Why I Turned Down $200 CPM To Put An Ad On This Episode - The Podcast Report InbetweenISode

I turned down a $200 CPM for this podcast, the podcast report. That is twice what Tim Ferriss gets. That is five times what other podcasts get. And here's the thing. It wasn't necessarily that I have that special of a show. It's just that a really good number came through the desk and the sponsor was great, the offer was great. It would have been good for my audience, it would have been good for me. It would have been a fair and equitable exchange. But the fact of the matter was it wasn't a good long term strategy for me. And that's what I want to chat about on today's episode of the podcast report. We're doing in season six. We're doing at the beginning of the week what I'm calling an in between episode where I will go live to Facebook like I'm doing right now. Some of you have already jumped on, as a matter of fact, some of you are on the old version of this. I started recording and I didn't like where it was going, so I stopped and started over again. And a couple of you come back in. Welcome. If you have any comments, go ahead and leave it in the comments section. Those of you who watch the replay of this on Facebook, you know, I jump into Facebook on a somewhat regular basis. So if you got comments or thoughts or suggestions, go ahead and leave it on Facebook. But more importantly, this audio is being recorded, obviously, and we're going to make it an audio podcast and it's going to go into the podcast report and you can find the podcast report wherever fine audio is found. Every other episode is going to be this for this season at least. And then every other episode will be a more, you know, traditionally produced episode. So CPM$200. What does that mean? In the podcasting space, when you sell an ad, you traditionally sell an ad on what is called cpm. That stands for cost per milla. Milla is Italian for a thousand. That basically means the amount of money that you get per thousand downloads. Now, right now, Anchor is proudly advertising for their situation for their system. 7 CPM. That means for every thousand downloads of your podcast, you get seven bucks. The standard in the industry for podcasting is around the $20 range, $20, $30 range. Tim Ferriss, of whom I'm a big fan and I appreciate what he's doing. Tim has been bragging at getting to 100 and he does multiple of them and Tim's doing fine. Don't worry, his downloads are keeping him well paid. But I got offered 200. Now, this wasn't something against my ethics or something against my morals. And this is not an episode about not selling out. This would have been a really good ad for my show. It's about an event that podcasters would want to go to. It's a high profile, well focused, well dignified event. But the problem is I would have had to, in the middle of the episode, stop what I was doing and chat about that event. And I would have had to give, you know, the date and time for that event. And when I give the date and time for that event, instantly when someone is watching, listening, reading the transcripts for this episode, bam. Now they're now thinking about that date. And my stats, my numbers for me and my clients shows me clearly that I'm not creating episodes anymore. I'm creating assets. This episode of thinking things through, this episode about going long term, I want to exist long after, you know, I mean, the next episode, the podcast report, comes out in a couple of days. I want this to go long after that, but I want this episode to go long after the event. I want this episode to go into future years. And if I were to go to my audience and say a date doesn't really matter what that date is, everybody after that date is going to go up old news. You know, subconsciously, consciously, they'll still listen. I have an audience who's fantastic. Thank you for being part of that. But it's a disservice to you to mention something that takes you out of the moment of this information. You know, the seven habits of highly effective people have been the seven habits of highly effective people for a long time. The habits are still good. The content is good. You know, I've chatted about this on past episodes of the podcast before report. You know, Seinfeld is seeing as much money in syndication as it saw when it went live. Friends is doing that. People have been creating content for the long term, and that's what I'm trying to do here. One of the things we teach to our clients is that we're making assets, not episodes. Now, Dave Curley just jumped in. Dave said word. Thank you, Dave. I appreciate that. But the fact of the matter is this is where podcasting needs to go. This is the future of podcasting, and I am not going to do it on my show. But that's me. I'm kind of a curmudgeon this way. But what I recommend is that you don't do it on your show. You build assets as well. But, Paul 200 cpm is good money. It is good money. It's absolutely good money. And you know, one of my rules is don't count on the good money, don't count on the crazy money. But you know, if the checks ever show up, definitely cash them. And if that's what you need to do, that's what you need to do. But I'll give you a challenge. See, that money would just be for the immediate time. I'm going to have a lot more downloads of this episode after, you know, the ad runs than before the ad runs. So a, it's not really 200 cpm. It's of course, another a whole nother issue for the industry. But I think the thing that's most important, I think the thing that we need to think about here is that ads really limit the impact. I have high level clients that really logistically make this show in the thousands of CPM and got a product coming out very, very soon that I think you're going to appreciate that will change the game as well on podcasting. And that's where I'm going to see my revenue. And that's where I recommend that you see your revenue. And honestly, that's where I recommend that most podcasters see their revenue. Now, ways around this, you know, I told them I'm running dynamic insertion now and you'll be hearing this soon and maybe even when you heard this episode, you heard dynamic insertion. I'm going to be able to go into the back catalog, click a button and all the back episodes can have an ad. I can have a episode from the podcast three and a half years ago that has an ad for something I'm doing next week and if someone listens to that, they can get that ad. I'm going to do that. And if this organization would have said, hey, we'll give you some money to support our event and you can go into the back catalog and you can use dynamic insertion and once the event's over and just delete them all, get rid of them all. I totally would have considered doing that. I would have liked to have done that. But advertisers aren't necessarily as polite or, and you know, they don't have to be. This isn't a criticism about podcasts, you know, about advertisers. They're thinking right now, they're thinking the hit right now. You as a podcaster need to be thinking what the long term run is, how this is going to impact you. Not just this year, but following years. We did something really interesting. We sent all of our clients, a monthly update report that basically gave the numbers for the previous month and what they meant. And one of the ratios that we looked at was the new content ratio. And that's a metric we made up. That's a metric that, you know, I recommend others make up. But the math on the new content ratio is really simple. It was how many downloads in any given month were from that given month as opposed to the back catalog. Paul, what do you mean by that? Well, we were looking at December. How many downloads came were published in December, how many downloads were previously published at one client. More than three out of every four downloads were from the back catalog. Or another way to put it. For every download that happened in December, he had three that didn't happen in December. His back catalog is getting three times the consumption of his front catalog. This is what happens when you build an asset. He's got hundreds and hundreds of episodes. We have clients without hundreds and hundreds of episodes. You're seeing a 50, 50 split. I saw one client who's only been up for a couple of months who saw only three fourths of his stuff being this month, but already 25% of his audience was going into the back end. I think this is an interesting number to look at. I think this is an interesting number to play with. I think our goal should be, in any given month, that only one out of every four downloads is the new stuff. Three out of every four downloads is the old stuff. It was a pleasure. I, you know, we just got out of hiatus here for the podcast report. Thanks listeners who have reminded me of that fact, and you've missed the show. I appreciate that. But we saw a consistent regular stream of downloads that happened while we were on hiatus because we produced content that was good. Now, yes, last week I produced a predictions episode, and the predictions episodes only good for a certain year. Only good for a certain time. And. But that's sort of an industry tradition. That's sort of what happens this episode here. I don't really. I'm not putting a date on it. I want it to go for a long time. And remember, with a title like why I turned down 200 cpm, this has the ability to get consumed for much longer. So what does this mean for you? What is the strategy for your podcast? I mean, this is not an issue of do you want to take ads or do you want to sell your own stuff? Because that is an absolutely legitimate question. And there are podcasts where selling ads makes a heck of a lot of sense. Tim, you're Doing well. And for the impact on the other side, Tim's doing, you know, absolutely fantastically. But the nature of what it is that you're creating, if you and your mind are creating a podcast that is only of value this month, you and your mind are going to create a podcast that is only a value this month. You're not going to think long term. You're not going to build something purposefully that has an impact one year, two years, three years down the line. Now, could it have an impact? Are there podcasters who first episode they never thought in a million years people would be listening to that? People come back to and listen to. Yes, that could be part of the. Part of it. But if that becomes part of your strategy, you really want to start thinking through this process and thinking through this thing. What if Your legacy was 200 episodes of a show that served personkind for 200 years after you left? Now, in some cases, obviously your topic and your tech and what it is that you're doing might not lend itself to that. But they're going to be reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for some time. They're going to be reading Harry Potter for some time. They're going to be watching Friends in Seinfeld for some time. Maybe you can build a podcast that does exactly the same thing. I want you to, at the very least consider that once you start thinking long term, your technology might change a little bit. You might start thinking about dynamic insertion. You might start thinking about calling people to a giveaway that leads people to a more modern, traditional upgrade path. Bringing people in through email, bringing people in through text messages, that type of thing might be the best strategy for you. So a couple of you are on this on Facebook, Jerusalem, and I've done this. The audience participate. Participation has not necessarily been much, but if somebody has something to say or a question, I'd love to answer it. If not, we will close this up and we will go from there. The next episode that's going to come out is going to be an episode about Spotify and how to think about Spotify, how to handle Spotify, what to do about Spotify. There's all this excitement about Spotify taking on podcast, and last week we chatted about Pandora taking on podcast. But I honestly think the world of Spotify needs a bit better conception, a bit better management and paradigm, or I can't think of any other word. But basically you want to think about Spotify differently than you think about Pandora. When you think about itunes, than you think about Apple and It's an interesting player that we want to take a look at. We will be taking that later or next week. And interesting enough the week after that will be Stories of a Bad Podcast Producer. Last season, the show, I actually gave my podcast over to another producer and it did not go well. Now, funny thing is, it was my fault the show didn't go well because it was my fault. And I chat about what I learned because if I'm going to ask people to hand their show over to a producer like me, like us, I want that experience to do well. So I'm going to share with you what went wrong. And then the week after that, we're going to be chatting about the new product, the new service. I think it's going to change podcasting pretty considerably. Pretty excited about it. Some of you know what it is. But we will go from there. So thank you for considering the podcast report. Thank you for going this long. Whether or not you're on there live or whether or not you are listening to this on the podcast, on Pandora, on Spotify, on itunes, on Google, on Dasher, on Blitzen, or if you're watching a video of this at Facebook or YouTube, I don't care. Thank you so much for being part of the podcast report. I'd make sure you subscribe because not all of it's coming out on video. And if you subscribe to the show, it comes to you automatically. I'd love ratings, rankings, suggestions, reviews, wherever you may put it. The podcastreport.com Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, whatever will take you to all the places that you need to go. Thank you so much. We'll chat in a couple days about Spotify. Bye now.