HAS THE PODCAST BOOM FINALLY ENDED?

Todd and Rob in the afternoon.

Hey, afternoon delight with Todd and Rob.

Oh yeah.

Hey Todd, we're back on the New Media Show. It's been a couple weeks.

Yes, we are. Here we are, and, uh, the podcasting world is still alive and well.

Yeah, that's true. I think it's still here, I think, for now anyway.

Yeah, I'm just waiting for my streams to come live, Rob.

So, okay, well, I mean, I think we're live on all of my channels right now, so it's, it's, it's almost instantaneous from what I, my experience here.

Not for, uh, not for Facebook and YouTube for me because it's the spool-up time, but I guess, I guess, yeah, they're starting up now. So if you missed the beginning of the show, I apologize, everyone. Rob pulled the trigger really quick. So everyone, how you doing?

Doing terrific. I'm trying to minimize the amount of pausing that's on the video when people watch the replay on this, so people get right into the content. So that's, that's a little bit why I jumped the gun on stuff like this. It's a little bit of a difference. Um, I don't know why yours—

your side of things is, is kind of slow, but because you sound straight to Restream, then Restream has to start, right? And because you're going direct to YouTube, I'm not.

Okay, it's a two-step process.

Yeah, me has to spool up Restream, the Restream has to send out. So regardless, yeah, right, right.

Well, it's an interesting kind of, you know, kind of conversation because, you know, going, going direct has some benefits than going through like a, like a secondary kind of restreaming type platform can offer delays. Right. So it's an interesting contrast there. So anyway, yeah.

And you've been on the move quite a bit.

Yeah, I was back in, back in Seattle for, for a week or so and helping my dad move from his house in Bellevue to to a more of a senior living retirement community kind of, kind of a living situation. He had a lot of— had like 40 years of stuff that had to be moved out of the house. But so there's a lot of, a lot of hard work went into that. He's still trying to get out of it. But anyway, um, yeah, so it's been interesting kind of time to some degree. You know, there's, there's always, obviously, always news going on the podcasting space and And, you know, one of the things that continues to hit me in the head as I think about the podcasting space right now is I continue to see this research that's out there that's kind of pointing to how we've kind of, you know, and I think we've all kind of recognized the fact that podcasting in the US is kind of reaching a maturation phase. I would think once you have it like 80% awareness of podcasting in the, in the US population. That's pretty high numbers. I know for many years we strived to get to 30% or 40%, whatever, and we were constantly talking to people about what a podcast was. But that conversation really never happens anymore. So that's a little bit of a sign. And then also some of the numbers that are coming out about, you know, almost 70% of the US population has actually listened to a podcast or what they perceive to be a podcast. So that's a whole nother kind of element to that. And I just wonder if— and there's nothing wrong with this— it's just, I just wonder if we've kind of reached some level of peak podcasting in combination with what's happening with the economy and what's happening with the advertising market in the podcasting space, and just more broadly what's happening in business in general and media in general. There's a big shift happening right now. I do think that podcasting is becoming more important to more people in their lives. And it does seem like bigger shows are continuing to get bigger. And that's a good trend as well. But it is, I think, a little bit more of a challenging time for new creators getting into the space, trying to carve out their niche. Now, that doesn't make it impossible, but I do kind of wonder, Todd, what's your thoughts on all of this research that's coming out that's kind of showing that, you know, Maybe we've, we've reached some sort of plateau here and we're not going to move forward, especially around that podcast advertising side, which we seem to have hit that $2 billion revenue threshold and we can't really seem to get through that. Uh, we, we've been trying for quite a few years now.

Well, it just, just to be kind of honest, uh, it's the best time ever to be a creator. You know, the number of of shows creating content right now remain at an all-time low.

Um, so yeah, but why is that is the question. Why, why are fewer—

it's simple, it's the economy. Um, and at the same time, uh, we have this, uh, you know, this hype, uh, that, you know, you had to be on YouTube. And, and we're right now, finally some podcasters are starting to wake up. At least in conversations I'm having, that, you know, it's not all that it's been meant out to be as far as having success with video. So I think that is, we're going to have a little bit of a boomerang factor with that when people find that they've invested heavily to try to do a video podcast and then don't find success. And, you know, it's, it's all about creating content. Um, the listenership is, is, is again, the listenership is at all-time high, continues to grow. Podcasts continue to grow. So this assertion that we're at somewhere at peak podcasting, I, I don't think that's— I don't think we're anywhere near that. Um, especially on the creator side, you know, you're going to find at a certain point that you're going to you're going to be, uh, tapped out when it comes to the percentage of listeners. But again, you know, what are listeners and what are content creators? I mean, what are people seeking? Great content. So it just goes hand in hand. You know, we've had— you just look at the last 30 days, only 330,000 shows have updated in the last 30 days. That's, uh, that's, that's 50% off, maybe even 60% off what it was a year and a half ago when that number was close to 600,000 or 700,000 shows. So, you know, I, I, I just don't believe, you know, I, I think it's a great time to be a, to be a podcaster right now. Um, the numbers are showing it and growth on shows that that when we're, as we're watching stats, shows are growing at incredible rates right now. So yeah, I think the audience is here. I think they're just seeking great content. And if the content isn't great, you're not. It's just like anything else. Yeah. Superior content is going to win the day. Yeah.

I think that. That is one of the other key takeaways too, is that the, the bar is so much higher now for gathering large numbers of audience. And that's, that's one of the challenges I think that a lot of new creators are kind of running into is that, that level of skill and that level of, of savviness, right, on how to be successful as a podcaster has elevated And that's putting on a lot of challenges onto creators to navigate that. And then you think about the complexity of the media creation landscape right now. And I mean, obviously like what you've been talking about is that throwing into the mix YouTube is like a whole nother bag of worms that you're throwing into the problem that these creators have to face is that if they're trying to do a live streaming or they're trying to do YouTube and they're creating video and they're creating audio and they're trying to optimize optimize what they're doing for all these different mediums. It's a daunting challenge. And to do it right and to do it in a way, I mean, we faced some feedback on X this past week about this show and how this show is done and how, you know, and it really reflects that kind of feeling that a lot of people have around, you know, We tend to do this show, at least kind of, I, I think from a perception standpoint, as a more traditional kind of show, even though it's live and things like that. But we've been doing live for what, 14 years something? So, so for us, live is not something new, but it, but for a lot of newer creators out there, it's like, like you've been saying, video is a, is a component that is is an extra level of challenge, I think, is the honest thing. And it, and it may not be the right thing for every creator to jump in with both feet to do both, you know, and especially to do live on top of that.

Yeah. You know, it's still a small percentage though. You know, it's a higher percentage than it was. If it was 3% of shows were doing video before, now maybe 5 or 6%. Mm-hmm. Have a show that includes a video component. But again, you know, we see no slowdown in the number of shows that are launching, that are starting new podcasts. It's just not at the fervid pace that it was during COVID And we got spoiled during COVID too on the number of new shows that were created and saw this exponential growth. Yeah, so things are, things are back to normal and people are living their lives and they don't have time to do 3 shows anymore. They're doing 1. And, uh, but again, I think, I think we have to be careful in saying that we're at peak podcasting because, um, I think maybe from a listener standpoint, um, we might be, but also listeners are also they have a lot of options right now. They've got a lot of things that they can, you know, tune into. They can tune into TikTok, uh, Instagram, uh, Reel. I mean, just goes on and on and on, the amount of content that they can consume.

So there's lots of choices, right? Yeah.

And then, and I, and I really think that's a good thing. So again, I think anyone that wants to create a podcast that's considering a podcast, it still, it still remains the best time ever to start as far as a pure, uh, a pure audio podcast.

Yeah, I think for me— oh, go, go ahead, finish your thoughts.

Sorry, it's just the, the, the lift to get started is almost non-existent anymore.

It's easier. It's easier, right? You know, it's easier, but yet it's it's so easy. It doesn't, I guess, doesn't instill the amount of challenge really that is really inherently there to grow audience. I think we've made the technology part of it easy.

Growing an audience again is the age problem that people have been asking.

Yeah, that's been the case. Yeah, right.

You have to work. And any, any, any, any suggestion that there have people are having a harder time now growing an audience, in my opinion, that's total hogwash because look at the tools you have now to grow audience. I mean, it's, it's incredible. Um, all we had before was a website. So now you've got all this opportunity. To promote a show and get recognition and be discovered. So, you know, for someone to say, oh, I'm having trouble growing my audience. Well, maybe it's the content. Um, yeah, you have to look at that close. I just don't, I, I don't buy the, the, the excuse now that I'm having challenges building an audience. Those that want to build an audience that are dedicated to it, are going to build a great audience. And again, what is the number that they're looking for? Um, I, I think it has to all be put into perspective. People want instant success these days, and right, shows, no one has instant success on any platform.

Um, yeah, I mean, and I think one, one topic that came up, uh, on, on X as well, it, it kind of came up in my mind as I was thinking about some of the things as kind of newer people to the medium look at podcasting, um, they see a certain kind of perspective on where the podcast medium is right now. And it does tend to lean a little bit heavier on more kind of modern concepts around podcasting, and it doesn't really have always a lens to what the foundations of this medium are really built on. And I guess one of the things that I I created was a kind of like a 4-point list and thought I wanted to bounce them off you to see if you agree with them. Is that, um, there's only like 4 things that have really changed in podcasting in the last 20 years, right? I think anyway. And, uh, you obviously may have a different take on it or an additional thing or something like that, but I, I pointed out really one, the number one, one is ease of posting an episode via, you know, online tools, you know, for audio and video to RSS feeds. Back when we started, we didn't have that.

Well, we had ease of posting. We didn't have ease of RSS feed creation.

Yeah, exactly. It's the publishing process is what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Creating a post in an RSS feed, we had to hand-code that. So one of the big things that has come is the ease of doing this, right? Um, and, and then Rob, I, I hand-coded feeds for like 2 months. I know it didn't last long. It didn't last. But that was—

so this consideration that we hand-coded feeds for years? No.

Oh no, I'm not saying— yeah, I'm not saying that we did, but Lipson actually was the first podcast host, and they, they started making that available in— was it, um, late 2004. So it was only a few months that that kind of technology was available. And there was some other tools.

Yeah, there was being made, right? Movable Type had a plugin of sorts. And I was on Movable Type for many years. And then WordPress, of course, had from, you know, from its inception almost had a, yeah, had some tools or had a plugin.

So Um, yeah, I think that, uh, yeah, I was trying to play up the, the innovation that has, has happened with the podcast hosting platforms that have made all this so much easier than it was when it started.

I think from a posting standpoint, you still have to write a title, still have to write a blog post.

Oh yeah, you know, basics are still there, right?

The base, it's, it's just the pure basics, you know. So from that perspective It hasn't changed in 20 years. It's, it's definitely easier by the number of providers out there that are, you know, making it easy to publish a show.

Yep. And then number 2 is ad tech and dynamic ad insertion.

Oh yeah.

The, the attribution stuff and the brand safety stuff. I think those are, that's like the second biggest change that has happened. Cuz back in the early days of this medium and quite quite a few years. I mean, I, I started working on dynamic ad insertion technology back when I worked for PodcastOne back in 2014.

I, I think we've had DAI at Blueberry for—

oh, it's— had it for a long time too, but nobody ever used it.

Yeah, 12, 12 or 13 years. Yeah, so we've had it a long, long time. It's still not a product that is widely used by the majority of shows.

Or even a minority of shows, really, probably.

Yeah. Yeah. It's still— and, you know, and usually it's shows that have grown significantly. You know, they're big shows. And, you know, here's this, you know, here's the fact that still continues to this day. Um, 90% of shows deliver 90% of their lifetime downloads in the first 96 hours.

So, you know, you know, so DAI, for those, doesn't really help that much, right?

It doesn't, you know, it, it does from the simple fact that the ads aren't there anymore. Um, later on they get removed to a higher percentage of shows than they were before because You know, I've got thousands of episodes where the ads are baked in and I'm never worried about pulling them out.

Right. Actually, in a lot of ways, I think DAI has made it possible to, to have more advertising in your show than you would normally.

And if you look at the ad tech, you know, right now Garmin is in trouble.

They haven't heard that. What's, what's going on with Garmin?

They've been called to the carpet in Congress being, you know, basically have moderation, right? Well, they're classifying some content that is right-leaning negatively. So that's bias. Yeah. So they've had bias in there. So, you know, the ad tech goes both ways. It's good and bad.

Yeah. And the attribution stuff kind of carves into privacy issues too. So it's a little bit of a— You know, some of this ad tech stuff, and I know it's a sore subject, but it's only for a small number of shows that actually employ it.

You know, less than 10% of shows, I'm sure, are using any type of ad tech whatsoever.

But yet there is a subset of the podcast industry or community or whatever that really relies on this stuff, and it's really core to what they do. Um, which is in some ways relatively new phenomenon as well, um, that, that we've, we've developed kind of this secondary kind of industry around podcasting that really didn't exist, um, going back that far. I mean, I think it's—

and, and yet they can't get beyond $2 billion.

Well, that was my bigger point of, of this kind of like this this kind of peak that I was talking about. I mean, it seems like we keep hitting that $2 billion number and we never quite ever get over it. And I know that the forecasters, you know, like, like a lot of the bigger media, IAB and others, keep forecasting. Well, it's like they're even forecasting for 2024 that we're going to be up 12 or 13% in 2024. And I'm like, back up to $2.6 billion. But like we've said on this show many times, it's like, I think we've seen that projection like the last 5 years. Oh yeah, we've never gotten there. So I don't know if it's going to happen this time, but I think considering 2023 showed a 5% increase in ad revenue, I think it's a stretch to think that we're going to get 12% in 2024 given the market. I think it's, it's definitely, uh,, you know, an aspirational, um, kind of projection.

If any political advertising trickles down into podcasting, that'll help, uh, this, this year. But, you know, that's gone next year. So that's, you know, maybe a little bit of more ad spend that comes in because of that. But politicians have not traditionally advertised in podcasting, right? We don't get that windfall that radio and television does. So. And I think part of it too is, is a lot of people don't want political ads on the show even if it was available.

Yeah, I mean, I, I do appreciate these, these research companies kind of like wanting to be, you know, positive and, you know, try and convince advertisers that this is a good medium. And if you put out big numbers like that, maybe there's a certain amount of bump that can happen from people getting a perception that I want to get in you know, get on the bandwagon with a winning medium, right? That's growing and doing well, right?

Well, it's very— but, you know, with the people that are advertising in radio are definitely not shifting their dollars directly into podcasting.

There isn't this linear switch kind of, kind of connection between those two things, right?

Well, I think it's because there's so many options now and places to advertise. You look at the, the bombardment of advertising you get on Facebook. You know, it's in your timeline. It's ridiculous at the load count. You look at YouTube, if you're not paying for premium, the load count that's in YouTube is just insane. It's like watching television, you know, every 7 minutes, boom.

And it's very, it's not even, you know, joined with easy transitions either. It's just Burge is right in the middle of the content, right?

So, you know, they, they've, they've made it so intrusive that they, you know, it's forcing people to pay them if they want to watch content on YouTube, forcing them to pay.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure that's a better model for YouTube.

Oh, and there's something— there's some podcasters that have, uh, ad loads that way too, and some of the Edison stuff that just not— excuse me, uh, sounds proper stuff that just came out you know, indicates that, you know, there's a little bit of a tendency to, you know, we're starting to see, you know, it's not, it's not completely an issue at this point, but there's, there's hints that it's an issue.

Oh, as far as oversaturation of ads?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think there's been a danger of that with programmatic for a long time. Well, I've seen that, that growing and developing.

It's just too easy. I don't hear an overloading of programmatic. I hear an overloading of host read ads.

Oh, host reads. Oh, okay. What's happening there too?

Okay. Yeah, it's huge. You know, some of these shows have, you know, 8, 9, 10 ads in them.

There's a lot more money in the host read stuff typically, so I guess it does make a little bit of sense, right?

But the programmatic, even on our end, um, the most you can opt into is 2.

Per, per break, right?

Well, 2, 2 total.

Total for the whole— it doesn't matter how long the episode is? Yeah. Really?

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay. You know, because, you know, we're causing—

not all the platforms are that, are that restrictive.

That's why I get— that's why I'm gonna stop listening to some shows is because of the ad load. But it's mostly host reads. It's not programmatic that I'm hearing these high ad loads.

Okay, well, there's no kind of, you know, insertion limiter there on the, on the, um, well, it's a regular host read if they're using dynamic ad insertion technology.

But if you're hearing— if it's not on YouTube though, that's truly the programmatic, you know, bombarding hell zone, right? Yeah, you know, yeah, totally. And then if you go ahead— but I was going to say, if you're in— if you haven't been subjected to a YouTube ad load, you would be shocked if you're not paying how heavy it really is at this point.

Yeah. And the third one that I picked as far as big things that have changed is Spotify entering the, the medium. I mean, if I think back to the impact of even Microsoft and Facebook and Google and all those, I don't think that they— any of those equate to the impact that that Spotify has had on the podcast medium, whether we like it or not. I think that was a big inflection point in the podcast medium. And then the recording of audio and video, you know, the tools getting cheaper and easier to use and has really kind of fundamentally changed the medium. Like being able to do this show with a browser-based tool is something that didn't exist in the past. And so you can see where the technology has really made it a lot easier now. You know, these RODECasters or whatever, it just has so much integrated technology into them that, you know, I had to build out, you know, a $20,000 studio to do the things even even partially what I'm doing right in my little, you know, $400 or $500 RODECaster. You know, it's, it's, it's remarkable is what it is.

Well, you know, if you think about how long we've been doing video, the tools, the browser-based tools have been there for a long time. Think about when we were using Blip or Ustream.

Um, or Blab, was it Blab?

Or yeah, Blab, maybe it was Blab. Um, but you know, some of those did require an RTMP stream, so some of them were not 100% browser-based. But yeah, um, you know, I'm worried we're going to go the other way on browser-based stuff with what StreamYard has just done recently in removing pricing for their product and Uh, you know, there's, there's some question on what's, what's going to happen with StreamYard. Are they going to roll that into a new product? Uh, you know, but if they remove— you know, we'll see what happens, but it's definitely easier if you look at Captivate and all the other tools that are out there for recording. Um, definitely easier to do person-to-person interviews without having to have a studio, for sure.

Yeah, and there's, there's other tools out there too that are, you know, are competitive to, to StreamYard too that are doing, you know, very similar things like Riverside and Squadcast. And, and, uh, and a new one that's going to be launching here soon is called New Basic Media, um, is a new kind of live streaming platform that's, that's going to be launching at the end of the month.

But, and there's open source tools too, so stuff that's not—

there's the OBS tool, which is Yes, yeah, extremely capable, and that's actually completely free.

I'm trying to think of the other one that is, uh, that people have, uh, don't use as much anymore. Oh my God, um, it's Wirecast.

Oh, Wirecast, right. And then, and then there's Restream too, which is pretty, pretty powerful. Yeah.

And Restream, you know, I use obviously for just one, one stream in, multi-stream out. I probably don't use half of the functionality of, of, uh, of Restream. But again, those do require a little bit more tech savviness and sending, uh, you know, an RTMP feed to it.

Yeah. Oh, to kind of jump back on the earlier topic, Todd, where you had mentioned about how listenership may be slowing a little bit. The research out there from Edison does show that from 2022 to 2023, listenership grew by 5%, which is, you know, from a historical perspective, that's a pretty good clip. Because if you go back in time, typically, it's usually around 3 or 4% is is what we have typically seen on a yearly basis of listenership growth. But from 2023 through what we know so far in 2024, it's only up 3%. So, so that may be a sign that maybe listenership may be kind of, you know, plateauing a little bit right now. But again, but that could also be just a temporary blip because we've seen that fluctuation over time too. Some years it goes up 3 or 4%. Some years it goes up 6%. Some years it, you know, so it's this back and forth thing. As long as it's plus up every year. But there is a ceiling to this, Todd. I'm not sure that, I don't know that we've hit that yet, but it's only so many people.

It's been a long time since I run into someone that did not know what a podcast was. Not necessarily that they are listening. Um, you know, again, because of the perception now that, you know, everything's a podcast, you know, no matter where you listen or watch, you know, everything is considered a podcast now.

So yeah, that's true, that's true, especially in the research that's coming out continuously hammering this, this thought that, um, you know, YouTube is the dominant podcast consumption platform.

Yeah, well, okay, they can, they can keep on selling, uh, the YouTube marketing, uh, speak per se.

But, but again, why do you think that, that, that is going on? I mean, is it all a fraud, do you think?

Or, well, where's the numbers? Where's the numbers? Where— I'm not saying it's fraud. Where's the numbers? Where are, where are all of these listeners and viewers? Where are they? If you look across 90% of shows or 95% of shows on YouTube, they have almost no, no, no uptake. So that, yeah, there are shows that are very, very popular that are doing gangbuster numbers., you know, millions of views, but that doesn't trickle down. It's not trickling down. So what you have is a, a very concentrated audience on a few shows on YouTube. And if I— a few shows, probably 200 or 300 shows on YouTube that have this high concentration of listeners and viewers, but yet if you look at the average Joe or Jane podcast on YouTube, they don't, they're not getting, they're definitely getting more listens than they are on podcast apps than they are on, than they are on YouTube. So again, you've got a high percentage of audience concentrated on a small number of shows, they're definitely driving this, uh, this narrative. So have you watched a podcast on YouTube? Yeah, sure. But it's one of like 200 or 300 shows. Again, you go much deeper than that. Those numbers don't, don't translate down, downward into the majority of shows that are on YouTube today.

Yeah. This, this study came out. It's the Spring 2024 report from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights called the, the Podcast Download. Um, and it, it talks about in this, this report— I haven't found the slide yet, but, uh, says YouTube is the most utilized podcast listening platform in the US, say 31% of its surveyed, um, again, folks 21% said Spotify and 12% said Apple.

Again, a high number of people concentrated on a small number of shows. So I have no doubt that the survey data they're getting is right, but it doesn't translate downward into the average podcaster.

Yeah, I mean, I think that— I think you have to look at this data, um, from what it really says it's telling you, and that's YouTube is the most utilized podcast listening platforms in the minds of 31% of people out there that are listening to a concentrated number. Well, they think that they're consuming a podcast.

Well, they watch them and they are, and it's fine. I'm not going to argue about the definition of podcasting, but again, they are in their mind, but again, it is concentrated to a relatively small number of shows. So I have no doubt that there are people who are saying this. Yeah. But at the same time, the Spotify phenomenon, what we're starting to see now, and we've seen this growing over the past year, is Spotify podcasters per se wanting greater flexibility to produce their shows. So while they're still seeing success on Spotify, they're not necessarily— a lot of shows are moving from hosting on Spotify, successful shows that want to grow and have more tools. They're moving to more traditional podcast hosts per se, just because of the breadth of tools available. And yet they came out with this number that, you know, they're hosting this number of video podcasts on Spotify. And I have yet, have you watched a video podcast on Spotify?

Yeah. Oh yeah. I watched Joe Rogan.

Well, Rogan over there. Okay. Right. Right. Um, I just don't see, I'd love to know what people's uptake numbers are because those, those numbers are not at all public. On how people are doing on Spotify Video. Um, again, it's a, it's, it's an interesting, interesting move here.

Yeah, I found a slide that, that was part of that deck that I showed earlier, and it says a tale of three studies. It says weekly podcast consumers use YouTube and Spotify most often. It says here on this study, it shows the Cumulus Media Signal Hill Insights shows 31% YouTube, 21% Spotify, 12% Apple.

And then the question needs to be asked is, what podcast are you listening to on YouTube? Which podcast are you— and I'm sure it's pretty more broad spread on Spotify. I think that question needs to be asked because when I still today look at the consumption numbers, at least in my statistics, you know, Apple is still from a total listener number. What's the download number? Yeah, but still, it's a, it's, it's, it's above 50%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's, it's tracking different data than what these folks are tracking. So it's, it's not comparable really.

They're really asking, you know, how many people listen on Spotify. And if, if Spotify is driving listens, that's, that's great. You know, I have no doubt people are listening to Spotify, but people are not listening to this show on Spotify.

Yeah. And then the other two studies in here, um, Triton Digital Podcast Metrics. Yeah, demos plus Q1 2024 shows YouTube 34%, which is, you even higher than the Cumulus one at 31%, and then Spotify's at 27%, and Apple's at 13%, which is slightly higher than the—

but again, it's, it's the perspective. You can throw these numbers out all day long, but is that, is that, is that trickling down to the average podcaster?

It's not. Well, okay, these are They're not talking about podcasters here. They're talking about consumers of podcasts, right? And what they're perceiving is, is when you tell them they're experiencing, right?

When you tell a podcaster who is not, they just hear a number. 34% of podcasts are being, um, 34% of— they, the way they hear it is 34% of podcasts are being consumed on YouTube. YouTube.

That's not true. Yeah, I mean, it's— that's not what this number should be telling anybody, right?

But that's the way they perceive it. That's right. That's how the podcaster perceives.

And there are content creators out there that are making decisions based on this data, right? They're making a prioritization decision and choice based on this data, even the Edison Research shows a pretty high percentage for YouTube at 27% and Spotify at 29%.

Again, Seamless and Triton and Edison need to go to the next step. They need to go to the next step and say, okay, what are the top 10 shows that you're watching on YouTube? And I guarantee you that will be a very concentrated number of shows. Yeah, I'm sure that list. Um, so I think while the audience is there and they're discovering podcasts are there, if you look at the billions, and I say that in a big word, billions of downloads that are happening, the majority of the actual listening to podcasts are still happening in traditional podcast apps.

Yeah, and I'm sure that there's a lot of consumption happening in the, in the YouTube platform of consumers that think that they're consuming a podcast when it's really just a YouTube channel.

But I think, you know, I think again, I'm not going to try to, to defend the definition of a podcast because then we're the old curmudgeons, right? So again, if they're cons— if they think they're consuming a podcast on YouTube great. That's fine. Again, it's a concentrated number of those types of shows. Um, on— again, I think people have to take into account that this is what consumers are saying, not exactly where the actual download numbers are coming from.

Yeah, right. It's a different kind of data is what it is. And this slide is interesting too, because it plays on another aspect of it too. It says YouTube is the number one most used platform among consumers regardless of tenure of heavy use. So what they're saying here is that if you're a podcast newcomer, That's 32% are seeing YouTube. If you're a podcast pioneer, 31%. So the number is slightly less, right? But if you're a heavy podcast consumer, it's actually at parity with the newcomers.

But the question again then is, what are they— it's true, but what are they listening to? Or watching, you know, there again, it's about context.

Well, are you saying that because you're trying to factor in a, a total percentage of the podcast space is what you're trying to calculate here? Because it's all about what people think that they're watching, right?

Okay, so, okay, I understand that, but just Blueberry alone, we have over 300 million listens of content every month, right? So you take whatever Libsyn has, whatever Podbean has, whatever Buzzsprout has, whatever Red Circle has, add all that up to the total number of where the actual people are consuming the content in a, in a quote unquote traditional way, and then you roll that back into And maybe that number is equal on YouTube because you have a concentrated number of shows that are getting incredibly high numbers. So maybe there's a billion, let's say a billion listens on traditional podcast apps and a billion video views. So, but again, if there's a billion of podcast listens across 330,000 shows, there's a much different percentage of, of listens. And so if this, let's say it's a billion on YouTube of just podcast, people that consider a show a podcast on YouTube, I bet you that's constrained to no more than a couple of thousand shows.

Yeah, I could, I could totally see that, especially if those shows are, are very popular., yeah, video shows on, on YouTube, and they, they're like us right now, 2 people or 3 people talking on a microphone.

And if you look at the YouTube podcast area, there's not a show in that listing at all that is audio only. There's no, there's no, there's none.

Yeah, so which would make sense when you think about it, right? What is YouTube's strength? YouTube's strength is a video platform, right?

So when you— and again, you look at the numbers on those particular shows that are in that section. Yeah, they're incredible. There's some incredible numbers in there on some of those shows, but yet not so incredible that it overcomes, at least if I just do a a quick count, you know, if we do the math, which we probably could. Again, it's very, very concentrated in very few shows. So this is the thing I keep trying to tell podcasters when they are talking about me. Should I do video? Yeah, do video if you want to do video. But please have a realization that your Audio listening numbers are always going to be higher than your video numbers are going to be for the most part, for most shows. And even this show, we run about 70-30. Yeah. 70% listen, you know, about 30% actually watch the traditional video podcast. It's a true video podcast.

So yeah, so Todd, I found another slide.

We're talking about this topic a lot.

Well, because it is top of mind. I mean, it's like at the top of all the research that's coming out, Todd, and, and I think people need to dive into it a little bit. It's like this particular slide I have up on the screen, it may be a little hard to read. Um, I can probably kind of zoom in a little bit more on it, but it says in April 2024, it says Um, there's been a trend line of YouTube and Spotify having been growing amongst, um, newcomers at the expense of Apple Podcasts. But again, trend line here, and it's been growing. Um, looks like YouTube is at 32% and Spotify's at 18% and Apple's at 6% in April of 2024.

The problem though is when you throw a slide like this up there, again, the perception is, well, all the content consumption is happening on YouTube and Spotify. Well, it's not, right? It's not happening on YouTube or Spotify. The majority of the consumption, over 50%, is still happening on Apple Podcasts in a pure download. Listen metric. Most of the services are hovering in and around 50%, saying some have went a little below, but still to say that. So there's this disconnect here between percentage of actual, you know, I, I'd be curious to know, okay, Triton, how much are you billing? You're, you're an audio platform. Uh, okay, Triton, how much are you billing? How much money are you making on YouTube?

Um, you know, where— well, increasingly, Toddle, um, these agencies that are selling advertising are, are bundling YouTube numbers with, uh, podcast numbers in their pitches to advertisers, right?

If they have shows that are doing substantial numbers, they should be, yeah, on both, right? But at the same time, I bet you those numbers are, I bet you they're not getting the same CPMs on those YouTube views as they are in podcast listens. So I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here and making sure that, you know, people are paying attention to the context of the data. And again, I'm not doubting the numbers of percentage of consumption, but again, where's it concentrated at? I think. Tom Webster made a, um, recently had put something up about this type of a, um, phenomenon as well. You know, it's this, this consumption is really concentrated at the very, very top and, uh, within those platforms.

Yeah, but he's also been very much amongst the research that's showing that YouTube is, is really kind of starting to lead the way around podcasts.

But again, a context discovery, right? We have to give them— we have to give the correct context of how is that trickling down to the average podcaster? How is that? Yeah, because if you, if you tell a podcaster that 31% is discovery, okay, discover— discovery of what number of shows?

Um, again, it's a small number of shows. Yeah, but this is an overall number from the people that they're doing a survey on, right? To say, where are you most likely discovering a new podcast or a podcast? It's— yeah, you know, these are what the numbers are coming back showing. That makes sense. It's not a, a metric of consumption.

It's more about—

not at all— discovery and finding something that may be interesting.

But again, it's concentrated, continues to be concentrated at the top because YouTube has got a logarithm and they will surface popular shows. Um, they will surface popular shows in people's feeds, and of course you're going to discover stuff. Um, but again, it's a concentrated number of you basically, the rich keep getting richer on YouTube. The popular shows continue to grow and continue to build audience at the detriment, well, not at the detriment, but just, you know, the, the, um, the, the average Joe podcaster is not getting discovered on YouTube. You ask your audience, how did you discover me? Those of you that are building actively on YouTube, and I guarantee you 9 out of 10 will say that they discovered you from a recommendation or a potential search. They did not discover you on YouTube. Whereas if you have a big YouTube channel, it's probably the opposite. 90% of the people probably said, oh, I found you right here on YouTube. That's because they're, because of the algorithm pushing those big shows into people's feeds. So, and then, you know, and again, I'm not, I'm not poo-pooing these content platform consumption platforms. As long as it's driving numbers, it's great in building awareness, but it builds a false narrative for someone that's researching and, and doing their initial, you know, initial, uh, planning on how to do their podcast. Oh, I have to have a YouTube channel.

Well, I think, Todd, also what's going on here too, and this research, and I haven't found the slide for it yet, but I saw it in the notes. It says those who discover a podcast on YouTube say they stick with the platform for the video. So what we may be talking about here really is kind of two different audiences, two different types of consumption audiences, right? Those that like video and those that like audio. And there is this kind of this audience out there that likes to do a little bit of both, right? And that's the research that I haven't really seen yet is what's that distribution? I mean, what's the percentage of people that are primarily video podcast consumers and what's the percentage of audio podcast consumers and how do we kind of parse that data between the two and how many are doing both, right?

Well, you look at YouTube, they do not surface. Good luck finding an audio-only podcast. You have to know the show that's audio only on YouTube. And, you know, go look at those shows on YouTube. Look at their numbers.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's kind of silly, isn't it, to put audio up on a video primary platform, right? Well, that's, that's, you know, that's what YouTube sold is, uh, I know, I agree, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So, you know, so, you know, they don't support, you know, RSS ingestion of a video.

No, right? But they convert an audio file to a video file, right?

Which is, which even makes less sense with the more you think about it. So it's, it's, um Yeah, I mean, it's completely ass backwards. And then what we talked about, you know, what Spotify is doing where they're taking in the audio podcasts and they're giving now podcasters the option to replace the audio file that's been delivered to them via RSS with a video file is also kind of wacko as well, right?

Yeah, they don't want you leaving the platform. They want to contain that data. They want to contain and market to your audience, um, because they have all this data. That's another thing podcasters have, you know, like, you know, used to be we were worried about listener privacy. Well, you know, that's, that's not even a topic anymore, right? Yeah. So if you're on Spotify, you've completely sold out your audience, uh, to Spotify. You know, you, you basically handed, handed their, uh, um, you know, their, their, their, you know, their privacy to them, right?

Yeah, that's true. Well, here, uh, Todd, over the last, uh, probably 24, 48 hours, there was a thread of conversation that had a little bit of focus on this show, and I thought maybe I would, I would raise it. It was done, um, on X, um, and I exchanged messages about this, and it was done with John at John Podcasting on X. And his thoughts are, once the live show is done— and I think he was referring specifically to this show, but I think he was thinking about it more philosophically from this concept of doing a live show and whether or not it's worth it to do a live show. I, I think it's kind of like two parts to his commenting, but, um, you know, his, his thought was we should edit this show for replay, right? So any kind of ability that we have to edit this program prior to it going out as either an audio or video podcast, I do try and do that with this show sometimes. And, and, but, but also, you know, realize that when this goes out live um, we don't inherently touch it once, once it goes out live. And I, I do know that YouTube has the ability to get in and do some editing of it, but then you're posting a new version and it's, it's kind of, kind of a mess, you know, until YouTube kind of gets their act together on that.

If John has— if John would like to edit our shows and donate his time, great.

Well, Todd, I'm already kind of doing it right, right now, but well You know, I don't think that people are seeing that because they're watching the replays off of X and LinkedIn and they're not—

the consumption beyond this live is very minimal. We get the majority of our— well, Todd, I've had up to 3,400 plays off of my channel of this show. I get less than 100.

I know. So, but But people are seeing this show on replay off of X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. If you go in and you add up all the numbers on all those platforms, at least off of my channels, it's, it's a couple thousand per episode. So there are people that are watching. I don't know how long they're watching it. Right, right, right. Um, that's a whole nother question.

I don't know how, how long they're watching on the Apple Podcast either.

Right. And, and so John's point was I don't get the point of leaving all the fumbles and dead air.

And, and it's, um, oh, good, good luck editing video.

Yeah, you know, it's audio too.

I mean, that can be edited on the audio side separately since we have it. Yeah, and it sounds like shit when you do that because all the, all the air is gone out of the show when you start compressing every, every blank spot and taking air out of the audio. You can tell it's been edited. You can tell it, it, the pacing is not the same.

So yeah, he says that, uh, you guys are supposed to be leaders and your show comes across like two old white dudes reading the internet. Okay, so it's probably true to some degree.

Here's the thing, um, and to his argument, if you have time to edit, edit. If you want to survive and be able to continue to create content for 20 years and put out a show every week for 20 years or 2 shows a week like or for me, for 3 shows a week total, or even 4 because I'm doing a Blueberry, which we do edit the Blueberry version of the show that I'm involved in. You have to say, what is that worth in your time? And I'm too busy.

I don't have time to edit. Yeah, but you have to admit that there is an ideology out there that's contrary to that.

Great, great. So great, then they can knock it— knock themselves out, uh, knock themselves out and, and, and edit, edit away, right? Um, I'm not gonna do it. And that's the beauty, that's the beauty of podcasting. I can do it my way and he can do it his way. Now, now, this is from a guy that has 884 followers on, on X. So, you know, I'm not so sure that I'm going to take advice on my podcast from someone that has 884 followers on, on X.

So Yeah, I told him that, you know, we, we've been doing this show this way for like 14 years. Yeah. And that, you know, it's, it's worked out fine for us, and we've been okay with, with what we've been doing for, for a long time. And he wrote back saying, um, just because you've been doing something a long time doesn't mean much. I, I—

you may have been doing it wrong all along. Well, you know, then, then if we've done it wrong all along, we have— we will have paid the price in not building a bigger audience. But at the same time, we are doing a show that has a limited reach. We're not doing a show for the—

for Joe Q.

Public.

No, this isn't a show that's ever going to get, you know, huge. No. It's never going to be a Joe Rogan program, you know.

I think, you know, the top, the top number of downloads we've ever, ever had for the show was close to 20,000.

You know, that would be like very, very high on the consumption when we had the two folks from Facebook on or somebody like that. Actually, no, it's—

no, was it Google? Our worst shows are when we have a guest.

Oh, right. So Yeah, well, you know, the, the top show, the top episode of this on YouTube, um, on my channels was over, I think it was 3,600 views, and it was us talking about, um, podcasting and YouTube. Of course, because everybody's searching, right? Right. Everybody, it was extremely meta to the platform. And, and it's like, there was another person, Clone Fluence, uh, made a comment even in the thread too. People waste years repeating the same mistakes because they're too proud to learn. Be humble.

You don't know everything. We don't admit to knowing everything.

I know, totally.

That's exactly what I told them too. Yeah, you know, and in the beauty is we're doing a show that we can do that's sustainable.

Right, you know, and also, you know, people have to be careful about being judgmental about other people, um, you know, and it's also, you know, trying to decide what's right and wrong, um, is, is kind of a slippery slope. I mean, I'm not sure that, you know, each person— I mean, this is what podcasting was built on, was kind of like independent free choice, and this is, uh blank canvas. Now granted, people have different ideologies around what's good content, what's bad content, what's the right thing to do, and what's the wrong thing to do. And that's been the interesting part of this medium for all these years, is that nobody has really the perfect answer to any of these questions.

When I was at Podcast Asia, um, session after session after session was talking about, this is the things you have to do, this is what you have to do. You know, dictating, this is what you have to do to have a successful podcast. I get up there and said, listen, you do you, you build the show you want, right? Yeah, you do what you want. There's no rules. And I get the biggest round of applause from the audience in basically saying you don't have to do what is a cookie cutter show that you're being told to do, right? Okay. Someone's found a proven strategy.

Maybe, but when someone maybe work for them, but that doesn't mean it's going to work for you, right?

Someone tells me you have to do this. I say, okay, show me your successful show, right? Show me your show and how it's been so successful. And, and I will take a look, but if your show is not more successful than my show and you're telling me I have to do things exactly this way, Paxan. You know, I'm— again, yeah, this is, this is the beauty about this medium. I don't have to have a YouTube strategy. I don't have to have a podcast strategy. I do the show the way we want to do the show, and we put it out the way we want it to put out. Um, hasn't hurt us. And then we're not getting paid. To do this. We don't have a sponsor for this podcast. Yeah. And maybe we are two old white guys, but we've been doing this.

Not much we can do about that, Todd.

I can, you know, we're doing this for 20 years. I must be doing something right with my tech show. GoDaddy's still sponsoring it for 19 years straight. So there must be something I'm doing correct. No one else can say they've had the same sponsor for 19 years. Well, that's certainly true. You know, show me the money if you, if you have such a successful formula. Yeah, and I got the GoDaddy sponsorship before there was a Blueberry or Raw Voice. That came, that, that, that came before I was running a company. Mm-hmm. So it is what it is, and that's the beauty about this medium is you do you, right?

Right, that's true. And I do think that that's, that's the key takeaway from this whole thread of the conversation is that I think there's a tendency, um, in the more recent years of people being very, like you said, very rigid judgmental, trying to, you know, build, let's say, a consulting business to say, well, I know how to do this better than anybody else, so pay me and I'll be your consultant. Right? Right. I'll tell you how to do every little aspect of this. And it's— I find it to be a difficult conversation being a podcast consultant because there is no one way to do this. Right? And I'm not an expert at— I mean, I've been doing podcasts a long time, but I wouldn't say that I'm an expert to tell every person exactly what to do and that will make them successful.

The biggest cringe, the biggest cringe that my team gets is when the phone rings and the person on the other end is a consultant. Yeah, yeah. If, if we had— I could give every one of my support people a raise. If we just, every time someone called and said they were a consultant and we put $10 in the kitty, um, and the angst it causes because, well, they might be good video editors, but the majority of them don't know jack about the overall podcasting space. They might be great audio editors, but they don't know SEO. They don't even know what a feed is. They don't know. I mean, it's just, it just is amazing to me the number of so-called experts that are out there that are selling their wares. And I hate to say it, they're making it up as they go because they don't know.

Well, I think it's very difficult for any one individual to know everything about this industry now. I think it's, it's, it's a little hubris to think that you can know. I mean, I've been around it a long time. You've been around it a long time. Yeah. And I've spent quite a bit of time trying to learn all of the podcast hosting platforms and how they work and all this kind of stuff like that. And I find it very challenging to be able to have a thorough understanding of all these platforms. Because each one of them is different and they function differently, and the distribution has become much more sophisticated now, complicated. So I mean, one really has to spend a lot of time now to keep up with everything. I think the guy that I probably, probably respect more than anything now on that front is probably Dave Jackson.

Well, he's been able to keep up with all this stuff, and we're, we're building a consulting course And, um, it's almost done, and we're going to charge for it. And if you get through the course, it's going to be 12 weeks, uh, if you— and you're going to mandatory to actually attend, uh, training an hour a week for 12 weeks, then we will put you as a, uh, certified consultant for at least for Blueberry. But, um, well, that's, that's SEO in the age of AI. I think, um, that's a whole, that's a whole show in itself. Um, but I will say that, um, uh, AI is improving what was before non-existent show notes.

Yeah. And, and how far is that going to go, Todd? I mean, Jody, that's a good, good point that you're making. Um, you know, SEO could, I could, could integrate in with the very fabric of the publishing process.

Well, what's gonna, what could really happen is Google, the gatekeeper to search, um, it could be devastating.

Um, well, I know I'm, I'm spending a lot more time doing queries in ChatGPT, um, Omni now.

I'm not doing it as much in Google anymore. Yeah, that's what she's referring to as Perplexity AI. But ultimately, when Google gets their act together, search as you know it is going to change. And this is going to be the problem is that you won't be found in search. They are going to— Google and Perplexity and all these folks are going to be picking winners through the large language models and the traditional SEO stuff is going to affect every business, not just media creators. It could be potentially devastating. So I think what is happening is people are starting to realize that having their brand everywhere is going to be critical. Because if you're not spread wide, if you're just building your business on your dot-com, and, and I'm not talking about podcasting, I'm just talking about business in general. If you are that local plumber or whatever business you are and someone is trying to find your business, um, you have to be wide now. That's the only way you're probably gonna— because Um, the large language models is looking at multiple data points, and if you aren't available in multiple data points, how is it going to recommend you? If your sole point of presence is just your.com, um, I think you're screwed. So I, I think the future of media creation is probably very, very bright because if you aren't creating media on all of the platforms, podcasting, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. If you're not doing it, um, when, when the AI search changes and you look at this stuff that, uh, that Apple— I mean, not Apple, this piece of crap that, uh, um, was it the Apple Intelligence or something? No, not Apple. The, um, I'm looking for the word here. It's called the AI overviews that Google came out with. Absolutely trash, but Google's all in on that. So if you don't make it into an overview, which will ultimately be people are going to ask a question, you know, what is the best tech podcast? What is the best? You better have a wide presence. Because the overview serves what's going to just like Perplexity. Um, that's how search is going to change.

So yeah, I just applied for that for my own personal brand.

So, so I think what will happen ultimately is that, um, you, you the creator, you the podcaster creating original content is what's going to be sought out. I, I think the future is bright just from that perspective alone because there is going to be a ton, a ton, a ton of garbage.

So, well, Todd, I can see a lot of correlation to what we have gone through with these, um, you know, the smart agents from from Google and Amazon, right? These, these talking kind of, um, boxes in our homes, right? Um, of being a single results type of a scenario, right? So, so as you look at AI, um, AI is going to give you answers, not results, right? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. So I'm going to give you links, and if you—

if—

well, it may give you links in context to the results, but Yeah, it'll be very—

they're gonna— it's gonna be narrower. It's not gonna give you 50 pages of links that you have to comb through to find information.

It's gonna give you one result.

And there's the danger, right? And that results— like, I did a query for like the top 10 podcasts about podcasting, right? Yeah. And just to give an example here, and it it came up with us, I believe, in the number one spot. And that just— I'm not quite sure why it did that, but it just may be longevity or whatever it might be.

But worldwide, we have a wide enough presence, maybe. Again, I think, you know, I think this is going to be a bigger issue for the whole world because businesses to date have relied on being in that top search result and, and, you know, being able to be found for a keyword, which I think, you know, be honest, keyword phrase or something. Google, um, faces real challenges here. Uh, oh yeah, because how do they tie this back? How do they keep the ad model rolling when you're doing it, an overview.

That's, that's the trillion-dollar question right there, is, is what happens to the advertising industry as this rolls out.

Yeah, yeah. But again, on the opposite token, you might have to buy your way to the top. You might have to give, give them money just to be seen in any forthcoming search result. Because they already have been kingmakers, but this is going to ramp up even more. Perplexity is a great product, but as soon as Google gets their act together, they're going to eat Perplexity.

I wouldn't count out Microsoft with their Copilot either because they've got their fingers in OpenAI. And now Apple is, is trying to do that too. Did you notice that the, uh, the two folks, one from Apple and one from Microsoft, have been removed from the OpenAI board?

Well, they, because they have— they don't— they haven't been removed.

They have observer positions on the board. Well, they, they pulled themselves out because they were being investigated for antitrust by the government. When did that happen?

Because it was just last couple of days. Oh, because I reported on Monday that Apple had been given a—

yeah, and they pulled out. Wow. Because, because the government, the antitrust folks were starting to investigate what was going on with OpenAI and Apple and Microsoft. Um, you know, and I mean, obviously Google is a competitor to that, but, um, that's kind of like a, you know, that's the development of a monopoly is what's happening with OpenAI.

Again, I think in the end, well, if they have the money, you know, a lot of market presence between Apple and Microsoft. They've got millions of, not maybe millions, but they have a huge investment in, you know, Nvidia chips and the tools that needed to. But again, I think ultimately Um, I think our content, podcast content, YouTube content, uh, will be sought out because people are going to be looking for, uh, genuine voices and personalities. I think there's going to be a trust, you know, like you said, your trust factor. Um, it— people are going to be seeking stuff that has not been curated and ground out by an AI. Because people, they've set up paper mills now, and it really is not a paper mill. It's a digital printing mill where they're putting out thousands and thousands of articles every day to drive traffic to their websites, all of it generated by AI. With very little overview of the quality of the content. So with this influx of, you know, it used to be we would be limited by the number of articles we could write as humans. Um, you know, that's why my personal website, from a budget standpoint, and, um, you know, I could basically afford to have about 30 articles a month put on Geek News Central. But if I turned on the printing machine, I could, quote unquote, feed it 10 press releases and have it rewrite the press releases as blog posts and probably put out 10 a day easily just myself in a matter of a few minutes. But again, is it drivel? Is it accurate? Is it real? There's copyright concerns. You know, it just goes on and on and on. So who's going to be the bearer of the trusted voice or site, you know, or consumer? Are we going to have to put, like right now, we're not generating, the only thing we're generating on Geek Central or New Media Show is the summary of this show. From AI. So are we going to have to have markers on every piece of content that is, or every blog post that's put out that says human generated or AI generated? And is the source of the information that we used to write that article, was it AI generated? So are we taking an AI-generated article? What is real anymore? You know, so. And with the pressure to cut budgets, folks like CNET and The Verge and Engadget and any other newspaper, they're going to be awfully tempted to just turn on the printing press with AI and regurgitate stuff out.

Yeah. Jody Cragle posting here, uh, what I love about the tools like Perplexity is that they offer, um, citations of their sources. Yeah, they cite the source. Um, yeah, she writes in here, you never know with ChatGPT if it made it up, let alone where it got its info from. Though I have seen in ChatGPT some results that cite sources in the past. I know that the Copilot version of ChatGPT on Microsoft does cite sources because of its integration with Bing.

Let's just be careful though. Yeah, this is not true AI yet. This is a large language model.

That is, this is machine learning is all it is really.

So generative AI is a different beast. Yeah, that's going to create new content, not something that's regurgitated from a source, right? Yeah. So, you know, what we have now is the large language model is basically taken, you know, millions and billions of pieces of data, and then it tries to come up with the words that you— that it thinks you're looking for without any regards to accuracy or anything like that.

Yeah, I think what, what's happening here is this recognition by the big search engines, and I believe Google's probably doing this as well, is trying to combine their search business with their AI business. They know that all the revenue came out of the search side, so if they can kind of blend those together somehow, maybe there would be an ongoing kind of sponsored link opportunity for even their AI platforms.

Well, they are going to be— how do you— if this thing that— this piece of crap that Google came out with, this AI Overviews, which was telling you, okay, how do I make a pizza? You know, it suggested you use glue to keep the cheese on the pizza. You know, that's how bad the AI Overview was. Um, so how do you— so let's, let's say someone goes to Google and the first thing they get is an AI overview with maybe potentially links below it. Most consumers are going to take the AI overview and they're just going to run with that.

And it's showing up now in the search results.

Yeah. So, so the problem then becomes How do you as a creator business, how do you get sourced and cited? You may not. You may not, and you may not ever be found. So your, your business could, could literally die just because of this change because you won't be found anymore. So what strategy You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a real, it's a real issue. And at the same time, Google's got to recognize that if they stop driving traffic to my site, to my business from search queries because the AI picked two winners.

Well, um, well, Todd, I, I recently noticed, um, I don't know how recently, it's been a few months now. That ChatGPT actually learns from what information you feed it. And I do think I saw an announcement that says— And technically— That it actually will learn from your data. So if you feed it, this is a derivative, I guess, functionality that came out of their GPT product, right? Right, where it's actually, you can train it, right? So it's looking for training data. So what does that mean for us from the standpoint of, of individuals and our companies, that maybe we need to be feeding it information about our companies and about us that we want it to know, right?

Well, I'm a firm believer that I'm not turning on any blocking at blueberry.com.

Right. Because if you're a podcaster, it's the same scenario, right?

Do you want ChatGPT to have access to all the audio and all the video? My perspective is, again, if I shut off the content, you know, this is what, you know, New York Times, all those folks are signing, you know, multi-billion dollar, you know, deals. Copyright it. License it. To consume this content. But for me, as a business, I think it boils down to survivability.

I've been feeding it information for a long time now, trying to get it to generate results that are favorable.

I think over time we'll see how this all evolves. But yeah, search. And you talk about discovery. So, you know, that's why discovery is happening and more discovery is happening in apps because most people are just touching their app and doing a search and they're not using Google for a search. Although my search traffic to my personal website hasn't evaded. In other words, it hasn't went down. Oh, it hasn't gone down. Good. Down. But also I'm putting out better show notes now. So we're getting more traffic. To the blog post currently. Even on New Media Show, our web traffic is up, um, just because there's richer show notes. And it's not just a short paragraph that I summarize. I have the whole show summary in the show notes now. So, and I wasn't even drinking my own— well, on Geekness Central, I was drinking my own Kool-Aid, but on New Media Show, it wasn't. Mm-hmm.

So we'll see what happens. Yeah, because if you do a search in, um, Google right now for this show, it comes up with this, this result. Yeah, probably hard to read because it's—

I don't know why it's got the— I gotta look at the favicon. I don't know why it's showing Keaton Central on the New Media Show. Must be I didn't switch the favicon over, but Yeah. So it's linking to the primary stuff that it needs to.

So, right. And it's linking to the RSS feeds and the podcast.

But the, you know, in the end, Rob, the, every show can be found. That's not an issue currently today. But the articles, the episodes is where battles being won is, um, you know, just do a search for advertisers versus podcasters and, and see what that— see what you see in that result.

Do advertisers versus podcasters, do that search.

Advertisers versus podcasters? Yeah, just do advertisers vs. advertisers versus podcasters. Podcasters. Now, if with any luck, our episode that we did that I wrote up— now, now see, scroll down here. See, this is an AI overview. That's an example of an AI overview. Now continue to go down and see if you find the New Media Shows episode on this. Keep going, keep going. See, it's—

if it is, it's buried. See?

Yeah, I don't see it so far. Yeah, so, you know, the, the, the challenges is being able to be found on an episode level, right? And obviously we did not win that search result. And this stupid AI overview—

now go to the top again. Um, let's see if it comes up at all. Yeah, says in the new media show titled Podcasters: The Battle for Control of Advertisers Versus Podcasters. So it comes up in the Search Labs AI overview.

Yeah, so see if you scroll down, then you know, it, it shows up. But, you know, people are not going to type the battle for control advertisers versus podcasters. That, you know, they're going to search advertisers versus podcasters and hope and see what they get. Right. You know, so the, the ultimate goal of any podcaster these days is to be, have their episodes surfaced in the search results. You know, that's how we build traffic to Okay, here it is here, and the, the, um, there's multiple links to it. Yeah, you've done, you've done a very pointed search, but an average person searching in Google is not going to do that, right? That's true. So, you know, you might have 2 or 3 words here that, um, podcasters, new media show, that came up interesting.

Yeah. Yes, there are multiple keyword phrases that come up on that search query, right?

Yeah. But if we went back to that original search and you look at advertisers versus podcasters and then look at the AI overview of that, so delete that. Yeah. And then look at the AI overview on this., and read that. Is there any, is there any, hit the show more.

Is there any links outbound to anybody on this?

Doesn't look like it. Yeah, there is Spotify and LinkedIn. But again, um, that's where search is going to change right there. You know, are people going to go any further? Are they going to go down and read the Quill article? Yeah, I don't think they will. Probably not. Yeah. So immediately on that AIO review, you've lost the game.

Your business.

Podcast versus radio. What's the difference? Yeah. So time will tell how this all folds out.

Yeah, I agree. It'll be interesting what's going to happen. Um, oh, looks like Jody's got another question for you. Says, do you put up a transcript? Yeah, of course.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's embedded in the RSS feed, and my player on my website is closed caption enabled, so with the transcript. So yeah, of course.

But Google is, um, you know, here's the— that's helping.

Do you think that's helping, Todd? No, it's— Google ignores the transcript. It's purely in the context of the, uh, of the, the summary for the episode is what they're using right now. You know, they had said at one time they were, they were making their own transcripts of every podcast. That's what the Google folks told me when, you know, they still had a podcast app.

So I don't know, we'll see.

Yeah, I think Apple has said that they, um, the transcript for us is purely for accessibility. Yeah, I, I don't think it's being used at all for, for Google. Because if they're going to do it, they're going to, they're going to generate their own summary.

I think people are going to find, you know, and, and this gets back to what Jody Crangle is saying here about, honestly, she thinks that people are just going to stop using the search engine for—

I'm sure. And so this is, this could be very devastating to—

it's going to be blended in with, uh, your watch, it's going to be blended in with your phone.

That's kind of what the whole deal with Apple. How does a business survive? You know, again, they're going to be more of a kingmaker than they have been already.

It's very, very scary. Yeah, it's going to be integrated into Siri or it's going to be integrated into, you know, the Alexa.

And if you're not white enough, this is my contention. You have to be wide. You can't be narrow anymore. You have to be wide. You have to be— and podcast leads to that because we're distributed everywhere. And where Spotify has shot themselves in the foot in shutting off, you know, we're seeing them. Actually, there's been some— we've been noticing that there has been some tags set in some Spotify feeds. That basically are using the, the Apple tag to not be listed in Apple Podcasts. Um, so, you know, Spotify is— may be playing a game here and trying to limit distribution of podcasts on their platform to Spotify only. Um, luckily Apple's not recognizing their own tag and people are not being delisted out of Apple Podcasts because of this flag.

So Ted and company, don't fix that bug. Yeah, I did hear Elon Musk say that he's going to be building Grok into all of the AI neural net.

Well, self-driving cars. Grok is a piece of crap right now, so I wouldn't trust Grok to be in anything in my vehicle at this point. They're going to maybe future versions of it, but its version on X right now is absolute horse—

it's trash. It's got some makeup things to do, right? Well, you know, he just bought a half a million NVIDIA processors, so he's going to start crunching data. That's what he's going to start doing. Yeah. But it's going to come out of X.

So what do you guys think? You know, the audience that's listening here, what do you, you know, if you've stuck around here to the end, um, but again, Jody, as soon as Google gets their act together, Perplexity, they're going to eat Perplexity's lunch. I think Perplexity has a very short shelf life.

Uh, it's cool in what it's doing now, but a year from now when Google gets caught up, Um, well, and OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, everyone's going to be doing this. And, and you can't count out Facebook. No, they're going to be doing something here too, I'm sure. Yeah. And, um, and, you know, I think, uh, xAI is going to be ramping up fast, no question.

Yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

Again, uh, It's just, I've got the full self-driving in my car right now and it's, it's doing a pretty good job.

So, well, don't fall asleep, uh, and end up underneath.

Believe me, it won't. Believe me, it won't let you. So it's, uh, it's watching what you're doing. So yeah, well, again, not doing it in this—

I don't know how your back survives riding in a Tesla. It's like riding in a Jeep. That's— it truly is. It's the worst riding vehicle I've ever been in. If you appreciate luxury car rides, do not own a Tesla.

Well, they've— in the Model 3, they did a— in their most recent upgrade to the car, they have a much better suspension in the vehicle.

Well, it could not have gotten any worse. Um, I will just say that, uh, it's got a very low center of gravity, Todd. And again, based upon my, uh, upon my, um, experience of a Tesla in Phoenix, Arizona, I wouldn't own one of them.

Well, it's probably not a great, great place to own one.

I agree with you. Okay, well then, where can you own one where it's a moderate temperature? You can't own one where it's cold where I am and park it outside. I don't park mine outside, so I keep it. You look at all the dead cars that happen in Chicago. That again, that's a whole nother show.

Yeah, well, that's true. That's right. I don't have any trouble with it in the winters here, so.

But yeah, and Jody's correct, they totally might, but the tool they build will do something similar. I agree, they will do exactly what Perplexity is doing and search it. But the problem is a logical move. Yeah, but how does Google survive? And their revenue comes from advertising on Google Search. You look at Podbean, Libsyn, and Buzzsprout collectively, they're probably spending $150,000 a month on Google Search ads. So if they're used to spending that kind of money, they're going to continue to be found. How are companies that are not spending $50,000 a month on Google Search Ads going to be found? And will search change so much that people won't do SEM anymore?

So, well, it's, it's going to change the game, Todd. I mean, you're going to have to figure out how you're going to show up in, in queries in large language models. Models, right? And that's— yeah, and that's what Google and Microsoft and all these companies are counting on, is being able to figure that citation model, because then you can integrate links in there. So I don't know, I mean, I think it's interesting to see how they're going to handle that. It could just generate ads that are relevant to your queries too.

Well, people may never click a link again. They may just get the information and not click a link. That's right. Yeah, because there may be no links to click, or you won't.

Yeah, but there needs to be a way to respond to something, right? You can't, um, just look at something and— yeah, I take action on it, right? I mean, it has to be an action-oriented—

well, people go to YouTube to find how-to videos. They, they go over there and look, look at a how-to video. They learn how to do something. Google is going to give all the information that has been lifted from websites and give that in a summary And guess what? They may not link out to a website. So guess what?

How do you survive as a business then? Well, the— was it the Instagram platform has been doing this for a long time, right?

Making it difficult to have external links. Yes. Even X. They— you get a— you get less viewership anytime you link out of X. Yeah. Same thing with Facebook. But, you know, Facebook doesn't— they don't want you leaving their platform.

Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, subscription models.

There you go.

Well, or, or people get fed up and there becomes a true competitor to Google. Well, think about it. On OpenAI, people are paying for that subscription, right? That's like paying, paying for your search engine. Sure.

It's, it's the equivalent to it.

That's a research assistant is what it is right now. Right. And when we migrate to this model of smart agents where these language models are actually working on your behalf, that's where, that's where things are going to shift again. People have no idea what's coming.

Where a language model or an AI agent will actually help you run your life. I just, we're working on a, basically it's a, we've already announced it. It's a clip. It's a highlighter. Basically, you basically analyze the transcript and then you come out with clips. It would basically,, you know, short segments, 60-second segments of a show that can then be exported into a short or reel or whatever. So, you know, we've been testing that and having some challenges to get it right. Well, one of the models updated and we switched that particular piece of the query to another model and we basically got our prompts better now. So the results. That it's outputting is about 50% better, just over 30 days of testing. So we've solved our issue with going to a different model that has been updated. And we'll probably release this in the next couple of weeks, but it was not in a state a month ago where I said, I can't put this out because it's just not good enough yet. There would be— we're going to cause podcaster frustration. So our clip creator is now, because a model got better at interpreting the type of query we wanted— so same thing with agents, you'll have specific agents doing certain things where we in our AI integration, some stuff we're using Aphonics, some stuff we're using Anthropic, uh, some stuff we're using another service. So we're, we basically are using, and we are going to have to continue to monitor this continuously as the models change. And this is the way we build our system is that if I want to change a query, all I go and do is my admin and I can go from Athonic to Facebook to OpenAI. I can switch the model that the query is being sent to based upon the result. And it's just going to be a cat and mouse game for a long time for, for us and many others that are building tools, at least on, for us, for the podcasters.

So yeah, I believe this is the direction that Apple's going on their, on their iPhones, is that they're going to have this AI engine that is basically a smart agent that has access to all of your personal information.

On your, on your phone, right? Apple's been doing a lot of AI stuff for years, so we'll see what—

well, it's been— yeah, it's kind of more machine learning because I know they've had a bunch of machine learning PhDs over there for many, many years. Um, but it's, it's, it really gets back to it's a privacy issue, I think, is what's going to happen with these smart agent technologies. Because in order to fully utilize this technology, they're going to have to have access to all of your information, right? Your calendar, your contacts. No, no, but it's going to have to be integrated into these AI agents that are going to be able to analyze it and to produce recommendations to you before you even know what the right recommendations. So let's say you have a plan that you, like, you exchange an email with your, with your, um, with your grandparent or your parent or whatever, that you're going to take a trip to Seattle, or something like that, it'll pick that up in your communications and it will generate a whole trip for you, right? Based on the criteria that you have, that you have built into the model.

And it's going to pick winners and losers.

And again, yeah, we have to be careful here. Yeah, but it's really gonna get into, I'm starting to see it a little bit with my Tesla being able to predict where I'm gonna go with my car before I even get in my car.

Oh, Google, if you've had an app, a Google account, Google will tell you 15 minutes to get to work today before you—

No, but it, it'll, it'll predict where I'm typically going to go on a certain day of the week at a certain time, right?

Because I've done it in the past, right?

Yeah, but Google's been doing that for years already. But that's, that's an example of what I'm talking about, where it's going to learn from your patterns and your behavior. It's going to have all these sensors that are going to pick up your activities in your life. And it will, you know, integrate with apps or whatever.

And increasingly, you haven't seen this, you haven't gotten a notification on your phone that it's, you know, 10 minutes to work, or—

right, well, it's all part of it, right? It's all part of it. But there's— what I'm trying to say here is it's going to be a deeper integration other than just that, right? Yeah, I can see how that would work, but I can also see where The AI is going to be much more intelligent about being able to negotiate contracts of sorts with vendors and providers to you.

It's the Google, the lead Google AI person, as she said a year ago, the thunking is going to be done by AI and the thunking is those mundane tasks. And the people that are going to survive this are going to be the creatives and the subject matter experts.

Those are all those thunking jobs are gone. Yeah. And welcome the robots.

Well, the robots are the other part that's coming. Oh, absolutely. I have no doubt. And if I can have a robot to mow my lawn. Yeah.

Well, they've already have, they already have those, Rob Greenlee. Well, I know. They're those little boxes that run along the ground. I'm talking about the actual humanoid robot pushing a lawnmower.

Well, you don't need to.

They've got ones that roll them now and no— that's true, that's true, but I have to pay separate for that. Well, I don't have a yard, so— oh yeah, right.

So I've got a half acre, so anyway. Yeah, well, when I go back to Michigan, I got, you know, 3 acres to mow, so I technically don't have a yard, but the family does. I got it. Yeah, you get roped into, uh, using the zero-point turn Bo.

All right, well, I think we're going, going a little long tonight. Yeah, we're long. Or morning for me.

Morning for you, right? That's what's— yeah. All right. And I had a very long day yesterday, so I've only had a few hours sleep because of the, you know, me working opposite hours and being on East Coast time while I'm here.

Yeah. Yeah, Matt. Matt confirms what, what I'm saying. My iPhone knows exactly when I'm getting into my car to go golfing, right? Because you probably do it on a regular basis, so it, it learns your patterns and your activities. It's, you know, the Saturday morning golfing or the, you know, the Friday afternoon golfing or whatever. Yeah, like I go to Costco on Saturday, so whenever I get in my, my car, it already knows and it pops up in the list of destinations, and I just click the button.

Well, a lot of divorces are happening because, uh, the, uh, the phones are narking on the cheaters too, so—

oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, privacy is at stake here, definitely.

So, all right, all right, I hope you found this entertaining, everyone. Uh, todd@blueberry.com, todd@blueberry.com, at Geek news on Twitter.

My phone's ringing here. Yeah, and I'm, I'm on X as well, um, so here's my information up here too. So it's just @RobGreenlee and rob.greenlee@gmail.com if you're, um, listening to this. And then I also have a, a YouTube channel that, uh, and then a website too, you know. And, and I have a I have another podcast I do called Podcast Tips that's actually hosted on Todd's platform, and that's got a, that's got a website as well.

So, so for those of you that were, um, complaining about the, the audio quality and the audio editing that Rob did on the previous show, um, I, I am in control of the audio recording today. Don't worry, you are, you are. Okay, I have recorded here so we don't end up with the This bevy of emails that came in and said something is wrong with your audio.

Well, I think we had some issues of crosstalk, Todd. So I think it was more of your editing taking out too much dead air. Okay. Well, actually, the editing was done by Descript.

So if that tells you— Oh, that explains it. Explains it. Okay. I am not a fan of their automated tools.

It just sounds like they have been improving them, I have to say, here recently. Um, so the user experience of the app itself has definitely gotten a little smoother to work with.

Well, I'm gonna stick to my guns and no editing allowed.

So, okay, Todd. All right, well, you didn't capture the, the video though. I'm gonna have to send you the video part of this.

Yeah, you'll have to send the video. So, all right everyone, thanks so much for being here.

We'll see you next time.

All right, bye. Good night.