Tracking Podcast Downloads Is Worthless To Everyone [S3E41]

I’m aware that most podcast advertising inventory today is priced and purchased based on the number of downloads an episode is projected to receive. And it is with that full awareness that I assure you no advertiser wants to buy podcast advertising inventory that way. Instead, advertisers want to pay when their ads are listened to by the right audience in the right geography at the right time.

Downloads, by themselves, illuminate none of that. Downloads are nothing more than an internal count of computers talking to computers. 

Spotify is changing the game, working with select advertisers to optimize campaign performance around true listening activity. And they’re not alone. I encourage you to read the great dialog between Amplifi Media and Sounds Profitable, where Steven Goldstein and Bryan Barletta walk through the sweeping changes we’re already seeing in podcast advertising. 

Then there’s the fact that downloads of podcast media files can be faked in a way that podcast media hosting companies following IAB 2.0 guidelines cannot detect. Anthony Gourraud details exactly how he faked downloads that were tracked and measured by IAB compliant hosts and tracking services. 

As advertisers gain a better picture of the disparity between actual listener behavior provided by Spotify and file download activity provided by their media host, the inferiority of downloads will become more obvious, eroding the trust placed in that metric. Evnatually, high-trust data (measuring listens) will be sold at a premium. Low-trust data (measuring downloads) will be sold on the cheap, forcing publishers to apply pressure directly on other apps to provide similar data to reclaim the value of their mutli-platform ad inventory. 

Tom Webster of Edison Research published an article that illustrates what  I'm calling “The Serial Problem”. Popularity rankers aren’t smart enough (though they could be) to separate automatic downloads from promotional content by legacy subscribers from actual consumer behavior of the actual podcast episodes. 

The obvious improvement here is to track the actual popularity among consumers against the totality of episodes of the show itself. Which we can do today, getting rid of these out-of-date rankings that are deeply, deeply flawed.

Want to double the number of downloads your podcast gets in a month? Produce twice as many episodes. Even though you’ve not gained a single new listener, you’ll see ~100% growth.

A much better way to measure show growth is by measuring the unique audience of a podcast over a period of time, noting how often each unique person accesses one or more episodes of a podcast. 

Once you have a good handle on active users over various time frames, you’re able to examine and segment on activity. We might find interesting, data-driven learnings on Time To Listen by calculating the amount of time that elapsed from the file request (taking into...

I’m aware that most podcast advertising inventory today is priced and purchased based on the number of downloads an episode is projected to receive. And it is with that full awareness that I assure you no advertiser wants to buy podcast advertising inventory that way. Instead, advertisers want to pay when their ads are listened to by the right audience in the right geography at the right time.

Downloads, by themselves, illuminate none of that. Downloads are nothing more than an internal count of computers talking to computers. 

Spotify is changing the game, working with select advertisers to optimize campaign performance around true listening activity. And they’re not alone. I encourage you to read the great dialog between Amplifi Media and Sounds Profitable, where Steven Goldstein and Bryan Barletta walk through the sweeping changes we’re already seeing in podcast advertising. 

Then there’s the fact that downloads of podcast media files can be faked in a way that podcast media hosting companies following IAB 2.0 guidelines cannot detect. Anthony Gourraud details exactly how he faked downloads that were tracked and measured by IAB compliant hosts and tracking services. 

As advertisers gain a better picture of the disparity between actual listener behavior provided by Spotify and file download activity provided by their media host, the inferiority of downloads will become more obvious, eroding the trust placed in that metric. Evnatually, high-trust data (measuring listens) will be sold at a premium. Low-trust data (measuring downloads) will be sold on the cheap, forcing publishers to apply pressure directly on other apps to provide similar data to reclaim the value of their mutli-platform ad inventory. 

Tom Webster of Edison Research published an article that illustrates what  I'm calling “The Serial Problem”. Popularity rankers aren’t smart enough (though they could be) to separate automatic downloads from promotional content by legacy subscribers from actual consumer behavior of the actual podcast episodes. 

The obvious improvement here is to track the actual popularity among consumers against the totality of episodes of the show itself. Which we can do today, getting rid of these out-of-date rankings that are deeply, deeply flawed.

Want to double the number of downloads your podcast gets in a month? Produce twice as many episodes. Even though you’ve not gained a single new listener, you’ll see ~100% growth.

A much better way to measure show growth is by measuring the unique audience of a podcast over a period of time, noting how often each unique person accesses one or more episodes of a podcast. 

Once you have a good handle on active users over various time frames, you’re able to examine and segment on activity. We might find interesting, data-driven learnings on Time To Listen by calculating the amount of time that elapsed from the file request (taking into consideration automatic download vs user-initiated requests) to actual listening. That would be a fascinating study, you know?

Broadly speaking and ignoring the costs inherent with payroll, marketing, and other overhead necessary to run a business, the variable costs podcast hosting companies face are for bandwidth and file storage. That’s it. Yes, more downloads of media files increase their bandwidth cost, but not uniformly. My episodes are about 9 MB each. A 2-hour long episode of another show might be 120 MB. It’s the file size combined with downloads that are the factor.

I get that basing podcast media file hosting pricing tiers on the number of downloads is a convenient shorthand. Candidly, I’m not sure what better solution won’t confuse the heck out of podcasters. What I do know is that basing pricing on downloads is flawed from the start. And it continues to propagate the myth that downloads are an important metric in podcasting. 

For all the reasons I’ve laid out and more, I assure you that tracking podcast downloads is worthless to everyone. 

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Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions.

Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few.

You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com.

If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources:

1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion.
2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions.
3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics.
4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet.
5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more.

We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Podsights - https://podsights.com/privacy