Gen Z is Recording Podcasts in Bed? What is Ahead in 2024 Podcasting? | New Media Show Live 1/3/23

That was curious.

Hmm.

All right, let me send these two notifications real quick. All right, I think that worked. Todd and Rob in the afternoon.

Hey, afternoon delight with Todd Todd and Rob.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And happy New Year, Rob. How are you?

I'm doing terrific, Todd. It's great to be in 2024, I think. There's so much stuff out there in the world now. It's like, um, what's next is really the next thing. So it's like, um, what kind of waves of disenfranchisement are we going to see in the podcasting space? There's been a lot of talk about, you know, how people, some people are upset that other people are saying, you know, given, given a bad name to podcasting now, you know, because financially things have been tough. So it's, it's kind of an interesting landscape right now of a lot of discussion about where the podcast medium is now and what the future looks like and what we've been through and, Everybody's got a little slightly different take on it. And I don't know if, you know, if we want to talk about some of that stuff today, but it might be an interesting thing for us to dive into a little bit.

We can, but I just want to let everybody know we are lit and live on those new podcast apps at podcastapp.com. We're on a new— I changed everything. Um, we're on a new streaming, I guess not necessarily platform, but interface I tested yesterday, and we should be coming through audio-wise. So if any of you are listening on any of the podcasting apps, please, please, you know, ping back and let me know that the Live and Lit is working as it was supposed to. And basically, the audio stream is where the changes were made. So But yeah, everything settled kind of in with the new hardware. So nothing new on that. But, you know, to be honest with you, Rob, I was reflecting and getting into your point. I, you know, here we are and I'm going to say we're officially heading into, you know, August in my calendar. And I think in most podcasters' calendar, you know, besides what James says, and by the way, don't eat me, James Cridland. I consider 2024 the true 20th year in podcasting. And, you know, and really, this is 20 years ago. This is when things really And really kick off, right? Yeah. Yeah. So as we march to both the— you and I— your and I, I guess I'm speaking proper English today— uh, 20th anniversaries, um, you in late September, me in early October, um, you know, I really— I kind of made it a point that I, I kind of made a decision And I put a Facebook post up. I'm announcing Blueberry group. I announce in the Podcast Movement group that I, I, I, I am gonna do just like I do on this show, and it's gonna be a no-bullshit year. And not that we don't do that already, but I just, you know, I get into so many of these groups and I hear stuff and I just cringe and I cringe and I cringe. On the advice the content creators get. I've got to— I'm at a point where I'm just going to start saying, hey, if you want to— if you want real advice and no filter, um, I'm going to tell you how it is and what you're going to have to do. And I'm going to— I'm going to set up a private group. And those that want to be in that private group will meet every couple of weeks and have an open discussion. And I'm just going to this year, I'm just, I, I, I so often now, you know, there's lots of pundits like you said, oh, podcasting's dying. And I think there needs to be I think I've earned my placement in the point to be able to give my opinion and, and know something. What I say is, you know, I talk to podcasters weekly. It's like, and you do too. And it's a situation now where I don't think a lot of people really understand the ground truth on what's happening with, you know, podcasters. And I think I'm going to adopt something that Adam Curry said. I'm going to stop. There are no indie podcasters. There are podcasters. And whatever level you're at, all struggle the same exact way.

And well, especially now, it's not like really even these bigger companies have as much of an advantage as people think they do, or at least they used to because they had big budgets. Now they're, they're back doing it like everybody else has been doing for a long time, right? They have to be responsible.

You know, a few people like were congratulating me, and it's not about the congratulations. That's, that's, let's just leave that You know, let's leave that behind. Let's set this space up. Let's set podcasting up to move forward for the next 10 years. Let's—

yeah, it's got to be built on a foundation that's solid and people understand and is clear. I think, you know, I agree with you, Todd. I think that there is this kind of undertow that's been— it's happened before. Yeah. You and I have seen this happen before.

I don't think it's as significant. I think we're seeing more naysayers than we ever have. You know, people like to pile on to a good party, you know, and podcasts— oh, podcasting's dying. You know, it's not.

I think we've fallen, you know, in perception, we've fallen quite a bit. Whether or not that's really based on real data and real reality, I just think that we got to be, you know, so hyped up about what this medium was doing and what it was accomplishing that it was a little beyond kind of where it really was. All along. And people were doing things that were probably not smart to begin with, with this medium, given this enhanced feeling about the medium that somehow it was, you know, in the gold age or something like that, that we had to, you know, do things so much differently than we've always done them. And that's also coming out right now too. It's like since the industry is down a little bit in its perception, it's like, well, now we got to redo everything, right? Right. You know, RSS needs to go away and we need to go more proprietary because that's the only way we're going to come back. I mean, I'm hearing that kind of rhetoric too, and it's like, well, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? You know, let's— the, you know, RSS is what built this medium. Why do you want to throw it out as a solution to a downturn?

It just doesn't make any sense. And the thing is, it's—

there are solutions to address many of the concerns, things that they say about RSS, right?

So, but yet they've ignored—

nobody wants to do it, right?

Yeah, they've ignored those, you know, these new adoptions and some of the stuff we're doing in Podcasting 2.0. But I think that the— we need to remember, and I think podcasters are starting to wake up to this, that— and, and I, I'm going to be very, very frank here. And I'm going to go along party lines. You can't trust YouTube at this point. You can't trust them to do the right thing because Google has a history of not doing the right thing. For number one, if you want to have a YouTube channel—

Todd, Todd, also just another layer on top of that, can we ever or should we ever trust any huge corporation that has a lot of power and control? I think is the bigger thing.

And we, we had a show today that is making the move over to a platform that shall not be named that has been promised a bunch of money. And we basically said, okay, we recommend that you don't shut your account down here. You know, we're going to leave the lights on for you. And, um, as soon as the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence, you can come back. And but there's this demand, oh, you have to move to our platform, you can't be hosted anywhere else, you have to be hosted over here. And that's fine and dandy, they can make the move. But time and time and time again, we've seen people leave and then a couple months later they come back because they You know, the grass wasn't greener on the other side of the fence. So if we look at what Spotify has done, again, you're being— content's being— you're being monetized, your content's being monetized around you. Your audience members are paying to be over there. And again, it's, it's, it's a It's a closed ecosystem. It's a monopoly. So we don't care. And again, I go on the mantra, go ahead and distribute to all those places. It's all good. I'm not naysaying not being on YouTube. I'm not naysaying don't be on Spotify. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is don't forget that These folks are not your friend. They, they, they don't care about you. Um, and you should care about yourself and care about your branding. And it doesn't matter where your host is, as long as you control your RSS feed, um, you're good. Now, of course, I, I'm biased. I want them over on Blueberry, but Not all of them are going to move. That's fine. And those shows are chasing money, are going to chase money. And again, I, you know, I have serious, serious concerns on that space too, because I don't think 2024 is going to be any better money-wise on the advertising side. They can say all they want, all spending is going to be up and Everything's going to be good. But, um, it's just like the news. There's no recession. We're not in a slowdown, um, yet. We had 8% inflation a year before, 4% compounded again this year, whatever it's going to be, you know. So you're compounding inflation. People are tight, budgets are tight. I just come off the holidays talking to a lot of people, and I talked about on the last show Maybe it's good in your neighborhood. But yeah. So I think 2024 is going to be another rough year.

I hope not.

I hope it pulls out. We have to make a major recovery and everything turns to, you know, to gold. But, you know, wish in one hand and poop in the other and see what you get first. So that's not even That's an interesting analogy.

I haven't heard that one before.

Well, my dad would use another term and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't poop, you know, wish in one hand. And I think that we need to set realistic expectations. And here's the thing. When I was in the Navy, there was this term that we like to use. It was called sustain superior performance. If you maintained sustained superior performance, you would get promoted. If you were average, you wouldn't get promoted very quickly. And if you are below average, you would fall behind. So you have to have sustained superior content. And that sustained superior content has to bring value to your listeners to make them want to tune in and listen again. Yeah, if your content is average, they're gonna go find something else to listen to. And it doesn't matter all the tricks, and you can go to Podcast, go to Podcast Movement, All the stuff that they talk to us about and how to build shows. Well, you can wish in one hand and poop in the other that you're going to wish that you have a great show. Well, that wish needs to be sustained superior content.

So I think these things aren't new. No, things have been the criteria for podcasting since podcasting started.

So it's Yeah, but I don't think— and I took some time, and, and this is time I'll never get back. I specifically only watched— and boy, my amygdala needs shrinking— I purposely watched stuff on the platform that shall not be named that called themselves a podcast. And I'm going to be honest with you, what a train wreck some of this stuff is.

Absolutely. Are you talking about the content or the platform?

Content is absolute train wreck. 6, 7 people all talking on top of each other, and it was nothing more than— and I understand what is my opinion on why some of those shows were popular is because they were like CNN or MSNBC or Fox. They were, they were providing chaos entertainment.

Yeah.

And extreme speculation, decisiveness between— and it was dating, it was relationships, it was sports. I mean, and, and to be honest with you, it must attract a certain demographic of listeners, because to me, I got nothing out of it. There was no, you know, one 42-minute program that I listened to, tried to, and I had no takeaways from that 42 minutes except people bashing each other.

Yeah, unfortunately, our media landscape has digressed into emotional topics that drive division in perspective. Now granted, I think we're all in favor of free speech and we all would love everybody to say anything and everything that they want to. And I think that still exists to some degree in podcasting. And I think that that is a good thing, that this medium is kind of open to all sorts of views and topics. And I think it's its strength.

So while that format may work over there on that platform, I think people that listen— and maybe I'm wrong— I think they want to be educated and listen to constructive conversation. Maybe I'm wrong.

I think— well, I think also that, you know, this was probably a couple decades ago that mainstream media, if that's what we're talking about here, had kind of shifted their news departments to be part of the entertainment, right? Right. So you had this shift in priorities really around building audience, not delivering journalism. Right. And, and I think once we headed down that path, we kind of had this blended experience of, uh, of driving people to extreme emotions was the goal, because that's what they learned in the data, that that's what kept people watching. And not so much like the old days when journalism wasn't— those programs weren't sponsored, right? There were no advertisers, that they weren't part of the entertainment side, and they certainly didn't have a connection to the ad sales side. So, so, but now all those things are munged together into one thing. And so that's where we've started to see the decline of the mainstream media because they lost all of our trust. And, and that's where podcasting and online, online video and stuff has really picked up and is really moving the ball forward now is because all these independent voices have felt the need and the desire to share other other views that weren't aligned with the corporate agenda.

So, you know, going back to 2024, I think we just have to again go back and say it's about content. Yeah. And we have to have a double down on the understanding that the content is king. And yes, you can help yourself with a whole bunch of other stuff, which you have to do.

Yeah, you have to think about distribution too and how your content aligns with the distribution side. Are you reaching the right kind of viewer or listener in the right demo group to the kind of content you're creating too.

And again, with only, with only 0.5% of podcasters doing true video podcasts that are available via RSS, you know, again, I'm not going to get wrapped around the ankle here by talking about video that much because Again, very, very, very, very, very few shows are being successful doing video. And yeah, okay, you might be getting a discovery or two, which I doubt.

Well, I think that's the distinction, Todd, that, that your point is well taken, is that, you know, what is the success of the video side of what you're doing, and is that important to you too? Is success What does success look like too? You know, these are complicated questions.

Success to every podcaster I talk to about growth, about growing an audience.

Okay.

It's rarely that anyone has, you know, rarely does, at least when I go into the initial conversation, right? You know, you know, what are we talking about? I want to grow my show. And then I flip it around on them. And then we've talked about this in a previous show. I say, okay, what's the, what's the goal? What is the true goal of the show? And if you can get them to get the content creator to think about the goal, then sometimes the growth isn't as important because then you get them to focus on the goal. Yeah. And, and then look at the small wins. You know, look at when you reach 100, reach when you reach 500, look when you reach 1,000. Listeners. And then, you know, visualize what that looks like. And, you know, if you're going to go up and speak in front of 500 people, are you prepping like you are going to go and talk in front of 500 people? It's just like the podcast presentation. I'm preparing to stand in front of 500 people. There won't be that many people at my session. There might be 50 or 100 if I'm lucky. Yeah, but still, I'm prepping as if I'm going to be talking to 500 people to be able to influence 500 people. I'll spend more time on that presentation than I'll ever spend on a single episode of Geekness Central or this show, because I'll, I'll have spent, you know, probably 20 hours getting ready for that, that presentation. So You know, this is, this is the thing we have to think about. If I'm going to spend 20 hours getting ready to present in front of 500 people, and yet when you and I sit down here and do this show, we're reaching over 10,000 content creators, we don't do any prep. But should we? And then again, is the, is the advice I'm giving, you know, am I drinking my own Kool-Aid? Um, but again, my goal is not necessarily to grow my podcast, um, at least on the tech show. So I, I don't know, I just, you know, I got to thinking about it, and, and really there's 3 or 4 things that triggered it.

Yeah, I think it— there's a lot of lot of variables that each content creator needs to assess, right? There's a lot of, a lot of different ways of doing this. And I think that's the strength of, of online media is that it is kind of a blank canvas of opportunity, right? You can create and do what you want. If, if you are passionate about video, do video. If you're passionate about audio, do audio. And if you're passionate about both, do both. You know, I don't think anybody's stopping anybody from doing anything here. It's just, you know, your own values, your own strategy, your own approach. It's kind of like starting a new company, right? Um, come up with your unique strategy, your unique approach, and implement it and get it done. And be like you say, Todd, do it consistently and keep trying new things all the time, you know, and see what works. And If it doesn't work in some period of time, then, you know, hang up the microphone. But, you know, that, that shouldn't be how you go into it, is thinking that that will be what you will do 20 episodes in, potentially, or something like that.

And, and you need to— right. And at the same time, I'm just so sick and tired of consultant doublespeak. Yeah. And People are so willing, so willing just to, just to, okay. It's like, follow me in, follow me into the raging river. We will be able to get across. Don't worry. It's only, it's only 6 inches deep, but it's running 100 miles per hour. Don't worry. We can get across. Come on.

That's right. You put one foot in it and you're gone.

And, you know, and then 3 days later, they're fishing your body out, you know, 3 miles downstream. You're wrapped around a log and you drowned in 3 inches of water. So, you know, I'm just sick of this. No, it's true.

You know, and, and well, and that's how it's being portrayed out there is what that, you know, it's, it, it's such, you know, a treacherous landscape of things to do and not do. I think a lot of people just don't get started because they're just flustered with the whole process and how complicated it can be.

And I hate to say it, going to that point, it's not that difficult. Right.

Well, and it's a valid question to ask is, should I do it too? You know, I know that there's been some folks in the industry that, that have pointed out, and it's sometimes controversial, is the question is, should you do an online show, right? I mean, do you—

but we're not even talking—

want to do it, or are you following it because somebody said—

we're not even talking about live, we're just talking about someone that's in their closet, any online media recording, recording their content. I, I think that we have an opportunity here to, to tell, to just give people this understanding that it's going to take work. You know, that's, that's the ultimate thing. And again, I go back to, you know, I'm listening to podcasts, I'm watching stuff on, and I often will go back into people's back inventory, and I'll go way back, especially on, especially on the platform that will not be named. I will go back as far as I can into 10 years ago when they were a nobody creating content and they had 10 views, and then 20, then 100. Then 450, and that's like 5 years to get to 450.

Actually, I think that's a terrific example, Todd, um, because a lot of people see these very popular, um, YouTubers or podcasters or whatever, and they, they, they think that this happened overnight, and oftentimes it didn't, right? If you go back and look in their archives, which that's what's great about podcasting, is you can do that, uh, you can do it where they started.

You can do it on the platform that shall not be named either.

Do it on this one.

Well, but you can't go— but you can't go look at their stats, right?

Which is— yeah, but you can tell by the production, like, you know, how they did it, all that kind of stuff like that. I know— I mean, you can go back and look at the, the early radio show that I did back in 1999. It's still available as an MP3 file off my website. Um, like February 7th of 1999 was the first radio show that I did, live, live radio show that is recorded and still available out there. And you can see where, where I started on this path. And, and that's the same thing you can do with a lot of these big content creators and, and just kind of skip forward, you know, like a year after that and a year after that if they've done it that long, and, and see how they've changed, see how they've improved, and, or, or not.

They've gone the other way. Leland says in the, uh, on the Facebook chat, he says, I tried to do that in the Shawasi save a rowboat. Was a good call on my part. Thank God for low-hanging branches.

Right.

Yeah. Um, so I think that you and I have lived and breathed this medium 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since the beginning. 20 years, right? Okay. And it's remarkable it's remarkable how many times I answer the same question again and again and again and again. Yeah. And I've gotten to the point where sometimes my responses to people, they take, take back a little bit because they're like, well, that was That was rough. And so here's the bottom line. I'm going to have a private group. You want to be part of the group, send me a message. You can follow or take or leave the advice I'm going to give you, whether take it or leave it. And I'm going to talk about the trials, tribulations of everything that's happened to me personally over the past 19-plus years. And we'll have frank, hard discussions about your content, your content, your content. And so It's going to be a no-bullshit perspective. So take all these other naysayers. I see the numbers. Matter of fact, we're going to start— Blueberry's going to start putting out our own report. It's going to be unique. We're working on getting the first version of it out. We ran the data yesterday and We'll talk about what happened in December in a few days.

So do you say your report is around metrics?

It's going to have a whole bunch of stuff in it. Okay. And we tried to come up with something. Some of the stuff would be some of the repeat other people do, but some of it's— we're trying to get some unique perspectives from the datasets we have. And I think that that's going to go along with setting some of the narrative of some of these discussions is just, you know, the hard reality. I'm not trying to make anyone quit. This is, this is—

no, if not the obvious, I mean the opposite, right?

This is today.

Get off on the right foot.

This is today, right? And I, and I've been saying this for 6 months or 9 months or whatever it's been. It's the best time ever to be a podcaster. Is absolutely unequivocally the best time.

Yeah, because hopefully in the future there will be an upside here, right? We've seen a significant drop-off in the amount of active shows and people publishing new episodes. So whenever you see that, um, there's always a down, but that also means eventually it's just like the stock market. If you stick around long enough, it'll it'll pop up higher, and that's what's going to happen. I mean, this happened back in 2008-9 where we saw a big fall-off of content creators, and that's where a lot of the most popular podcasts, they all started back in that time frame.

Yeah, they kept growing, right? Another comment, Leela said, wishing you both a happy New Year. Be sure to get in on the latest declaration.

I don't know what that is.

Declaration? Yeah, Leland, you're gonna have to clue us in. I don't know what that is. Eileen, happy New Year to you as well. Thank you for chiming in on YouTube.

So did you see the, the, the news on Generation Z, which is the younger, younger side of the podcast community? I think it's the— was it the 18 to 24 age group? The Gen Z biggest podcasters are all working from bed. Did you see the headline of that?

Why would they say that? Why is that? Why is it so demeaning?

Well, it says it cuts down on room echo or something like that. I don't believe that, but it's just an interesting thing. Working from bed.

That is like the ultimate demeaning. Yeah, who wrote that?

I agree with you. Uh, let's see, let's see where that came from. Let's see here. Working from Fast Company, of all places, says why Gen Z's biggest podcasters are working from bed.

I have, I have a bunch of kids in the 18 to 24 year old range, and you know what they're doing? They're working their butts off because they are trying to survive in this cruel world right now that is— or cost of it, they are not working from bed.

So the first sentence of this article in Fast Company is this, a woman, I'm not going to mention her name, She's an iconic '90s supermodel, I guess. Uh, I'm not sure how that's a Gen Z, but maybe. Yeah, I guess it could be. Um, says wouldn't get out of bed for anything less than $10,000 a day. What? That's the first paragraph of this article. Says now a new generation of young media personalities are finding they don't have to leave bed at all to make bank. In fact, for some, the bed has become the broadcast set of choice and the strategy to connect with audiences in a whole new way, Todd.

All right, I'm trying to go back in my comments here. I, I must have missed it. He posted to— you want to read this on your show right now— was sent out at 4 AM on January 1st. Okay, I can't— I don't know if I can go back and read the old comments. I guess I gotta refresh the page. How do I see this?

Oh, what was it called again?

Oh, I don't know if we can talk about this on the show.

Oh, okay. I mean, just to kind of put a little cherry on top of this Gen Z article, you know, for many years, and there are a lot of successful podcasts, and this is a true fact, and I'm not saying that what's being said here isn't true. I'm just saying that a lot of podcasts have been recorded in closed closets. Yeah.

Yeah. I've done it.

Because of the sound buffering effect.

Oh, I have recorded in some weird, you know, I've used pillows off a bed, not in the bed.

Or shipping blankets hanging on the wall or all sorts of stuff. I've done all that stuff too.

Yeah. Won't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. Well, you know what? I hope they're taking that money that they're making when they do get out of bed and investing it well.

Right. Where though is the question. Where would you invest your money now?

Yeah. Leland, I don't know if that's a topic for the show or not. I will, I will review it after the show. Thanks for putting it on. Linking it in the, in the podcast. Uh, Eileen says, do you all remember what we used to call sleep blabs? Oh, blab. Was it blabs that where people were falling asleep on?

Is that another way of saying it was boring content? Is that what they're saying? Wow. Okay. Yeah, you know, and I, I mean, I do say, and I, you know, that, and Todd, we've had this discussion a lot over the last month or more about video and things. And I, I do hear this, this across the industry, you know, rhythm around video. I mean, everybody's kind of like, that's the hot thing now, right?

Knock themselves out.

And I think that that's being driven by what what the unnamed platform is, the, the YT platform, uh, is— has driven that change in people's kind of perspectives.

If you listen to this show, right, you have been warned.

Well, yeah, you've been warned that, you know, just tread carefully and make sure that it's not a waste of your time, right? Yeah, that's the— yeah, that's the takeaway.

Because believe me, doing— so when I do— when I go on the road and travel and we just do audio, the production time for this show is remarkably short. I'm done like 20 minutes after we finish the show. I'm done. It's put up, transcripts run, the, you know, got the— it's, it's easy. It's very easy to, to get. But anytime you're doing video, then that's an hour at least. And I, and I'm a minimalist editor as it is. Don't do no color correction, nothing. We just, we just rock and roll with it and it's going to be more time. Yeah, it's going to be more time.

So they do have a photograph of a bunch of podcasters doing their podcasts in bed on this article.

Oh, please, we don't want to see that. That's probably AI-generated anyway.

So it looks pretty real, actually.

So here's— okay, so All right, here's the new set for the new generation. Here is some hard-hitting, no BS advice.

Hard-hitting?

Wow. If you're laying in bed doing your podcast, your diaphragm, number one, is compressed. Number two, are you really going to be in the mood to give a high-energy show? The real— and be honest with you, The best podcasters don't do their show sitting down. They do it standing up. Now, Rogan sits down and others, but a lot of people do their show standing up.

Well, that's certainly been a technique in broadcast radio for a while.

Yeah, because it's— it just allows you to have more energy for the show.

Plus, they also usually keep the temperature like down to like 65 degrees. So you're like, so you got to keep wide awake. You're not. You know, getting sleepy because it's too warm, right? So, you know, I, I don't advise that, doing your podcast from a bed, but, you know, if you're just talking about, you know, you know, it's this concept, Todd, and I've, I've explored this a little bit with my work with the Nimano platform, uh, around the, the kind of more casual recording environment. So you can get in with some of the newer technology that's coming out where it creates more podcasts that I would consider to be more conversational, not interviews per se. And I think that's kind of what's going on there to some degree, is that it's kind of casual conversations between a group of people. You know, like it showed in some of the pictures, it showed like 4 people all in bed together. It just so happens that they were under the covers. You know, it could have been at a regular studio, but it just so happened to be in somebody's bed.

So I don't know what was the topic of the show.

Well, that's this particular show. I saw the picture of it was all women, all sitting around, young women, all sitting around talking. So maybe they were talking about, you know, their relationships and their relationships or their boyfriends or what they were talking about.

This was some of the stuff I was watching on YouTube over the weekend.

And it's probably very similar to that. You know, maybe that's the next thing coming to YouTube is video podcasts from podcasters in bed. So, so we'll have to see if that's the next big trend here, Todd.

But you know, some of the stuff that was being said on some of these shows, both women and men, well, I— there was no— there's no way I would even get into those topics because it's like Do they want jobs in the future? Because some of the stuff that was being said, I'm like, if I'm a future employer and I see that—

Yeah, but Todd, I think you have to think about the changing culture of the next generation too. It's true. It's coming up. It's not going to be the same as ours.

They can get away with it. I sure can't.

Right. And, you know, and I think increasingly, I think the younger generation has been able to get away with this stuff up until recently, um, increasingly because of the labor market. And, um, I think that has changed. So I don't know if that means that employers are going to be more stringent on what they are looking for in hiring going forward, but that may change things. You're exactly right, Todd, that that could be fallout from this is that relaxed kind of approach to your external persona and your external perception. You know, people being a little too casual in what they're doing and maybe not looking professional may hurt people in the future.

But, well, and, and maybe not. And not to mention, across the board, there was a whole— and, and I don't— again, I'm just an old white guy. Right.

But, but don't listen to me.

Right. But, but some of the stuff to me was like, where did you go to school?

Well, that's, that's opening a Pandora's box, right? Given, given what we've been seeing happen with the president of Harvard here the last couple of days.

Right. Oh, I'm not even talking about any of that, but I'm just— I know, I just—

but that's an indication of what's going on here.

I'm just— I'm old, so just— it is what it is.

Well, I mean, I'm trying to see the world through people's eyes, and I know you are too.

I'm trying. Yeah.

But also, you know, see it from a very practical perspective too. And knowing that, you know, I guess it depends on the audience that you're talking about. For sure. And that's, that's what the bigger—

you know, in some of those shows, we're definitely, you know, 18 to 27.

If you're speaking to an audience that appreciates you doing your podcast from your bed, right, um, then, you know, or thinks that's cool or thinks that's fun or whatever the rationale is, they could grow an audience doing that, uh, because it's something different, right? It's something unique. And we're always looking for content creators to do something new or something.

Well, some of these guys, maybe some of these guys better pray their shows do very, very well and bring in a lot of revenue, because otherwise, well, they're gonna—

this article said is that the, the most popular Gen Z podcasters, or some of the most popular, are doing it from their beds.

And well, again, this— some most stuff I was watching was not coming from a bed, but you know, some of the panel discussions were such that I was just like you better pray you have a great show, otherwise you're— it's gonna be a long, lonely road in the workplace. Right, right. You better be a good, really good entertainer for a very long time.

Uh, a lot of, a lot of younger people, I believe, are, are struggling to find careers, and they're increasingly looking to being influencers or online content creators as a, as a career path. Um, and certainly podcasting is part of the mix now. Um, so I guess, you know, I guess we have to be careful about discouraging— oh, I don't want to discourage nobody, you know, because we want them to be the, the next generation of content creators.

And, and again, you know, I'm never one to say don't do content. That you— it's, you know, this exactly thing about this medium is, then the beauty about this medium remains, you do whatever you want, right? Knock yourselves out.

And they will, whether we like it or not.

You know, have a good time. You know, I, I'm not one to judge, you know. I— well, I can— maybe I have been judging, but guess what? Go ahead.

Well, I think you're looking at it from the perspective of, of, you know, success and—

yeah.

Performance of what you're doing, what's going to work, right? And I guess part, part of what I'm saying is I'm not always 100% sure that I know.

I don't know what that is. I can't— that's right. I can't talk to that audience. That's a different generation, you know, that— right. But I do know that. I do know that again, based upon the breadth of content being created out there, that you should strive to be— have, you know, put the work in to have great content that gives great value back, right? I, I felt no need to give any donations to any of those shows, but some of those shows had that Super Chat thing going on and they were getting $50 and $100, and I was like, people are giving money for this? I am I guess they're getting value.

So, so where's our Super Chat, Todd?

Uh, it's right here, right here. And you send your boost.

It's called Satoshi's.

Yeah, send your boost using one of those new podcast apps. Beauty Bubble says, uh, the sleeping blabs brought a lot of people together, sorta. Todd, it's practically a prerequisite to demonstrate you know how to sleep on the job.

It's an awesome point, Beauty Bubble. I appreciate that.

All right. Yeah, that's on the, on YouTube. So yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as we head into 2024 here, as we are into 2024, I think that there's just more of the same. I'll be speaking about Podcasting 2.0 at Podfest. That's my topic. We're going to be doing a live event at Podfest. We're going to be doing a new media show there. You've got a podcast host provider that's from India. Is that what you said? Yeah, it's going to be joining us. So we're going to hear about the international scene a little bit.

Yep. And I'll get, I'll get one other person up there too that can give us a kind of a unique perspective on the industry.

So, and then the Hall of Fame announcement will come next Monday, you think?

On Monday, right? Correct. At least that's the current plan anyway.

All right, awesome.

Yeah, so, so all, all will be disclosed at that point.

I will be at CES, so, uh, leave Friday for Vegas.

So I'm assuming that we're not doing a show next Wednesday?

No, no, impossible. You can do one on your own if you want. Yeah, somebody.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll probably wind up doing, doing a show maybe covering the Hall of Fame.

Oh, so, well, that— bring the other Rob on.

I'll— I haven't pulled that together yet, but that might be a good, good idea, Todd. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's a good idea. I can ask Rob if he can join.

Yeah, so I think that will be an interesting conversation.

Yes. It will be an interesting conversation. It's been interesting to try and pull, pull that event together. Um, again, it used to be with Podcast Movement. Um, that's where it was started. Uh, and then it, this year, this past year, it moved to, uh, Podfest. So we've had to create a whole nother kind of organization around trying to put on the event. So. I think we leaned a lot on Podcast Movement to do a lot of that. But this year it's kind of on our plates to pull all the details together.

Well, sounds like a good time is being had by all.

Yeah. And, and, and we may still call on you, Todd, to help out if we can.

All right.

Absolutely. And so anyway, so that's, that's going on. And like I said, we're doing a new media show. Actually, that's on the— the new media show is like 3:30 in the afternoon on the 25th of January, and the Hall of Fame starts at 7 PM on the 26th, which is Friday.

I think my session is on— I have to go back and look at the calendar, but I think I'm Friday as well for my session. Oh yeah, late afternoon. Yeah, awesome. I don't know who I'm going head-to-head with yet.

I got to go look at that, but it's going to be interesting to see what the turnout is.

Um, yeah, well, the event this year, considering the parties involved, uh, that I know, it should be fun.

Yeah. Oh, it— well, it's always a fun event to go to. I've always enjoyed it. So if you want to go check it out, if you haven't ever been to Podfest, just go to podfestexpo.com and get all the deets on that.

That, uh, it sounds to me like they've done a pretty good job. Um, you know, last year we didn't exhibit because, well, we just didn't exhibit last, last go-round and chose not to. Yeah. And, you know, they did a good job in bringing the numbers back. And so we'll be there. Mackenzie and I will be there. Uh, um, it's podcastexpo.com.

Podcast Expo, right? Yeah. And then the Hall of Fame, you want to check on that website, you can go to it now. It's at, um, podcasthof.com. It's a Podcast Hall of Fame and Hopefully that site will be updated on Monday. So let's see if I can find all the new deets.

Let's see if I can find my session. When's it going to be? 2.0. I have to search for my name. Yeah, so we're 3:30 to 5. It's going to be our dealio. I don't know where the heck mine is. Because it's in sub-sessions is what you gotta— yeah, let me click on my name and then, uh, what else?

I also saw that the average cost per thousand for podcast ads for 2023 via Advertisecast was $22.58, and it— I guess it represented a 6% drop year over year in CPMs. Uh, it said the December average was 22.9 from November to December. Um, so that was up a little bit. Um, I guess my average was, was 23, 22.58.

I guess my, my presentation Saturday right after lunch, 1:15.

Oh, Saturday.

Okay. So I don't know what is Yeah, that's, I guess, oh, that's a good Prime Day. Yeah, so, uh, awesome. Yeah, just digging through the schedule here, but gives me an extra day to tweak the presentation.

So I saw that, um, that James linked to an article titled A Year On from the Death of Podcasting.

Oh my goodness.

So it shows a tombstone with 2004-? Says 2022, the year that podcasting died.

'22 was the year. That's— oh, that's— oh, so someone backdated it to '22, huh?

Yeah, I guess. Well, yeah, I guess it's kind of a referential article that was talking about the prediction in podcasting.

So we're still here.

We are still here, right? But I think he was a year late in his prediction.

You know, we've seen— what is this, a 5th cycle of podcasting is dead?

Oh, at least, probably more.

I think it happens about what, every 3 years or so? Someone says that. Yeah, 2 to 3 years.

Yep. If they see something happen in the industry that they don't like, they say, oh, it must be dead.

So yeah, you know, it's— I will say that it's pretty flat, but it's not dead right now.

It is right Yeah. Oh, it is. There's no question, but we've been through flat periods before. I don't know that the— it depends on which— how you value this, this, this market, right? Is it all just based on the number of shows and the number of advertisers and that's all that really matters? Or do the listeners matter?

Well, the podcast industrial complex, it's all about the money. So if there is a You know, if there is a downturn in advertising, oh my God, this, you know, that it's, and they're crying buckets, you know, because.

Yeah, I had a person on Twitter send a tweet to me with a mention of that, that phrase, right? The podcast industrial complex. And I wrote him back and I asked him, Why don't you think about that a little bit before you post that to give me a little context on what you think the podcast industrial complex actually is. And I don't know what you think it is, Todd. Is it, I guess if you take the analogy of like the military industrial complex or—

It's the money machine.

Right. It's usually a referential to big companies, right?

Yeah. Well, it's the companies that are, you know, Driving the $2, $3, $4, $5 billion in, you know, advertising revenue. You know, that's, that's the thing we lose focus on is that.

So, but does that include all the hosting companies too? Does that include all of the advertising sales agencies? Does that include?

I think so.

The, the listening platforms is. Podcast industrial?

I don't think the listening platforms, because they don't derive revenue from advertising from, you know, podcast ads. Matter of fact, they oftentimes they get blamed for the ads. You know, Marco's always happened to say, hey, that ad came from the podcaster, not from my app. And I don't know, I guess we're part of it if you may, you know, consider, you know, we're doing programmatic. So I guess we're, we're part of the money machine. But at the same time, I'd like to think that things that we do are, you know, ad revenue is not by any means our primary focus. I mean, it's, it's a, it's like a 3% focus, 3, 4%, maybe 5% focus. 95% of the rest of the focus of at least Blueberry, and I'm sure— and I can't say that for Libsyn, but for Blueberry, it's definitely tools and services, whereas probably Libsyn is more like 50% because of their relationship with, you know, having owned AdvertiseCast. Uh, I don't know about Buzzsprout or RSS.com, you know, they They're probably like us on the advertising front. They run a little bit of programmatic, but again, more focused on services, whereas Megaphone and some of those others are definitely, you know, they are definitely tied to the hip to the ad revenue. So I think it, you know, depends on how you're looking at it from a, from the hosting provider side.

Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I posed the question to ChatGPT-4, what is the podcast industrial complex? Oh, it, it came back with some results. Oh, but it, but it said the term podcast industrial complex isn't formally defined, but it generally refers to the rapid growing industry around podcasts. This industry includes not just the creation and distribution at PodcastCon, but also the surrounding ecosystem of technology platforms, advertising networks, and production services and marketing efforts. But actually, it really is a— is really kind of, kind of referring to the whole ecosystem.

Well, you know who's originated the podcast industrial complex, right? Dave and Adam.

Oh, right. So that's, that's probably where it came from.

But if I do look at the current statistics, you know, it's been a pretty rough week. Numbers are, numbers are 87,225 episodes in the last 3 days. That's, that's, that's, that's way off. You know, that's the lowest 3-day average I think I've ever seen. 179. Of course, you know, I just came off New Year's, so, you know, in this year, New Year's was on a— yes, everything fell on a Monday, so most people were off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, right? Okay, so they got 4 days. So they—

some people took off a couple days after.

Yeah, so maybe took off Friday PTO and then Tuesday they got, you know, 2— they got 2 for 5. Um, you know, my company, we give everyone— we only work 36 hours a week now as it is, and so everyone at my company had Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday off. So a lot of my team members opted to take Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and half a day Friday. So, you know, they— we really set them up to maximize their PTO time. And a lot of my team members don't come back until, uh, the 8th. So I'm sure a lot of people were off on vacation, and I know a lot of podcasters that are on the high end, they took a whole month off. They took, you know, like from the 15th of December to January 15th, which is big. But yeah, this, this show's published in the last 3 days, 87. In other words, shows, that's not episodes, but 87,000. So think about this for a second and where the opportunity lies for those that did an episode Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. You had lots of people, and this is what I was doing. I was— I ran out of content. All my YouTube channels that I watch weren't producing things. That's what made me go digging for— to watch a whole bunch of content, just kind of a research project. And did you go— did I lose you?

Oh, I just shared, uh, this is James, James Cridland's chart of active podcast trends, um, off of the podcastbusinessjournal.com website.

Okay, but again, so the thing with this, this chart, Rob, is the problem with it is that in a peak was at 300, about 360,000, down to 350,000. 15. Yeah. So you've had over the past—

yeah, it's in the last 30 days.

So, oh, so that's, that's because you look at it, where did it fall? November 27th, stuff started dropping off. It'll come back. It always does. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, that's not an unusual—

no, it's not unusual. That's only 30 days.

Yeah.

It's not unusual. Absolutely not unusual.

Yeah, so we usually see a fall-off, um, in the month of, of December.

Um, well, for a period of time there was not any. For, for 3, 4, 5 years we didn't see a drop during the holidays, right? You know, because people— because everyone was seeking content. And so I've been watching my stats and I've only been doing one show a week because of the way the holiday schedule worked. And last Thursday, man, the shot, the show that I put out last Thursday, it had bam, it had great numbers right off within 24 hours. I'm sure this one will too, because a lot of people are, you know, just the way the holidays fell this year was kind of weird. So I'm not worried about it. That, that, that, that number's coming back.

Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if it starts to climb again as we move into late January, um, and see if, if, and also Todd, if you start seeing a growth in people coming in and creating new, new podcasts, because I mean, at an increasing rate because of New Year's resolutions or whatever, that this year I'm going to start my podcast. I mean, I know a couple of people that I've been kind of giving advice to for a while that are doing that.

Well, so good time to start. The audience—

there's not as much competition.

Yeah, the audience hasn't went anywhere. They're still here.

Yeah. And really, if anything, it's going to be interesting to see what the numbers look like around audience from the Edison Research folks and Sounds Profitable, wherever, about how audience growth is.

Oh, they all went to—

they all went to YouTube Right, Todd. Right. Probably, probably some of them went from YouTube to podcasting and went backwards that way again.

Oh, okay. So can't do that. Possible. Although I have a couple of my favorite YouTube channels that have started podcasts. One of them finally responded to one of my comments and they said, tell me more about this RSS thing. It only took me about 6 or 7 of their, of their quote unquote episodes for them to finally see my comment and tell me more. So I did tell them more. So I think that those folks are actually going to sign up for Blueberry and have their RSS feed over on Apple Podcasts and everywhere else, podcast can be consumed. I'm— and I'm like, you know, they didn't know. They really did not know.

Interesting that they didn't know.

They didn't know. Really? We're supposed to do that? I'm like, what do you have it at? Okay, can you— here's, here's the thing that I— here's how I tricked them. I said, take your iPhone and look for your show in the podcast app. And they're like, we're not in there. And I'm like, exactly. That's the point.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yep.

So what happened here? Oh, so yeah. So tell your favorite YouTube channels that they should be in Apple Podcasts too. Hound them every—

hound them every video because it is, it is shocking and surprising to me that a lot of— there's a lot of podcasts that don't think to be in Apple.

Well, they, they live in— they live feeding the— in Spotify. They live feeding the beast. Yeah. And they get the type of numbers over there where they're being heavily monetized, you know, they're making big money over there.

So, so we have seen a little bit of fall-off in Apple's delivery of podcasts, right? Somebody got— you've said no, but There's plenty of other folks who have said it's been a fall-off.

We'll have our numbers. Let me, let me see if I can go over and look. See here, if I do it from here. Uh, may not be able to do it from here. I'm going to go to this site. I don't want to say that URL out loud.

So Todd, after this thing that you're digging up, um, Let's talk a little bit about what we think we should be trying to accomplish in podcasting in 2024.

All right, so why don't you go ahead and start? Let me see if I can find this.

Well, I think one of the things is that it's probably worth a, a, a revisiting of podcast metrics, um, and, and trying to figure out if as an industry we can come together and really come up with a standard standard, because I think we're under pressure a little bit from the OP3 folks as they have come up with a standard. And I know that the IAB metrics guidelines, the keyword in that name is guidelines, not standard, right?

It is a standard.

Yeah, but we've always couched it, Todd, over the years to be not a standard.

Standard.

So because nobody could agree, right?

Right.

So that was always the caveat. And what, you know, it was basically a way to appease all the arguments to some degree, right, around what that should look like. And also, you know, accepting the fact that there was going to be some variability between platforms. But I'm just wondering if that is a a, you know, a noose around our neck. No, that's being, being used against us now.

Not because the OP3 folks have very few shows that are being measured on the platform.

They, if they were, but that's not my point. I mean, my point is, is that that variability between hosting platforms on the guidelines is a vulnerability.

Advertisers are— it's not a vulnerability. Advertisers have spreadsheets.

Well, it's a vulnerability in perception because people are thinking that the metric standards need to change.

Who thinks the metrics need to change?

Lots of people. I hear comments.

Well, then they need, then they, then they need to speak up at the IAB meetings.

Well, that's kind of my bigger point, Todd, is that the industry needs to come together and come up with an actual standard that everybody adheres to. Rob Greenlee. Options for this way of doing it, options for that way of doing it. And then some people have have different opt-out bot lists than other people, whitelist, blacklists. People have different, you know, it creates what we were trying to—

No one is ever going to agree to share all their secret formulas and how they measure.

It's not about sharing secret formulas, Todd. And I think that's where we're going sideways here is that, you know, if we're going to have consistent metrics across the industry and are— these platforms shouldn't compete based on metrics. They're not. That was always the goal of the IAB, was to take metrics off the table.

Yeah, that's— and I haven't heard no one complain about deltas between Blueberry and Lipson and differences between us. They exist, but it's very, very small, very tiny differences.

That's always the argument, Todd, is that, oh, those differences are very small.

Yeah, a couple percentage points.

So, so what? By saying that, You're saying you're admitting that there is differences.

Well, that's for us. That is the sales. That is a sales advantage.

I understand, Todd, also that you don't want to invest in, in making changes or share your secrets.

No, no way.

Not kind of another aspect.

Not, not a, not a date. No, I got millions of dollars wrapped up in my stat system. No way.

No way.

What? No way I'm sharing.

That's kind of, that's kind of my point. We're leaving ourselves open for criticism.

No, there's no criticism. Have not heard of a criticism all the time, Todd, from podcasters. You don't hear it from agencies. They're not complaining.

Look at what just happened with Apple.

Guess what? Guess what? Great sales advantage for me.

Nothing changed on your platform, but 6% changed on Lipson's.

Yep. Because guess what? They're not investing. What do you mean they're not investing in improving their stats platform?

How do you know that, Todd?

Well, they had a 6% difference. If they would— if they wouldn't have— if they'd had— if they didn't have— if they would have planned— if they would have built into their system overqualification. They—

okay, yeah, but there's no standards.

So yeah, there is a standard.

Anybody know what, what is consistent across?

There is a standard. The problem is it's the minimum standard. It's the minimum requirement. That's what people need to realize. It's the minimum.

Yeah. But yet if you look at all of the other IAB metrics standards, not just podcasts, they are, they are strict standards.

Well, here's the thing, podcast is the, is the outlier, and they will never ever— MRC will never ever certify a podcast host because it comes from log data, not from client data. MRC, anything that MRC qualifies is all based on client data, and you're not going to get client data from Apple, from YouTube.

MRC come into this conversation?

MRC is what's made all the other, all the other mediums more tight.

Okay, well, that also plays into a narrative that's not good for, for—

well, the MRC has said for years they're not going to do it because— which is also a vulnerability No, it's not a vulnerability. It's a fact. Big podcasting is a different medium type.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I, I guess we're going to continue to be criticized by the ad buyers.

I have not heard an ad buyer criticize numbers in years. Haven't heard it.

Okay. Well, then that means that the ad sales folks are are, are doing that for them somehow. So how do— yeah, so how do you justify different metrics from different platforms? So let's say a show moves from platform B to platform C. Yeah, right. And the ad buyer knows that platform C has different numbers than platform B, or usually, usually the ad buyer has a spreadsheet Right, right. So I hear people in the ad— I mean, I think if, if you were to talk to Brian Burletta or you would talk to anybody on the industry side, Brian would say that there's a problem.

Well, yeah, because Brian isn't in the trenches and doesn't understand where we've been. And plus You're never going to get to where you want to be without client-side data. Until, until, until all—

That's driving the narrative of pushing towards proprietary distribution here.

Well, that would be not open. Well, then that's— well, guess what? Then go ahead, knock yourself the hell out.

No, no, no, no. I'm not saying that that's what I want. I'm saying talking about client-side data is talking about proprietary platforms.

That's why Spotify has an advantage. Yeah. Because they have all the client-side data.

Listener-side data, which is—

how's that working out for them?

Well, it also is a point of that they can, they can drive a wedge against how we're doing it because it's sporadic and so inconsistent.

They already are.

It's easy, easy to criticize. Size.

Yeah, they already are.

And pull— and, and pull budgets back from—

yeah, there are— they already are, right? But is that helping? Who's that helping? Not very many podcasters.

Which part of the client?

The only people— again, the only people that are worried about download and play numbers are podcasters that are running advertising in their shows, which still remains a very small minority of podcasts. For the 95% of the other shows, they don't care.

So why, why wouldn't we as an industry want to have a metric standard that's across?

They will never agree to a tighter standard.

I'm not saying tighter.

Oh, it has to be. I'm just saying, how do I get— how do— how did I not have a big drop? Because I have a tighter standard that I run.

Well, that's a race to lower numbers, right? Absolutely. So is that what everybody wants is a, is, is a spiral race to the lowest number?

Do you think? Okay. So let's say, let's just take one variable in the IEB spec, just one. And this is something OP3 can't get because they don't have the log data. Let's say that I say to qualify something as a player listen that we the, the, that you have to have 20% of that media file delivered. Yeah. What do you think that's going to do to people's revenue instead of 1 minute?

Right. It's going to cause it to drop.

Exactly.

So if, if one platform does that, but another platform makes it, you know, a smaller number, then there's a discrepancy between those two platforms that then puts us right back into where we were before we ever had the means.

My podcasters perform better.

Well, that could be the case. Yeah, I agree with you on that. But that's not the metric that, that things are oftentimes looked at on the advertising side.

The advertisers are always going to back it out and see what their CPA was if they're on a DR.

No, I agree after the campaign is done. I'm talking about on the buy side, on the buy end. How are they going to evaluate?

We've been running for 18 years. I know, yeah. 19 years almost now. Without client-side data.

And it is what we're still seeing platforms take big haircuts after all these years. Look at what happened to Lipson. Look what happened to other platforms that got caught in this iOS 17. Right? They got exposed. Sure. Is having weak metrics.

Not having weak metrics.

Granted, if you made it through there unscathed, that's kudos to you.

Not having weak metrics, having not analyzed deep enough.

Okay, fair enough. So we want to keep it as a competitive tool.

For me, it's a competitive tool. Right. I always tell podcasters moving to us, prepare for your numbers to go down.

Yeah, it's a— it can be a frustrating thing for a podcast. I mean, sure, we've seen this a lot, Todd. We've seen platforms take haircuts repeatedly over the years. And some put it off, put it off, put it off. And then years later, they got hit. Yeah, with a big one, and they lost a lot of their podcasters because of it. So it's, it's a, it's, it's a gamble, the industry not having a strict standard across the industry.

So because OP3 uses redirects, their numbers, just like our redirect, is always going to be lower than hosted data.

They're doing it the only way they can do it, right?

Right. Until they start processing raw log data from podcasts.

Or if that, whatever that methodology that they have gets turned into a standard that's implemented on other platforms.

Yeah, but the problem would be the only other way of doing it. It's not going to be because no one's going to buy into that. They want— people are already too much, too heavily invested in the IEB, for better or for worse.

Well, yeah, and I think that the, the worst part is how expensive it is.

It's, its prices come down considerably. It's not like what it was. Okay. I think the renewal this year is going to be around, I don't know, I don't know, $7,000 or something like that. Oh, okay. A renewal for a member.

Just a renewal, but you still have to pay the IEB fees.

Fee. And, you know, so it's still in the end a big check to write. At what point does that become less valuable? I don't know. There's a new guideline that is being drafted right now.

So, okay. Is there a timeline when that might be out?

I think they're probably come the new year or at some point. There's a— I can't go into the latest meeting, but at some point it'll be made for public review.

And Will that be a significant change? Will it bring us closer to it?

I can't— to more of a uniform kind of minimum. The minimum download's still a minute, so—

oh, it is? Okay.

I can't go into any more details than that, Rob.

It's that, it's that 2-hour versus 24 hours what creates all the variability. Um, Well, I mean, a chunk of it might be—

well, the 24-hour stuff is fair, um, just based on pure, pure statistics in that, again, the number of times you see the same IP with the same user agent twice is very, very low.

2 hours, you're going to see that.

Oh yeah, more frequently. Yeah, but 24 hours, I think the 24-hour number is safe. That's a good minimum.

I would— you want to have higher numbers, then you opt in for the 2-hour.

Well, you, you can't be certified if you're doing 2 hours.

I thought that that was the optional range.

No, no, there's no optional range. Just 24 hours. There's no optional range. Okay, 24 hours is the number. Some people might be doing 2 hours, but it's not—

that's not an IV certified Okay, well, that's good to know because I always heard that that was— those, those were the two options. No, that's 24 hours to choose one or the other.

Yeah, 24 hours. Matter of fact, that was quite— in the early days of the discussions on that was quite the— if you think about it, you, you have to get—

that's a big difference.

You get 30-plus companies in the same room to agree on a document is very, very difficult. The politics behind getting 30 companies to say, yes, we'll put our name on this is very, very difficult. So it could be tighter. But again, if it's tighter, then what do you do? Start taking money out of people's pockets because the numbers are lower, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that is a, that's a, that's kind of a self-destructive process too, because then it, it drives people to not want to support the standard either.

So the, you know, the iOS 17 was definitely an anomaly, but it was based upon back catalog. And now there's some other stuff that's happened with iOS 17 that have affected the numbers a little bit too. So the change has been good. In that regard. But every app does different, has different rules on how many episodes it downloads and how far back in the catalog. So every app has a— if there was just one app, but there's not. That's where Spotify has the advantage. They have one app. There's not variability between any of their stuff. They know exactly what they've got. We've got 100 apps and there's variability in how those apps work, how they download the data when it's— if there's followers subscribed, you know, preload or whatever they do. There's 100 different variabilities that no other industry has to put up with. YouTube doesn't do that. YouTube's got one number because everyone's on the same system. Podcasting is unique because we're distributed, because it's a It's, it's open. It's, you know, every Dick, Tom, and Harry has built a podcast app. So the numbers will never be completely perfect unless there's just one company that ends up selling all advertising to podcasts. And then they'll rig the numbers however way they want. Right. Right. Yeah.

But yeah, it's interesting.

But, you know, this is not the first time there's been a haircut that's been taken by— no— platforms. I know, I can't remember the last one. The other was— last one was a big— when we actually implemented the standard, that's when the haircut— big haircuts were taken because we got it tighter because there was haircuts all over the place.

Well, it was the haircuts that came about through the shift in support for the IAB standard, right?

Right. So it made a big adjustment. Yeah, made a big adjustment then.

Yeah, some of the platforms took incremental steps in that, right?

That's right.

They didn't want to have it all of a sudden done at one time, so it stepped down over 6 months, right? But that just extended the pain over a year, you know, getting it done.

And here's the funny part, we went first.

I know you did.

You know, we went first along with NPR, so, you know, And I think we took a little haircut in that first round in implementing the specs. We learned from some of that too. And that's when I said, okay, let's go deeper. Let's look. Let's overqualify this stuff. Let's make sure we're— and I don't want to do this again. Right. And you know, who knows, maybe I've missed something. And maybe at some point, we'll find something that we've missed. And you never know. Yeah, you know, but you know, in the early— we had the advantage of the early days where everyone was trying to do fraud. So, you know, we had fraud prevention built in before we had actual good measurement stuff. You know, we put more investment into fraud than we did on—

you know, was it more kind of, kind of bots?

You know, yeah, people running the click farms, you know. So that was, you know, we put a lot of investment in that before we even really looked at, you know, some of the other stuff, you know, because the fraud was 50%.

Yeah, I'm not seeing as many, um, people pitching buying downloads anymore, so I don't know about you.

It's plays. It's— they've all switched to the word play, but it's still a download.

Okay, so they are still selling plays is what you're saying?

Yeah, plays is the— that's how people—

because I haven't seen it in my inbox of people pitching that.

Yeah, everyone's— everyone, they just changed the word. Download and play are the same word. It's just, they just changed the word.

Or it's now, it's impression.

No, it's not. That's one person that's gonna be severely impacted by doing that. Oh, you think so? I think so. I think that's a very, I think that's very, very, very, very bad idea.

But that's what the advertisers want, Todd.

That's what the brands want.

No, they don't.

They want to buy— They don't. They don't. They know they're still getting— Okay, an impression is a play, and a play is a download. Same word, same meaning. You get 3 different connotations. But guess what? Impressions, that's the last thing I want to sell. My website had 22,000 impressions today. Okay, great. We'll give you $1.75. Yeah, that's, that's the worst thing you could ever call. I don't have to worry about it. I'm not involved in that stupidity, right? And I think it's a very bad idea. I think people that decide to go that, they're not following the standard.

Yeah, because the standard doesn't refer to impressions. No. But yeah, I think it's, it's easier to sell, sell inventory if you tell an advertiser that they're getting an ad impression. Well, that's what they've been—

that's what a lot of these brands have been sold on, the, on the player. Okay, guess what? That's in there. Just, that'll be a faster race to the bottom because in Oh my God. Yeah, wait till the CPMs drop like a rock.

Well, that's what, that's what Norm at Podcast One wanted to do many, many years ago, right?

Well, he was counting by sixes anyway, so, so that's how he, that's how he made up more money. That's how he made up— no, that's how— but at the same time, I was going into media buyers and they were showing me a spreadsheet and they were discounting That's true.

His inventory.

So they were saying— so they're like, okay, they're giving me 28 and they're giving him 11 or 10 or 9 or 7 because they know he's overcounting, right? Right. Yeah. I don't know what they're doing now. I can't speak to what they do today. Like, yeah, I don't— this is a long time ago.

This is Podcast One, this is who we're talking about. Yeah, so I don't know if they've— I don't think they're IAB.

No, they're not.

They remain not, right?

But they were on all those calls. Oh, you know, and I can't go into the— boy, those calls would make a great podcast, right? Yeah, but I'm, I'm I'm bound. I can't. We just all know it was lively.

Well, and I think, you know, in the context of what we, what we just talked about was that if you take the context of all those phone calls, all those group calls that were had, to really think that we can come up with an agreed-to across-the-industry metric standard is probably, you know, It was a series of compromises. Right. And that's probably putting it kindly compared to really what it was. Right. So it was more like, this is the way it's going to be.

And no, I'll go back and I'll just say it.

Angelo Mendato. A group of people there had to come together to make—

Angelo Mendato at NAB talked about this years before. He came armed with spreadsheets and printouts to Podcast Movement and presented— it was at NAB, and they all got in a room together. It was about 100 degrees and battled it out, and he beat them. In other words, they could no longer—

they couldn't physically, but no, they could no longer—

with data, beat them with data. They could no longer push the agenda that was being pushed. The reason that Blueberry, Libsyn, and Podtrack joined the IEB is because other people were trying to ramrod something true that wasn't derived from the data, was not derived from data. So Rob, Rob Greenlee, Mark McCurry, Angelo, and some, and basically became the thorn in a whole bunch of companies' sides to squeeze the thresholds to get to a compromise point that they are today. Yeah. Not that the spec, the original spec, I— Angela deserved a damn medal going in there. And I, you know, and maybe I don't know if Rob Greenlee would agree, But that's where change— after that meeting, things changed and we made progress. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

It was— was it, uh, 2015, 2016?

Somewhere around there. 2016. Was it perfect? No. Was it a minimum? Kind of. Mm-hmm. Kind of. So when people were looking at a 2-hour window and had to switch to a 24-hour window, they took one heck of a haircut.

Major haircut. There were some, probably some lawsuits flying around back then. Because of it too.

No, I recall. No.

Um, well, you were brought in to do some audits. Some, yes.

Those can't— there wasn't lawsuits, but there was voluntary— how should we say it— make goods, voluntary, uh, check writing, right?

Voluntary check writing, trying to avoid lawsuits, right? Yes.

That's all I'll say about that. Yeah. And was put in the middle of some very uncomfortable situations. Yeah. Media buyers, let's just put it this way. Advertisers have known since the beginning of time that things adjust over time. It's happened in display. It's happened everywhere. There's been adjustments. It's a wild, wild west. Things get tightened up, things get tightened up. There's adjustments. It's just part of doing business in the advertising space because this stuff happens. So advertisers are kind of used to it. In the end, if the advertiser— here's the ultimate— if the advertiser was happy with the results, if they feel they got their money's worth, there's no issue. Right. So let's say we've just now taken this new haircut. They should be more happy now with performance. Right. So there'll be a new, a new performance level. And in return, actually, if it's all, if it all comes out in the wash correctly, CPM should nudge up. If they don't, then the advertisers win because they're getting more for their money that they're spending. If CPMs don't edge up— if you think about it, in the early days CPMs were 20, 22, 23, 25. That was pretty normal. They haven't changed, and we've taken all these haircuts, all number of haircuts over the years. Guess what? The advertisers have won because they're getting more value for the same amount of money now. And they're not upping their budgets. Right. So it comes out in the wash. And they don't ever give it back. They don't ever— you would think CPMs would have rose, but they've never rose. Yet some shows demand a premium. Some shows get way beyond 25. Some shows get under 25. Yeah, it depends on the show, depends on the show and the genre too, and where it's hosted. And, you know, you know, so I don't have to fight with the media buyers anymore. I don't do that. I don't, I don't have to do it.

So I, I think—

oh, go ahead. The new guidelines are going to come out. We're all going to go through another round of certification. All our systems are going to be checked and run through the wringer. If we've missed something, the auditors are going to find it. And then it's up to the IAB to explain or to say, hey, we, we, you know, we've got everyone aligned. And then in the end, when I'm in front of a media buyer, I can say my stats are a little bit better because— and in that regard, then my performance should be just a little bit better. And if it is, then we'll go down in their spreadsheet and there'll be a certain formula put against my inventory. Mm-hmm. Because they all do it. They have their spreadsheets. Every vendor that they run against, every host, they all have their adjustment. Because when the media buyers aren't stupid, when they're running on 100 shows on Blueberry, 100 shows on Libsyn, 100 shows on Podtrack, and they perform differently— why do they perform differently? Well, because maybe the numbers are just a little bit different. So they, they adjust, they come back and say, okay, here's your, here's your contract, here's your CPM. And they, they average it out in the end.

Yeah, Todd, a lot of my comments on this topic about the metrics and things like that somewhat came from an article that was posted by Oxford Road, the big ad buying agencies. Yep., and they, they ran down, um, the, the situation with the IAB download, right? And, and the title of the article was The Lowdown on the Download. And they basically just ran through, uh, this, you know, the topic that we just kind of covered to some degree was that downloads are not impressions. They totally agree with that. And that, that just because something was downloaded completely doesn't mean that it was ever heard. That's right. So I think we all agree on that. But their, their bottom line to this was that this lack of standardization leaves the industry susceptible to fraud and manipulation of the numbers, creating a misleading impression that advertisers are receiving more than what they actually got delivered.

Well, that's, that's, that's— and when that happened last time, guess who was being called? You. Best thing for Oxford Road to do is to hire a Blueberry or hire PodTrak or whoever you trust the most and say, I need a commercial account, run your own prefixes, give them to all across all the all the shows. Yeah, but that doesn't solve the core issue. It gives them a number to work.

It just gives them a different number, but it's based on the same method.

But it's based upon— they get the same number for all the shows running all their ad deals, so they as a company can work off one standard and not have to work off 6 different reports they get from 6 different providers.

They get their own report. Yeah, I think where the variability comes into play here is, is that just because a media file or an ad was delivered doesn't mean it was heard. And one of the variables that they don't know is what's the audience engagement of, of episode completion, right, of listening. And there's no way for anybody to know except for a player platform to know that currently.

No, we know a—

we know of a sample.

It's an estimate. It's a, it's a sample of each show. We can say that 8% or 9% of this show's audience got to the 78% mark of download. That's all you can see. Yeah, we can see play. Again, it's a small sample. That's what we have retention data for. This is something no one else has. It's something that we built. And again, it's a small sample, 7 or 8.

Based on, yeah, so where are you pulling that data from? Log data. No, no, but where was the consumption experience for the listener?

On a variety of different apps when they click play, not when they hit follow.

So how can you definitively tell between the the process of a download versus a process of a play?

Depends. And that's when the part of the secret formula that we've run for a number of years to get that data. And again, every application does a little different behavior.

So wouldn't we want to have that for the whole industry? Great.

Pay me for it. Give me $10 million.

I'll give you the formula. Okay, so if that's true, Todd, then there is a pathway forward for the industry to address this.

But it's a sample. It's a sample of the data. It's not for— for 90%, it's downloaded within seconds, right?

It's a— so really what you're counting is, is playback that happens on slow connections.

Well, we're also— no, no, not all that. Again, every app is different in how it consumes data when it's actively hit play.

Every app has a different— every app is different.

Some of them are both together and do things kind of similarly, but I'll just leave it at that. Someone else go do the research. But you can see a certain segment of content that is chunked out. And it's, it's not completely accurate. So if someone has, is actively listening to a show, and how do we solve this problem? We don't. Okay, so how do we— so you have to have client-side data. You have to.

So example, let's say you just told me that there is a pathway.

Well, there is, there is for a segment of data. But let's say someone has listened to 30 minutes of a show, it's already chunked ahead a little bit. So even there, there's some wiggle room. They hit stop. We've already delivered maybe, let's say, of an hour program and they're at 35 minutes. Maybe they've already chunked up to 42 minutes. So even within that data, there is some variability.

Well, because, Todd, by, by not deploying this industry-wide, you know, what we're doing is we're handing the keys over to the proprietary platforms to come in and say, you guys weren't able to do this, we're going to have to do it, and, and we're going to get all the advertising.

Okay, so let's go back to— let's go back then to talk about what failed. RAD failed. This was an attempt by NPR to get this data. And agreed.

And it fails. This is a way around having to do—

but, but you'll never get— you will never— it's already been attempted. You'll never get the top 10 podcast apps to provide client-side data.

You'll never get that. But on a proprietary ecosystem, you don't have to, Todd. Oh, I know that. But Apple, Apple has their data. Sure. Spotify has their data. Sirius has their data, and those folks are the only people that can sell.

Well, no, advertisers are looking for play data, and you have to go to every other non-big player like that and say, give us client-side data, and then you're going to get 10% picture, just like we've got a 10% picture in retention data.

I can tell you Spotify has complete picture.

Of course, so does Apple, right? They've all got that information.

So it's not a sample. No, the complete— of course, complete view, of course, which is a competitive advantage.

But for those platforms, it's not a competitive advantage because 95% of podcasters on Spotify are not getting a dime.

No, no.

Yeah, I'm not talking about— so as soon as podcasters learn that Spotify is never going to pay them, then they're talking about data. I know, I know, revenue. I know, but it ultimately leads to revenue.

Or lack of, like you just made a point. Sure, lack of. So that's even more of a reason to do this from an industry perspective.

But you're not going to be able to do it from industry standard. Rob, you go ahead and spearhead it. But you just told me that it was possible to do that. Okay, but again, go to— they're still not going to be satisfied. So go to Marco and say, Marco, We want you to tell us when a podcast listener hits stop. You know what he's going to tell you? Use my ass. He probably won't say that. He just won't respond. He'll say no. He doesn't like advertising to begin with. Go to Pocket Casts and say, we want— that's a different argument. We want client-side data. No. They're not going to give it to you. If they were smart, they would sell it.

Right. Right.

That was my next comment.

They would sell it back to the pathways.

Yeah. They would, they would sell it back to those companies that need that data. Right. And then you'd have to have the listeners opt in to have that data shared.

So I guess the bigger question is, is, is it, is this situation going to persist for the next 20 years?

We're never going to do anything about it. Not going to get fixed. Why? It won't. It's just the nature of being open, and it's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Okay, but there's a likelihood that because we didn't evolve this, that it will get—

it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. Well, then it's going to hurt those that are revenue dependent upon advertising. All the more reason for people not to be so beholden to advertising.

I just think it's bad.

Overall, it's bad for the— we've had the same conversation every year, Rob. This is, this is the same.

I know we have, but, but now it's coming up again and we're in a new environment now. And, and advertisers, I think, are becoming much more, much more—

they've already been educated— demanding of—

well, they can demand all they want—

industry to compete.

Well, they've already—

other, other media, they've given them— they've already demanded to give attribution. They've already got that. They're not going to get it. They can wish all they want. Okay, wish in one hand, advertiser, and poop in the other. And guess what? You're not going to get it. If you want it, go to YouTube, go to Spotify, spend all your money there. Okay, that's the answer.

Okay, that's the answer. There's going to be a lot of people in the industry that will agree with you on that.

Oh, I'm sure they won't. But guess what? There's no other way. Someone tell me how to get there. There isn't a way to get there.

Well, one way is to do like you just said that you're doing.

Then spend the money and build the system to do it. Okay. I'm not giving it away. All right. And again, it's a sample. It's not— it's a piece of it. And there's some, there's some, there's some, there's a wedge of uncertainty. How much further? They hit stop at 30 minutes and maybe they've already chunked to 42 minutes. So it's, oh, on a 60-minute program, my folks got to 45 minutes. Well, maybe they didn't. Maybe they got to 30. We don't know. We can't answer that. We know they're kind of close. So even the retention data has a margin of error. Right.

Put your advertising in early. I just think as an industry, we're, we're playing with our future.

Well, until someone comes out with an app that claims 97% of the listening audience, you're never going to get there. This data. Okay, unless the industry is willing to write a check to who? App developers say, give us this data, put in this system where your listeners come in. So imagine, here's the experience on— let's say they, they give Marco a big fat check, something he can't, can't walk away from, seals his future. Let's say it's $10 million a year. Marco's going to put in his system when people log into the app for the first time, do you want your play data reported back to the podcaster that's running advertising their show? Do you want them to know that you heard the ad and know your play habits? Yes or no? And about—

so, and a percentage isn't the other like on like the music platforms and aren't they doing?

Yeah, because they have it in the terms of service. Read through page 82. It's already in there. You're already giving it up. Right. So there's this trade-off. This is the thing we've been dealing with since 2005.

That's right. And it never gets any better.

That's the problem. It doesn't.

So we— every year, every year we keep having this same argument.

And the reason— and here's another thing that's crazy about the retention data. Depends on your audience makeup and where they're listening. Because if they have their audience on a certain app, the retention data that I have might be 1 or 2%. Because guess what? As soon as they hit play, right, you know, you know, just downloads it immediately. And it depends on the app. Hit play. Oh, I can get this chunk data, a series of apps to give me this information. This is not rocket science. Yeah. In some apps, again, you hit play and it looks like a download. That's interesting. But you can't get that without log data. You can't get— you have to have raw log data to get this minimal amount of information. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Oh, yeah. And sometimes the apps change. New version comes out all of a sudden. Hmm. Guess what I'm not getting anymore? Retention data. Or app changes. Oh, they did something. Become more efficient with bandwidth. Apps that are efficient with consumers' bandwidth are the ones we get retention data from. So I encourage you, if you're an app developer, we love it when you're really considerate of active plays, of only taking the amount of data that you need to give them the audio that they are listening to.

Hint, hint, hint. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So just, you know, I think we're going to continue hearing this this chime of change.

Well, they're making billions of dollars, so these companies can afford to write some checks to these app developers to get this client-side data. Yeah.

Well, you're not—

That would be one answer. You're not going to pay it to Apple. You're not going to do it for Spotify. You're not going to get it from iHeart because they've all got their own internal data. You're not going to get it from Amazon. And the subset of apps, so you're going to get maybe 10-15%, that'll be your sample. And then you got to ask all the apps that make up that 10 or 15%, got to write them a check so that they provide client data in a specification that is similar to RAD. And every company is going to have to write their own check because they're going to have to write protocols to send Blueberry data, they're gonna have to send Libsyn data, they're gonna have to send Podbean data, have to send Podtrack data without intermixing the streams. So that becomes very complicated.

Yeah, I think at one point I think we all talked about having like a, like an entity that sits in the middle of the internet.

That entity will have to be paid for, right?

So you want RAD, Rob Greenlee, that's what you want. Well, Rad was more of a player. Um, Brad was a kind of a player that, that, that reported back to the hosting.

Yeah, Blueberry's player reports back to us. This— that's not what really what we're talking about. I know, but the player was— had to be implemented by developers in order to do this, right?

They actually had to replace their existing players that they Right, right now. And so what you're talking about here is actually taking the data from their existing— Absolutely.

Not replacing it with a RAD.

And I think where, where we went sideways on the RAD stuff was that this new player had, had vulnerabilities in it.

Well, well, and here's another thing that you're up against. Most apps have no server infrastructure. It's on the phone. You subscribe to a podcast, they go out to Apple Podcasts, get different— they don't have a server.

You mean the apps don't have a supporting server?

A lot of that infrastructure? Nope. Labs run standalone. They make a call out to Apple Podcasts. They make— they don't have— they don't have infrastructure.

Marco does. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say. I think any kind of modern platform that has any kind of infrastructure, has a database that drives the— the database comes from Apple. Well, that's just an API. That's just an access to the data. That's right.

But they don't have— they don't— most of these apps do not have their own. Why? Why run it when you can just do the API call back?

Because why? I mean, I've talked to a lot of these developers too, and they have their own SQL database, and what they do is they do a query against the Apple APIs, pull the data in, and I think very few do that.

I have to ask the app developers how many do. I think a lot of them run standalone. I mean, it's so easy now to get a SQL database, then, but again, I think, but it costs them money, and when they're not making any money on their apps, it's, it's an overhead cost.

To run that search. I just don't, I just don't think that the Apple APIs would actually support that.

Well, I think it does.

Again, I'm not a real-time call.

They're not making a call on that on a full catalog.

Well, that, that's what you would want.

Well, right. I don't know what— again, I'm sure most of those apps have a base catalog already in their Right, so they had to populate it through pulling the APIs.

Yeah, time again, I know that data has to go somewhere. Yeah, I guess it could go directly to the app.

You have to talk to an app developer. I'm not— but I'm— I— my understanding is most apps don't have a lot of— well, if they do, it's minimal, right?

No, no, I'm not saying it's extensive database.

It's just kind of like a basic SQL that has maybe You know, so to get what you want, you have to have a whole new set of logging and parsing.

And that's, that's a heavy lift. Yes. All you're doing is capturing what is in the item lists of the, of the RSS feeds. And you're pulling that data and you're probably not even pulling the image. You're actually probably pulling a link to the image.

Potentially.

All right. Hey, Rob, we're— anyway, we're long.

Okay.

All right. Well, I thought it was a good show. I think we talked about a lot of, a lot of important topics going forward into the new year, and there's certainly a million more to talk about, but that's, that's for more episodes, right?

Yeah. All right, everybody, thanks for being here. No show next— well, Rob will be on his own next week.

Yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll try to do an episode about the Hall of Fame next week.

So, all right. Yeah, sounds good. Okay, I'm Todd at blueberry.com, at Geek News on X, at Geek News, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Yep, and I have my own website at robgreenlee— or not at, but robgreenlee.com— and then I'm on Twitter @robgreenlee. Um, and you can send me an email if you want, robgreenlee@gmail.com. .com. Would love to hear from you, and I'm sure Todd would love to hear from you too. Um, you know, share any tips or anything that you see going on, and it's always good to hear from you.

And at the same time, um, I'm doing my tech show a day early because I'm about to embark on travel. So, uh, about an hour from now, Geek News Central will be live for those of you that are here. So, uh, hang out and, uh, we'll be back on the air in about an hour with that show.

So, uh, oh, you will Okay.

Yeah. All right. So prep starts immediately, and then I'm post-processing two shows at the end of this show, so I'm gonna be here until late. All right, everyone, thanks for being here. We'll see you next time. Love to hear your commentary. Yeah, send us some boost on the, uh, on the show today. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time. All right, thanks.