What stole our attention and stole the show at CES 2020 were not sneak peeks of product prototypes that you won’t be able to use any time soon. This year’s big reveal at the world’s largest consumer product show turned out to be music to our ears.

First, here’s a peek at what was and was not real.

• Retro-cool dot-matrix display on your gaming laptop? Check.
• The largest curved monitor ever? Check.
• Augmented sexual reality wares without human? Check.
• Avatars with “real” human speech and “real” facial gestures? Check.
• Smart fridges that use vision to track how much cheese you’ve eaten? Check.
• A “companion robot” that promises to organize your life like a mini-butler: closing curtains, checking your yoga poses, and cleaning up after Aldo? Check.

After processing the overload of what tech CEO’s were trying to do, the return to reality was flatter than a folded laptop. But we’re not complaining. The two big reveals at this year’s tech conference were music to our ears: Podcasting and Permission Content. Here’s a free plug into the future:

Podcasting Has Gone Hollywood — At a panel session that was part of the Digital Hollywood track, seven speakers from companies including iHeart Media, National Public Radio and Warner Media, called podcasting the new Show Biz. Almost every film studio and TV network has announced a podcast division. Traditional Hollywood media and celebrities are creating and promoting podcasts as they used to movie premieres. Why? Podcast audience engagement keeps growing, budgets for quality podcasts are modest yet deliver quality sound bytes, plus the short-form of podcasts is a perfect match to today’s short attention spans.

Permission Content — Unwanted content keeps popping up everywhere you look and listen: on your phone, your laptop, smart speakers, electronic signs, your Freecycle machine. The average person is consuming content for 3.5 hours a day. That’s more time than many people work, play with their kids, or speak with their spouse. When your phone is flooded with even more content apps made possible by the speed of the 5G super highway, which content will you tune in? Enter: Permission Content. This is the stuff you agree to receive by signing up for a service, downloading to your device, or by following a company, or person on social media. The reason that 80 percent of podcast listeners actually listen to the entirety of each podcast episode to which they subscribe is because they have chosen them. They have given their permission by subscribing and downloading podcast shows of their choice to their device of choice. Podcasting is the original permission content.

Streaming Before Streaming Was Chill — The major announcements at CES 2020 were about new video streaming networks such as NBCUniversal’s PEACOCK, Quibi (a startup from Meg Whitman and Jeff Katzenberg), Fitco and Xumo. All will feature short-form content made by professionals and influencers, designed to be streamed primarily on the phone, bypassing the traditional TV and cable networks. Sound familiar? Podcasts have been streaming short-form content to phones by people in their basements and bypassing traditional radio for two decades. Podcasting was streaming before streaming became chillingly expensive.

Data, Except Different — The uniting DNA of all consumer and digital media is data. We can now track everything — what people consume, when, for how long, on what device, where . . . and much more. Podcasting is no exception. With relatively new services such as Blubrry and Chartably, podcasters can know your audience to the one. This includes data points on consumer downloads, listens, uniques, devices, average listening times, locations and platforms of choice. Data tracking is not new. But this new decade is about what you do with the data. It’s about how you can improve your shows, how you can make the content more relevant, and more interesting for your listeners.

CES has always been about trying to predict the future. And the conference is a lot of show. But this year we weren’t completely sold on quirky specs with built-in fantasies of little substance.

Here’s a solid prediction that we, at BurstMarketing, have reason to believe. That’s because it isn’t a promise. It’s happening right now. The average person subscribes to six podcasts. The reason podcast subscriptions will continue to outgrow other content platforms is because listeners have voted with the most real tool at their disposal: permission.

As BurstMarketing’s Chief Content Manager, Marisol guides the content strategy for your podcasts and develops engaging narratives that lead to audience growth. With more than twelve years of experience as a writer and producer, Marisol has created award-winning content for e-zines, magazines, videos and podcasts. As a former news reporter, she’s skilled in using storytelling to engage audiences.