The Podcast Gender Wage Gap With Jeanine Wright

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Hey everyone, welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracie Hazzard and I've got a really interesting interview for you. Surprising, I think you're going to think of this. So I've got Janine Wright from Simplecast and yes, before you go there, simplecast and Potatoise are somewhat competitors, I would say. We play in a little bit different plane and our client base is very different as I've gotten to know them a little bit better. But the reason I wanted to bring Janine on this show today is because she's got such an interesting research that they're doing over there that's valuable for the entire podcast industry. And we are here about being people of increase here at Pottiti's and at Feed. You'd brand. Right. We want to make sure that everyone speaks podcast can grow to be as successful as possible and it doesn't matter what platform you're on. So just wanted to bring you this great idea of why we're doing this and where we're going. And I met Janine at she podcasts. She was giving a talk on the podcast Wage Gap, the gender wage gap. And it goes along with so many articles that I've written for Inc Magazine over the years. So I really wanted to make sure that we're highlighting this because I would love it. And as you'll hear at the very end of the conversation with Janine, we would both love it. As if podcasting became gender blind at some point in the future, right? It didn't matter. There wouldn't be any monetization or wage gap differences. Wouldn't that be an amazing world? So Janine and I are here to bring exposure to the topic because when we bring awareness, we start to get at where we can make changes. So let me introduce Janine. Janine is the COO and CLO of simplecast. It's a podcasting technology company that powers podcasts from some brands like brands, media companies and creators like Netflix, Twitter, Politico, Us Weekly, Dax Shepard. Their management and hosting and audience analytics enables creators of all sizes to distribute their podcast anywhere people listen Janine got amazing background in angel investing, tech startups, mentoring high potential women professionals, and serving on corporate boards. She is very busy woman and she does a lot of writing for them as well. So you'll be able to see a lot of blogs on their simplecast website. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on this conversation as well. Let's talk podcast Wage Gap with Jeanine Wright.

Janine, I'm so glad we're getting a chance to sit down here because we didn't have time at she podcast to really talk. We were all just crazy going from event to event. Everything was running back to back. I don't know about you, but I was deeply tired after the event.

It was very exciting. There was a ton of people there, a ton of things to do. They did a really beautiful job, especially with it being the first event and just so many people to meet and talk to. It was exhausting. Yeah.

So I missed the first couple of minutes of your event trying to get out of my booth and get up there of your particular talk within it. But I was so fascinated by the just comments over the time and what I heard in your talk about the wage gap that's going on. And what I was really, I think most surprised about was that it wasn't such a male female demographic as it was a cultural demographic difference and that the wage gap is greater.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think that we are seeing a wage gap emerge in podcasting in all of the same ways that it has emerged in all of the other mediums. And part of the point of the speech that I was making there, and part of the reason why I'm so passionate about this is I just feel like podcasting is such a new and young medium that we have this opportunity to not make the same mistakes of the past and not let history repeat itself. And we can start to identify that these same trends are happening in podcasting. And if we really come together as a community and engage early, like there are things that we can actually do to prevent these things from happening.

Yeah, so we're going to talk about some of the things that you mentioned in your talk about preventing them. But you know, let's talk about a little bit about how this is coming about. So you started some research. You also have based it on some of your own experience with the clients that you have as well as marketplace information. And so you have podcastwagegap.com, which we'll be linking to in the show notes for this, so people can go there. So if you have a podcast already, especially if you're taking advertisement, sponsorships, affiliates, some kind of revenue from it, they'd love to have your information there. So the more data, the better. That's. I firmly believed in it, which is one reason why Janine's on the show today, because I want to make sure that you get as much valuable data from as broad an audience as possible, and because that's going to lead to more valuable information and greater services and information about how to close it. So how has that research been going for you, and what is it studying?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think initially there was some resistance, honestly, to us even conducting the research. We got a lot of, I think, surprising feedback of people who commented that they couldn't believe that it was even worth us looking into some snide remarks about how nobody's making any money in podcasting, so there can't be a wage gap. We even heard some comments that it wasn't just about differences between men and women or different cultures or ethnicities, that it was about motivation, and people who are most motivated were the people who are going to make the most money. And, yeah, so I think we initially saw some resistance, and then we really started to pick up the pace on the number of people that we were getting to respond to our survey. So we got a good swath of people respond to the podcast wage gap survey. So that created a good broad base of research for us. And then we also looked at a lot of the research that we're seeing in the space. It's easier to study gender differences, because even if people don't identify as man or woman when they're signing up for a service, a lot of times you can tell by the name or by somebody's voice when listening to a podcaster. Certainly harder to get as broad of information on culture, lgbtq, bipoc, you know, harder to get that information just from listening to somebody or looking at their name. But we started to get some of that information, too, and we started to see some other surveys in the space. You know, the number of podcasts that are now hosted by women, the number of women listeners, like, what the demographic of listeners are, and the way that women listeners behave differently than men listeners behave. And then we did this partnership with a company called Glow, which is a crowdsourcing monetization platform like sponsorship tipping, like a Patreon designed specifically for podcasts. And they had a lot of really good data that they were able to share with us on the different ways that men and women in particular are using their platform and what they're seeing and successful in terms of crowdsourcing monetization.

Yeah, you know, I thought that was really interesting. Some of the GLOW numbers were that there were more equal numbers in terms of men and women signing up for GLOW accounts and doing all of that. But when it went to go asking for money, the gap just widened to, like, you know, something between 90 and 10%. Like, it was like, that broad a gap between starting to go out there and say, hey, I'm taking donations for my podcast, or.

Yeah. So the really encouraging data there is that once podcasters launch their tipping platform, like, once they actually decide to make the ask and they have it set up so that people could actually provide them with some kind of direct sponsorship, the rates of monetization between men and women look like they're pretty equal. So men and women podcasters are able to engage their audiences and get their audiences to give them money in fairly equal numbers. But then when you kind of pull back the curtain and look at who are actually the people who are utilizing the platform. So I think the data was about 65% of the people who sign up for accounts are men. So right out the gate, more men than women are putting up their hand to just say that they're ready to make the ask. And then when you look at the entire funnel of, like, who starts an account and then who actually launches the account, 95% of the shows that launch the account to start asking for money are men versus women.

Wow.

It's pretty incredible when you look at it, especially when you think that, gosh, once they get out the gate, they're performing fairly, equally. So what is it that is holding women back from getting out the gate? Some of the research that we were doing and some of the learnings that we're getting from what we have seen in wage gap research in other spaces, and in particular the wage, like the actual wages gap of what is it that prevents women from asking for more wages, from negotiating more pay? Some of those same things we believe are forces that are operating here, that women are more hesitant. Yeah, yeah.

And we're bringing all that baggage into everything that we do, and it's time to break that in a great way. And so that's where I was really looking at some of the things that we do in both prepping our shows and how we build our shows and the audience and the feedback in the community demonstrates great value and why Is that not enough? Why is that not enough for us to say, hey, it's time to ask for tipping, it's time to ask for sponsors. It's time to move on and do a call to action, sell something.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that it's interesting. It's almost like these are the people, these are the women in particular that could be the natural born leaders in the space, because these are women who are podcasting. So you would assume that they have already found their voice, they already see themselves as an authority on something. Or like having something that is worth being said that people will want to listen to, but there is some barrier to taking that next step of actually saying that not only am I, is what I'm saying valuable and worth being heard, but it is also worth somebody paying me to do it, at least helping me cover my costs to do it. You know, like, this is valuable broader than just me sitting in my home office behind a mic.

Recording into my computer and hoping that somebody hears it.

Right. Right now, is your survey taking a look at traditional versus non traditional monetization? So, you know, is it looking at things like are you making money and selling your courses and your books and the other things versus just selling advertisements and sponsorship space?

Yes. So, and I think that's a really important point and some really interesting data that we've been able to get from the survey. So, so we look at all different forms of monetization and the one that first comes to mind for everybody is ad based monetization. And for some reason people have it in their mind that that is the pinnacle of success in podcasting, is that you are like an ad sponsored model. And it's, it's always funny to me. I guess I think maybe an appropriate analogy is like becoming a professional athlete or becoming a well known celebrity. It's like people think like, I'm gonna.

Get on the box of Wheaties and that's like, that's the pinnacle of success.

Yes. Or like, if I want to be an actress, then that means that I'm going to be the Kardashians and I'm going to have all these endorsements and I'm going to have movie deals and this, you know, there are a lot of people who make a good living acting and a lot of people who make a good living supporting others who are acting. And it doesn't mean that they're the top 1% and that they're monetizing in the same way as the people who are in our faces all the Time are monetizing. So it is true that the overwhelming majority of the money being made by podcasters is advertising money, but that's being made by a very small percentage of of podcasters. And the way that most podcasters are monetizing and a lot of podcasters are monetizing and monetizing very successfully is outside of the ad model. And that's because right now, it's still very difficult for people to get advertising dollars. There's not kind of that easy like Google platform or Facebook kind of platform to make ad buys, to connect podcasters with advertisers directly and for them to efficiently be able to do small buys. So most of the people in the space who are making money in advertising are these mega shows with sales resources and connections, and they're able to garner the top dollars and overwhelming majority of the dollars in podcasting so far. So the good news is that there's tons of advertising dollars coming into the space. We're starting to see a flow, and the analytics behind podcasting are getting better. The ease of making buying transactions is getting better. So those doors are going to continue to open, and more and more people are going to make money from advertising. But for right now, the overwhelming majority of podcasters who are making money in podcasting are not making money through advertising.

You know, it's so interesting because one of the first conversations we usually have with our clients over here is, what is your number one business goal and for doing this podcast, and what is a sign of monetary success for you? And very often it's not ad dollars. Right? It's not, because they already have a sense of, I do affiliate sales, and it doesn't make me a ton of money. You know, it's not. It's a. I think this is my personal opinion. And of course, we're doing some research on it, and that's somewhat included in our pod fading research that we're doing. There's a little section on it, but I believe that it is a bad training module out there on those that are educating people on what podcasts are about, like how to start a podcast. All of those things. Most of the old school, I call them old school, even though they're like five years old. The old school model of how to set up a podcast is a digital marketer's model of it, which was going after passive income. And passive income is ads and sponsors and affiliate sales. Right. So that model of setting up your show is what they're hearing. So they only have this thought that that's the way to go about it. So it's coming in this early perception of what is a podcast. And so if we can break some of that down, and we certainly break it down on our end, this is so interesting. What I really want to get at is understanding why you guys decided to do this research. What triggered this for you? Were you seeing something in your client base? Were you seeing something that was saying, there's a problem here?

Yeah. So I think we are pretty unique in this space. So we provide hosting, distribution, analytics. We're best known for our analytics in the space. One of very few companies out there that serve both independent creators and enterprises. And so we were doing a lot of studying on how do we help independent podcasters who are not a celebrity name, become bigger, have big audiences, and get success, whatever, and however they define success for themselves. And we started to see that there were differences between, in particular, the ways that men and women were thinking about or defining success.

So it started with that kind of understanding at a base level, success model was already different.

Yes. And so. And some of that data has been confirmed in the Podcasting Wage Gap survey. Because when you ask people who haven't started monetizing yet, how do you think that you're going to monetize, or what is your plan for monetization? Women in particular and black indigenous podcasters of color and LGBTQ in particular, they all think like monetization, where I'm going to go towards monetization. And then for some reason, monetization through ad buying, you know, might be the second or third top choice. But the overwhelming majority of men think that their plan towards monetization, even if they haven't started yet, is probably sponsorship, merch, live events, touring, kind of these other monetization models. And because we know that the overwhelming majority of podcasters are going to have monetization success in those other ways besides advertising. It's almost like the men, and the white men in particular, have the inside scoop that the women don't have yet and the minority podcasters don't have yet, because they are still kind of like, falling into this, like, stereotypical understanding about how podcasts get monetized. So it was that kind of this definition of what a success looked like. And then the other thing that really stood out for me, I don't make a podcast myself. I really respect the people who do and have that creative talent, but I listen to a ton of podcasts.

I'm so glad you're a listener, Jean, because I can tell you there's a Lot of hosts who aren't listeners, and it shows in the quality of their show. So one day when you go to make your own show, you're going to know exactly what you want it to sound like.

And I actually even sometimes we volunteer, especially like before the holidays when there's going to be a road trip or something like that, we often volunteer to our community group. If you want us to listen to your show and provide you some feedback, drop your link here. And so I've. Now that's you.

You're the one who does it.

Yes, I spent a good amount of time listening to podcasts and providing constructive feedback. So one of the things that I started to notice just anecdotally, as a person who listens to a lot of podcasts, and in particular, men versus women, because I can tell a woman's voice versus a man's voice, starting to take note of the way that women were addressing monetization and their calls to action differently than the way that men were. And the thing that I noticed, most significantly to me that stood out in my mind was that women are much more likely to put their call to action at the very end of their podcast than at the beginning or throughout their podcast. And our data shows, because we have the analytics on completion rates and stop starts and skips, you know, so our data shows that in the last two minutes of the podcast, the overwhelming majority of your audience is dropping out. And so the thing that kind of was this light bulb that went off into my head was, oh, no. The overwhelming majority of women are putting their call to action in the last two minutes of their podcast when the overwhelming majority of their audience is not even hearing it. So even if they are asking, their audience isn't even hearing it.

Wow. See, and this is where companies like yours and like mine, where when we look at that broad data sets and we start seeing these trends happen across so many shows, and this is why we, I believe we've been so successful with our launches and setups being very successful, because we do this again and again and we see these patterns happening. When you have a certain style, cover art, it doesn't work. It has a slower launch than other ones. So you're looking at the data and you're saying the same thing. You're saying this is really common with shows hosted by women. And yet our data shows this isn't even a point that most people listen to. Wow. Yeah. What an aha. And so how could you avoid doing research? Right? You're like, I have to validate This I have to understand. Is there more here that I'm missing?

As my ear perked up to it and I just, I literally even started a log of like, how many men I was hearing. You know, the way that they were asking when they were asking. The other things that I started looking at is how much time are they spending asking, like, literally how much of their airtime are they spending making an ask? And men are spending way more time making the ask than women are spending making the ask. They ask more frequently. The ask itself is longer than women are. So, I mean, I just started. It's like I had this journal in the car and I started tallying these different things as I was listening to all these podcasts.

That's awesome. I love that. Well, you know, so now we have to look at it from the other side. So because we're our platform's known. Your guys are known for your analytics and everything, and you guys have great analytics. They're beautiful looking, by the way. We're really jealous because ours are really ugly and we recognize that, but ours have not been the important part of what we're providing there. Our goal is strategies and setups to making sure that alternative monetization is the primary goal. So I always. My first question to someone is, why would you want to take ads? And is this the right thing for you? But that still doesn't mean you get out of your call to action just because you're not taking ads. And what you're pointing out is so valuable. And so here's the thing, that where our data overlapping is going to be very valuable to the people listening to this. So both of our audience is hearing that. So our data shows that if you make your ask in the first 25 episodes, if your ask is too heavy in the first 25 episodes, especially if you do a like a heavy launch, so your first eight weeks are 25 episodes, then you will have significantly less traction long term than if you wait till after 25 episodes to start making the heavier asks. So that there's a timing of. You didn't earn my trust yet. That's where I see it.

Not only that maybe you didn't earn my trust, but you haven't demonstrated value to me.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's part of why our alternative monetization model of doing the ad mixing after the fact allows you to. Once you hit 25 episodes or 100 episodes or wherever that is, you can go in and put your calls to action anywhere you want later, and you can change them out at Any time. That's where we created that ability to have the value. And we, like you don't recommend them in the post. We do do that so that the outro does always have a call to action in it because it would be silly if someone was listening to it for you to miss that point. But we also don't and this is another mistake that we see is intros that the introduction itself that has the call to action on it, you know, with the music underlying it. Maybe it's a voiceover, maybe it's you as the voiceover. But if you make that call to action immediately, that does worse when you're launching as well. So immediately it sets people up who've checking out your show to say they're going to sell me a bunch of stuff on this show, like it's not in my best interest to be listening to it. And so we don't recommend that. And we remove that from the intros as well. So you can do it right after that. You can add it in later. But we don't recommend it in that. Right in that intro with the music.

That's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, so we see a lot of people in our data, a lot of skipping behavior at the beginning of an episode. Especially when people, when the normal cadence of a podcast has been very set in stone. Like they are like, oh, this is the first three minutes is going to be commercials and then your chit chatter. And so then I'm going to start seven minutes in it. Right. And so one of the things that we like to work with our customers, in particular our professional plan customers, where we can engage with them on a more hands on basis is we start helping them kind of run tests to see what would happen. Like let's see if you did an Easter egg. Kind of like Ira Glass in this American Life is famous for putting an Easter egg at the very end of the show. Like how does that change your completion rates? Or if you played around with your intros, are you going to get more people who are listening to that introduction spot? And instead of skipping, what if you moved it around in the episode so that it wasn't always exactly in the middle? And so we've been helping people test a number of different things like that and seeing some really interesting results.

And that's really what we've seen as well. We've seen that those that don't follow up sort of programmatic style to their show, which follows the radio model of at 18 minutes, a bunch of ads are going to run and, you know, and following that model of it that where they put it in naturally into the sort of downspots. So a downspot for us might be. I'm doing a separate intro of you and we're talking about that. That downtime might be right before you start the intro. So I've already excited everyone. They don't want to miss what you have to say. And now I'm going to run my spot there. But if it's not programmatically five minutes in every single time on every single episode that I do, they're not going to want to skip it. They're not going to want to miss the fact that they want to hear who you are and then hear the interview with you. So, yeah, you're right that it is a planning and programming thing as much as it is a execution. I've got to have these calls to action, and I'm not going to ever convert. If I never ask it. Never going to convert.

That's really interesting. And it's funny to see how our data is kind of paralleling two sides of the same coin.

There was two other things that kind of came up in my ANNEC research, or listening to hundreds of shows and kind of taking notes in my journal about what it is that I was hearing. I was also finding that women are less likely to communicate the value proposition. So they're more likely to say something like, if you like me, go to my Patreon page, or if you like what you hear, and frame it almost as a call to validate me or validate my show. Whereas the overwhelming majority of the male podcasters that we were listening to, when they were asking for sponsorship or to attend a live event or to buy merch, the communication was often around the value that was shared. And so it was something along the lines of this podcast takes money to make. And I know that you get a lot of value out of it. You hear it week over week, and we're always the top of your listen and we do investigative journalism and that's expensive to bring you really high quality, great shows or whatever it is. You know, it's around what it is that we made and that it actually costs money and that it is worth your contributing to it, to keeping it alive, rather than just like kind of a vote for me by giving me a dollar.

Right, exactly. I think that's a really good point. And it is showing in the data of why people don't want to be sold too soon. Right. Why? In my study of doing the first 25 episodes. It's too soon to be putting in those types of calls to action. But by the time you serve them, they do feel obligated. You just need to remind them of that. And so that's what those mail hosts are doing now. Some women won't feel comfortable with that. Like, I could just see that happening because I coach a lot of them as they come through our programs, and we've come up with a slightly modified approach. Then you know you're getting value. So give me something back. Because that sounds kind of harsh. I mean, I'm simplifying it, of course, but it does sound kind of harsh. And so what we like to do is a little bit softer reminder. And this has worked for many of the women who have done something like a donation platform.

I'd love to hear it.

Yeah. And so what we do is more of a. Here's the examples of the value that you just received today. So you're reminding them of what they just heard. So this is an example of what you have. And then you're reminding them that there is this platform to do it. So the connection has to be made in their mind. But you're tying it to value that was just given, and now here's the platform. And so you don't actually make that same like, so you need to go do this. Right. Because that sounds too harsh. You're just putting the two things next to each other, and our brains naturally want to make that connection to the two.

That's really interesting how closely that parallels the research on how women should negotiate for increases in wages.

That's right. It's the same thing.

Because that research has kind of indicated that it's hard to go in and say, I am worth X or I have given you this amount of value, so therefore, you should pay me Y. But that women seems to be more effective in their approach when they say something like, here is the value that I'm bringing to the table, and here's how you're benefiting as an organization. Here's how I fit in. Here's how we can be successful together. And this is kind of what the market typically values this at.

Right. And so I always call it an invitation. That's how I like people to, you know, that I term it when I'm talking to and coaching the women in my. I try to do it with men, too, because I was like, you have women you're talking to, and they don't always respond really well to that push. So making it more of an invitation style of The I invite you to get even more value, get even more benefits by joining our event. And so putting it in that terms always is an you're creating an opportunity you're not selling.

And I think that it's great to listen to some of the greats in the space, especially like the public radio organizations that have been podcasting for a long time and listen to the ways that they're doing their calls to action and their invitations for sponsorship. And you can hear the love and the dedication that goes into creating this part of the content that is certainly just as important as the rest of the content that they're creating. So that's one thing that we talk to our creators about a lot too, is that if they want to increase the listen throughs and to have really happy potential sponsors or get really good responses to their calls to actions, then they should really get creative with the way that they're asking and to start testing it. And so maybe one episode you ask this way and you give it a different code or you test a different time period and another episode you ask this way.

And that's why our platform with being able to drop ads in and then take them out, we've been able to do that in a greater way across the listens and do a much tighter AB testing to start to study what's working and what's not. And there is a certain time, almost always we see host recorded ads do better, post recorded calls to action, do better. When you're asking for yourself on behalf of it and you're the one who has given the value, it has the highest traction, it will always have a higher call to action traction and conversion rate. But there is an occasion where you're like, this is a last minute, like the tickets are on sale only for two more days or something like that. That's where we find using your voiceover artist can be more useful in that sort of more pushy reminder that the deadline is coming for something. And so that's where your voiceover, that voice of authority that started your show out, can actually serve you really well in pushing them to take action immediately as opposed to the way that you might have done it otherwise. And so then you don't have to tread over your sort of icky feelings about being that pushy about it. So the $100 offers off December 1st, so you've only got so many days left, right?

I imagine that those are more effective for women than they are for men as well, you know, because audiences stereotypically tend to resonate Less with women being pushy sales versus men being pushy sales, even if. When it's the same message. Right, right.

And that's where we really do. If your voiceover artist isn't a male, we actually do recommend that to the women that your advertising voiceover, whenever you use it, should be a male. It has a more demand authority, unfortunately. But it's the level and resonance of the voice. It doesn't really have to do with the fact that gender. It has to do with the push in the sound of the voice to the cortex of your brain to saying, do this now. It's an urgent thing. So there was a bunch of studies. This is where we got the information from. There's a bunch of studies on navs, and the navs that are women telling you to take a turn and do all of this. Take many brains, take that as more of a suggestion than an urgency. And so if you're about to run into a wall or do something really wrong, if you had a male voice telling you, you would treat it with a higher level of urgency because of the resonance, the voice hitting your brain because you're passively listening, which is what happens on the podcast. Right. We're not always actively listening. We're doing other things. We're doing dishes or folding laundry or driving somewhere. Right. And so that passive listening, you have to have that sound hit you in the right place.

Yeah. I mean, that's really interesting. I would love to work with a client to test that. I mean, we have dynamic audio on the platform as well, and we love to encourage our customers to run AB testing on their programs, you know, with all of their different kinds of content. And we love being able to, you know, we. A lot of people look at analytics or look at dynamic audio injection as like, this is just for ads. But really we think the analytics are first and foremost a feedback loop for helping people make better content and content that resonates better with the audience that they're trying to reach. And then once you are able to dial in that content that you're making and continue to listen to this feedback that you're getting from your audience, both in what they're telling you in response to surveys and how they're engaging with you on social and all those ways, but, like, actually in the data, then you can think about, like, what is your monetization strategy and how can you efficiently get to monetization? And then what does the data tell you about how you should build your monetization strategy around what you know?

Right. So we don't want anyone to come out of this conversation between you and I to come out discouraged, Right? Absolutely. I hope we haven't in any way discouraged you, but, you know, that doesn't mean that we don't want the information and we want the data. So how are you putting that out there? How are you sharing that with the public and with your community?

Yeah, so we're definitely in the process of. We're still gathering information@podcastwagegap.com and putting together a white paper on the findings there. I've been doing a lot of writing on it, a lot of speaking on it. And then we work with our customers directly in providing feedback whenever we can, and certainly with our professional customers in working with them one on one to help give them the kind of big picture of what it is that they could be doing. I think a lot of in a.

Service that you have to dial it in personal. Right. You have to dial it into what's best for you and your show.

Yeah. And I think a lot of the value add that you're providing to your customers as well is that right now it is very hard for people to understand benchmarking and podcasting because the overwhelming majority of podcasters can only see what their numbers are and they have no idea if that's, you know, is that normal, is that good, is that bad? So that's why you see in all these, like, Facebook groups and all these community groups, somebody's like, I just launched my podcast and now I have a hundred listens. Is that good? Or most of my listens are not even from my hometown. Like, how am I getting these listeners? So sometimes people know to ask questions of the community to try and get a sense of normalcy, but the overwhelming majority of people don't. And so when you're somebody like me or like you, who sits in the seat of being able to see analytics across thousands of shows and to start getting true sense of what normal is, then you can help provide people more specific feedback as to how are they benchmarking and what they could be doing differently.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that's so, so true. The other thing I think is that being very clear in what that strategy is from the beginning, that is also giving you the right group to benchmark against. So that's what I find most often is they're like, I'm seeing on this Facebook group that they're posting that they got 10,000 listeners in eight weeks. And, you know, and concerning me and my first podcast out there, I didn't know that we were doing well, and I didn't really care. It wasn't the point of it. And so we achieved 25,000 listeners in five months. And this was five years ago, so it was, you know, at a different time. And we were told by a publication that wanted to write an article about us that that's phenomenal. And then we were like, really? Yeah, like, that's good. Like, you know, like, we were like, okay, I guess it's good. Yeah.

You know, it is crazy to think that I often know before the podcaster knows how successful they are.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, because people have no sense of what is normal. And so we help kind of provide them that grounding and what that sense and lots of other insights as well. I mean, for example, I was just working with a customer the other day where I was looking at her analytics with her, and I said, whoa, you are getting so many listens on an Apple Watch. And she's like, really? And I'm like, yeah, way more than normal. And then we started talking about, like, what does that mean? Like, what is the text slant of your listening audience? And how could you lean into that and knowing that that's the text slant.

Or the exercise slant? They're listening while they're exercising, right?

Yeah. And people come in with all these stereotypes of like, oh, everybody listens on their commute. But then when you really dive into.

The data, you can see, don't ever commute.

Right.

Like, I joke with my clients when I listen to their shows or when I listen. Like, if you were a podcaster coming on my show here and I was interviewing you about successful podcasting, I would be listening to you while I put my makeup on in the morning. Because it is the only alone time that I completely have. So my morning routine can be very long. Like, I'm not ready to come out yet because I'm still listening to a podcast.

Yeah, I'm pregnant right now, so I have a lot of pregnancy induced insomnia. So I am probably listening to you in the middle of the night.

Yeah, I'm the one who's doing those overnight listens that you're like, whoa, I'm spiking at 2 in the morning.

That would be me.

Well, congratulations, Deneen. I can tell you I listened to a lot of podcasts when I was pregnant with my last two here. So I know the feeling. It does happen.

This is the last thing that I want to talk about is that one of the things that I see so often Is that I actually met some really, really successful women who had great shows, and they didn't realize how great their shows were. And so they were getting feedback of, yeah, you're a niche podcast or you're focused all on women. And my comment to them were, no, women are not a niche audience, because I come out of the product design and the brand side of things. So the brand world of those that want to advertise and women buy or influence 86% or more of the purchases that are in the marketplace in almost every single product category. Finance, travel, obviously, shopping and products, and beauty, wellness, men's products, like, they influence that. So why wouldn't you be a valuable show to advertise on if your whole entire audience are all pregnant women, for instance? Right. That would be a huge entire audience. And so I said, push back on those advertisers you're talking to. Give up that company and go find another one, because that's not acceptable either.

Yeah, I mean, I think I saw in Forbes magazine one time they said if the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. So they are driving almost, you know, like you said, north of 80% of the consumer purchasing, and are often the influence or the veto vote behind somebody else's purchase. So even if they're not the one who's doing the actual purchasing themselves. But I also think that the data that we're seeing emerging in the podcasting space in particular, helps women there too, because now we're seeing that as quickly approaching to be that the majority of the listening audiences are women across all podcasts. And then two, we're seeing that women listen and engage with podcasts different than men do. So women are listening for longer periods of time, are listening more intently. They're less likely to skip. They're less likely to drop off, you know, so this kind of way that we're seeing that women are engaging with podcasting, I think, also supports an argument that they are more of a consumer audience that an advertiser might want to reach.

Yeah. So that demographic, you're right. As the listenership tipping right now should start changing the brand acceptance of it and the brand understanding of where the value lies.

I think that's true. And I think we're also starting to see more and more of the categories emerging that resonate with women's audiences. So you'll see even more of that. So we're already starting to see.

I loved the new category of shift at Apple. It makes a lot more sense. And this is where, you know, I have my own opinions, and I give them pretty freely on the show here about why I think it happened. But it is aligning itself much more with a consumer based view of marketplaces.

Exactly.

And that's really what I see in how they're listed. They're aligned with how Amazon organizes books, for instance. And so you're starting to see that absolute alignment in the categories.

I think that's exactly right. But I think you're right that anecdotally we are hearing that a lot of women, particularly when they go to negotiate with sponsors, get bucketed into instead of in the kind of gen pop source of revenue for podcast advertising, they get put into like the Latina women category or the like, you know, like women's sports category or the LGBTQ category. And women are finding these minorities are finding that they need to speak up and really push back to argue as to why their consumer base isn't niche and shouldn't have access to just a niche bucket of funds that might be available to an advertiser. Instead, they should be able to tap into that gen pop advertising dollar source.

Janine, it's been such a pleasure talking with you today. I'm so excited to just keep the motion of the industry going in the right direction. It seems like it is. It seems like great companies like yours and Min, we're working on it for all of the benefit of the whole entire community, not just our client base. Right. And we're shifting that model as we move forward. But at least what I love about what you're doing with the podcast wage gap and what we're doing over here with the pod fading research is we're starting to get at where the failure points are happening, where the discrepancies are happening, and we're raising awareness to that fact. And when we bring awareness to it, we can change the model.

Totally. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that people can take away is that it is time to start sharing information and to start becoming mentors and connectors for each other and start advocating for each other. And once we have this information and the power of this information, then we can make sure that this industry doesn't go the same way as we've seen so many other industries go.

Yeah, I've written about a few too many in my Ink column. So, you know, we've been writing about tech wage gaps, for gender and cultural wage gaps and all kinds of things lately, and I'm tired of writing about it, frankly, this many years.

I would love to write a piece where it's like how podcasting figured it out, you know, like for the rest of the world.

There you go. You and me both. That's our goal here. Well, thank you so much, Janine. I really appreciate it. Everybody will be able to find you at the blog post for this episode at Futurebrand Code and Absolutely. We'll make a big highlight, big box around it so they can go and take the podcast wage gap survey. So thank you so much, Jeanine. Appreciate your time.

Thank you so much. Good talking to you.

Okay, everyone out there, I'm Tracy Hazzard and I'm going to be back next time with another great episode of Feed you'd Brand and exciting new interviews with centers of influence in the podcasting industry. Thanks so much, everyone. Talk to you next time.

You've been listening listening to the Feed you'd Brand podcast. We'd love to hear your comments on today's show as well as suggestions for future topics and guests. Visit us online at feedyourbrand. Co or on Social edyourbrand. Thanks for exploring content marketing and podcast influence with us.