Podcasting Beyond Tracking: Embracing Audience Connection in the Age of Apple's Private Relay

I've been podcasting, in the truest sense of the word since 2004. I've been doing it for a while and I love it, and I'm going to be doing it for a long time to come. One of the biggest themes in podcasting has been the regular occurrence of someone telling me that X is going to kill podcasting. There was a time when MySpace was going to kill podcasting and Facebook was going to kill podcasting and Google was going to kill podcasting, and all these different things were income, were going to kill podcasting. And I just had to laugh because first of all, these comparisons were ridiculous because they really had nothing to do with what it was that podcast was giving. It was like comparing that apples were going to replace Snickers bars. It's just an entirely different world. And so I always laughed at that, always chuckled at that. But then again, at the same time, in my business and in my consulting, I would have people on a regular basis come to me and go, what do we do about this? How do we respond to this? What is our next step for this? So this morning in the sounds profitable newsletter, which is a great newsletter, definitely head out to soundsprofitable.com, big article about a real time look at Apple's private relay, which a number of people have been concerned is going to kill podcasting. And basically what it is Apple is now in some instances, and we'll chat about this in a second, they are redirecting the source information for people so that you can't really do the tracking that you were once able to do as a evil marketer. And what's interesting is, long story short, if you look at the spoiler alert and the article says spoiler alert in its current form, Apple's icloud private relay should have no discernible impact in any aspect of podcast analytics or advertising. So story spoiler is that it doesn't really affect the podcast at all. But there's two elements in here that I want to look at in today's episode. By the way, this is the podcast report. You can head out to the podcastreport.com to sign up to follow this show that you never miss an episode so that it comes on a regular basis. Anyway, we're recording these things live at Facebook right now. We'll see what happens. I'm playing with actually some tech to take this audio and clean it up a little bit and we'll have some fun with that. But anyway, back to the story. So, spoiler alert, no discernible impact of any way. Why were people worried that it would have a discernible impact? A I think people sometimes are always pessimistically looking for a bad story, but B there's this thing happening in podcasting and it's not a good thing There's a thing happening in podcasting where we are tracking podcast listeners and by we we as an industry. I am not and none of my clients are, and I really don't recommend that you do. But there's a lot of tech out there that makes it very possible for you to track someone in podcasting. They listen to a certain show that listens to a certain ad that gets sent to a database, they get tracked. Somebody goes from that show to that ad, buys a product, they know it comes from podcasting. It sounds fine and dandy, but the fact of the matter is it's pretty terrifying when it comes to privacy. And the reason Apple's iCloud private relay is in place right now is basically to prevent you from doing that on Safari. It doesn't prevent you from doing that on anything else because it only works for Safari right now. The premise is that at some point it will go to the iPhone as a whole, maybe different Apple products. Since we know that most listeners listen to the podcast, their podcast on the Apple podcast app, maybe iOS 16, maybe iOS 15, 5, maybe iOS 15 one in a couple of weeks has this. So people are concerned about it now. Sounds profitable. Did a good job. I will link to that in the article if you go to the podcastreport.com forward/private relay. That's everything about this episode. And I will link to the article in there definitely. And Brian did a great job and hats off there. But where I want to go here is if you are leveraging in podcasting, a tech or a trend or a fad or something that is not entirely ethical or you could get caught doing, or do I dare say not that strategic. Don't. It's going to get caught. There will come a time when Private Relay on Apple and whatever Google calls it, when they steal it in a couple of years and go from there, there will be a point where it'll be darn near possible to tell where your podcast listeners coming from. But the beautiful thing about podcasting is it doesn't matter where your podcast listener is coming from. See, it doesn't matter if your podcast listener is coming from California or Canada or I was going to come up with some country with a CA in it, but somewhere in Africa, somewhere in Australia, who knows? It doesn't really matter where they're coming from if they are your right audience for what it is that you are doing. I think this is really important. So many of us think we're going to have a podcast that means everything to everybody. That's not the future of podcasting. That's not realistic. That's not going to happen. What you want to do is you want to do a podcast that is specifically to who your audience is and what they want. The only people I want downloading this episode of the podcast report are those who are interested if Apple Private Relay actually affects the podcast. That's all I want. I don't want the kids, I don't want corporate America. I don't want people from someplace other than of interest to podcast knowing this simple fact. And so by designing your show, by designing your show intelligently specifically for your specific audience means that the only people are going to listen to your show is your specific audience. And if the only person who listens to your specific show is your specific audience, then you can know whether or not you're being in a value of purpose. Yes, by tracking the downloads, but also by tracking the opt ins, by tracking the visits, by tracking the purchases, by tracking whatever's next, let's say, let's say it's two years in the future and this really does affect things. And I were to do a follow up webinar where we could answer questions and we go live and I could say, all right, everybody could go to the podcastreport.com fancy pants webinar. By the way, don't go there, it's not a real page. And If I got 500 downloads to the podcast and I got 500 people to show up to the webinar, I'm doing my job. If I got 5 million downloads, the podcast and I got 500 people to download, go to my webinar. No, I got 500 people to go to my webinar, which is kind of cool. But Maybe in that 5 million downloads, maybe I'm too broad of a reach for my podcast there. It's that careful negotiation. One of the things I've said in podcasting for a long time is the only problem with podcasting, I'm sorry, the only problem with new media is when you treat it like old media. See, I don't want to sneak anything past anybody. I don't want to force anything on anybody. I don't want to make anybody download, listen or consume to something. I don't want them to download or listen to or Consume. That's the power of podcasting your content anytime, any place, anywhere, any device is the power of what you've got. Tracking someone across something so that you can know whether or not your ad for a mattress or a meal service is effective makes the nerds happy and maybe helps the bottom line a little bit. But isn't the best the pod podcasting has to offer? The best the podcasting has to offer is a true connection with the audience and a true, not necessarily tricky, but a true tracking between action and results. So, a, don't worry about it. B, Brian, I did have to enjoy. And I guess Brian and Ivo and James all participated in this one. Or I guess Ivo and James were editors for this article. Brian, I appreciate what you're doing, but let's be careful here. And let's not speak to podcasting tricks that we have to get around or hacks that we have to fix or people that we have to get in front of. Let's speak of podcasting in terms of our audience and what it is that they need and what it is that they want and what it is that we can give to them and how it is that we can track that we're giving it to them without being sleazy. You've heard me say it on other episodes, but we asked four questions. The podcast Partnership. Number one, what do you want the podcast to do? Number two, how we know the podcast is doing it. Number three, is the podcast doing it? Number four, how do you do it better? None of that needs nefarious tracking. None of that needs to break the rules or break the law. None of that needs you to head out to sounds profitable. Now head out to it for different reasons, but none of that requires that he heads out to sound profitable, to figure out how to get around something. Because if you're not trying to get around something that you don't need to get around because there's no purpose to get around it, you could be in a much cooler place. I want you to be in podcasting longer than me. I want you to have more success stories than we've had at the Podcast Partnership. And that will come from understanding that the true power of podcasting is just connecting with your audience without being sleazy, without being slimy, and without trying to get around things. This is Paul. This is the podcast Report. We'll chat again soon. Bye now.