Today I share parts of a conversation I had, but as I'm saying my negative opinion of a certain practice, I'm not saying the company, and I've replaced the actual guest with an AI-generated voice (from 11 labs). If you plan on paying for a service to promote your show, this is a MUST LISTEN. We also talk about Apple evaporating your downloads is a GOOD thing.
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Verified Downloads vs Verified Listens In Podcasting
According to the IAB standard 2.1, one of the criteria is, “To count as a valid download, the ID3 tag plus enough of the podcast content to play for 1 minute should have been downloaded.” With this in mind, if you create a player that downloads just enough to equal 1 minute of content, it will appear as a download (there are other criteria, but this is one of the big ones that everyone quotes).
A verified Listen is when a player DOESN'T Preload, and the file only starts to go from the hosting service to the device when a HUMAN presses play.
So you need to go deeper if someone says, “We have Verified IAB 60-second download” there is a difference between verified and certified.
GDPR and CCPA Compliance
GDPR and CCPA are laws in Europe and Canada that protect user privacy.
If you are using a service you might want to see if the number of services goes down when you talk about Europe.
Chartable (owned by Spotify) has documentation for GDPR and CCPA
You want to be sure any service you are using takes into account GDPR and CCPA.
Who Would Ignore Inflated Numbers?
Big companies with big budgets get the green light to create a podcast (probably with an inflated team) and then they need to show some growth and return on investment. So they hire a company that places an add, they show LOTS of downloads (with somewhere between 0 and 20% retention rate) and LOTS of data to show you, not just downloads but what type of person is listening. The marketing manager saves their job and gets their budget approved for the next quarter.
For the record I understand why advertisers would want this, but not at the expense of inflating numbers. Any podcaster who wants advertisers should run a survey with their audience. If the audience isn't engaged enough to fill out a form, well, then how engaged are they going to be to buy a product?
But What Happens to the Verified Downloads When You Turn Off the Campain?
When I asked if the download stopped the answer was, “They will Yeah, so it's like, you know, I'd reckon it's like, you know, it's, it's pretty pronounced.”
My Biggest Worry About Podcast Advertising
If we use inflated numbers to boost programmatic ad payouts, the advertisers lose. This may not be obvious in 2024 as an onslaught of political ads comes into the space, but what happens in 2025?
The DIY Way to Promote Your Podcast Yourself
Why not set up a page with a player (from your host that doesn't pre-load, and have a trailer or a welcome message (maybe a video saying thanks for stopping by).
The player there is to give them a taste and then have buttons to follow your show on Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts, and Amazon. (that will cover the majority of listeners)
Then you can use a click tracking tool like Switchy, so you can see how many people went to your landing page, and which follow buttons were clicked
QUESTION OF THE MONTH
Each month, I ask you to chime in on the show so we all can learn together. Be sure to tell us about your show and mention your website.
Leave Your Answer at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question
Where I Will Be?
I look forward to seeing you all, please come up and say hi. To see my full itinerary, go to schoolofpodcasting.com/where
Mentioned In This Episode
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Time Stamps
00:01:40 – Opening
00:02:18 – Apple Stats Evaporates 30% Of Your Downloads
00:05:47 – Trying Not to Get Sued
00:07:45 – How This Service Works
00:09:26 – Does Your Player Preload?
00:11:51 – The Terms You Need to Understand
00:12:42 – Power Rant: Do Your Job
00:14:57 – Make Yourself Look Good By Comparing Yourself to Something Bad
00:16:47 – Enter Attribution
00:17:30 – Working on Auto Follows
00:18:56 – It's Not Fake?
00:19:54 – How Did You Get My Information?
00:20:12 – Admission of Preloading/Buffering
00:21:23 – All About the Data
00:22:57 – Retargeting Equals More Ad Spend
00:23:38 – Verified Downloads Are Not Good Enough
00:24:09 – The Purpose of This Company
00:24:31 – A Specific Case
00:25:41 – Retention Numbers
00:26:18 – Cost Per Listener
00:27:07 – History Lesson: Twitterbombing
00:28:39 – The Takeaways
00:32:50 – Other Bad Stats
00:33:57 – My YouTube Shorts Stat
00:34:45 – Question of the Month
Bloopers
This episode originated at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/915
