
- How competition exists between podcasts and between podcasts and radio
- How the Italian podcast market differs from other markets around the world
- Podcast genres that are not popular in Italy: comedy and sports
- Francesco describes what they call at VOIS “responsible entertainment”
- Average length of podcasts in Italy and when people are listening, according to the data, and what Francisco thinks about it
- How non-verbal in Italian culture affects Italian podcast listening, or doesn’t (affect it)
- Francesco talks about how the Italian podcast market is a great opportunity right now
Chapters:
01:14 Intro
3:01 The Italian podcast market from 2019 to now
7:03 The reaction of Italians when Francesco told people in his life that he was starting a podcast company
10:03 Italian work culture vs the US work culture
13:39 How VOIS / the Italian market has changed from 2019 until now
16:15 Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) in Italian podcasts
22:56 The sense of competition in the Italian podcast market between radio v podcasts or podcasts v podcasts
27:13 How the Italian podcast market differs from other podcast markets around the world
28:22 Italian podcast genres and why certain ones are more popular than others
33:38 “Responsible entertainment” explained
37:55 Average podcast length in Italy
44:28 How non-verbal in Italian culture affects Italian podcast listening, or doesn’t
50:00 Francesco’s final thoughts on the Italian podcast market
52:00 Outro
To learn more about VOIS, check out their website https://vois.fm/
This interview is available to watch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, and available to listen-only everywhere else you can get podcasts.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsFrancesco Tassi· Guest0:00
Not a lot of Italians do speak English, and just because we were used to that, we just translate everything, every movie, every single movie. Most of the Italians don't know the real voice of Will Smith, of, uh- [laughs] ... many, many, many important actors.
Catrin Skaperdas· Host0:15
Even that some people didn't even know what podcasts were. What was the reaction when you told people that you were starting a podcast business?
Francesco Tassi· Guest0:24
When you have to explain to your parents what you're doing and you're leaving a very, very stable job and fulfilling job, uh, to something that they can't even pronounce- [laughs] ... it's like, "I- i- is that pos- postcard?" [laughs] Something similar to this. There are not famous podcast, uh, sports podcast in Italy. I mean, there are a couple. And if you go in, uh, even in UK, they have hundreds that speaks just about the Italian soccer. Comedy, for example, is another outliers. There are some podcast in comedy, but very few.
Catrin Skaperdas· Host0:55
This is Italian, For Sure, the podcast about Italian culture. I'm your host, Katrin Skaperdas, an American living in Italy, and I interview Italians who passionately share their wisdom, stories, and insights about Italian culture.
Speaker 21:08
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