Since its inception, podcasting has largely been an indie game. Though there are larger players in this space, almost all are independent companies. Ben Thompson digs into the current model, and the difficulties of making money with this model:
A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data: listeners still download MP3s and that’s the end of it; podcasters can measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to, for how long, or whether or not the ads are skipped.
Enter Stitcher, a free app that streams more than 65,000 podcasts. Stitcher was just bought by Midroll Media (itself owned by E.W. Scripps), and it promises to upend the podcast universe.
Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them directly from a podcaster’s server) and inserting ads. That model, though, was likely attractive to Scripps/Midroll: controlling the files and the player means the possibility of making meaningful measurements of play data plus dynamic ad insertion at scale.
As you might expect, this relatively gargantuan entry into the podcasting space does not sit well with independent podcasters.
The big threat:
Moreover, Midroll’s leading role in advertising combined with Scripps’ bank account mean the company could offer big bucks to leading podcasters to make themselves exclusive to Stitcher, driving users to the measurable app to the long-term benefit of the company’s efforts to attract brand advertisers.
Read Ben’s post. There’s a lot at stake for the future of podcasting.
Ugh.
I will not be using that nonsense. This is a grab by big media to monetize through spying on users to get metrics they can then sell to others. I will not be listening to any podcasts that break Apple’s iTunes model that respects our privacy. Screw advertisers. Let them cast their nets wide and see who buys. Just like old media. My personal information is not for sale.
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Not sure why podcasters are so stressed about this data issue. Surely if people continue to download a podcast, there is an 80% likelihood they are listening to it. If thats no 97.4% accurate then I would be surprised.
Google spent 3-4 years forcing as many people as possible into Google+ and ensuring it was used everywhere like YouTube. Why – so we could track sales across platforms and devices. In then end – we basically added 3% more conversions thru attribution. Pretty much a rounding error for most marketers.
Think about magazines. We know how many are sold – but no clue how many people read them, or how many or which Ads are looked at. The old adage used to be 7x readership for sales to allow for sharing and things like doctors surgeries. A completely preposterous metric but that was the accepted wisdom.
You can stress and spend big money on trying to measure things with some precision, or just take a rough guess and live with that.