YouTube Podcasts: What You Need To Know To Decide If It’s Worth Your Time

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, welcome back to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host and better half Tracy Hazard. And today we're gonna talk about YouTube podcasts.

Not YouTube videos, YouTube podcasts, which happen to be videos. Let's just be really clear here, right?

YouTube Podcasts, if you didn't know it, are a thing. It became a thing only about two months ago.

I think it was a little before that. But it's still, and it's parts of it are still in beta within the last quarter.

I mean, this is pretty new stuff. Well, from the time people are listening to this as a podcast, it may be later than that, but as we're going live, it's that new. We're going to talk about what you need to know to decide if it's worth your time. And I have an opinion on that. You probably do too, Tracy. Let's talk about it. Obviously, if you're doing a YouTube podcast, the first question on a lot of the listeners minds, I think especially if you're listening to this as a podcast audio, your favorite listening app is does it need to be a video? That's probably the first question, don't you think, Tracy?

Yeah, it does need to be a video. Let's talk about this as a general concept. What is a YouTube podcast? A YouTube podcast is a separated section. If you are a YouTube creator, you can see it very easily. It's super easy to be loading in. It must be a video on YouTube. If you're like using the desktop version of YouTube or even if you're using it and you're subscribed to someone, you might see the podcast as a playlist, which many of you were already doing. If you were a podcaster and been a podcast for a while, you probably created a playlist for your podcast channel anyway. Now you just need to easily convert it over to being an official podcast within the system. Here's what I want to say to you. If you're not on YouTube at all, you're missing out. And that's the number one reason a podcaster should should be thinking about a YouTube version of their podcast, and that is that there are 2 billion active users of YouTube. That's crazy numbers. On podcasting side, the last number check I had was 464 million worldwide podcast listeners. Million, not 2 billion, right? You are tripling the access. You have just access now, mind you not, how many listeners are gonna listen to your show, Our viewers that are gonna view it. You're opening your access to three times more people than you have in the podcast ecospace.

Now, I will admit I actually know a very few. Probably count on the fingers of one hand out of a thousand podcasts that we work with at Poditize that have a larger YouTube viewing audience than they do a podcast listening audience. We're not saying necessarily you are going to have a bigger audience because you put a YouTube video out there, right, Tracy?

No, I'm not guaranteeing you anything like that. I just want you to understand that don't we all want more? We want more access to listeners, to viewers, to people who want to find.

Our message, more exposure.

It's a bigger pond, right? Like it's an ocean, not a pond. Think about it that way. That's the first reason why you should definitely consider YouTube podcasts. The second reason is it's new. And when anything is new, like YouTube shorts, when anything's new over at YouTube, they dump more energy focus into it. So here's what happened since I converted my show, the binge factor, our sister show here, to feed your brand. And the same thing goes for feed your brand, but just to understand the difference, when I converted that a couple of months ago, when they first alerted us that it was available, I converted it, I did it immediately. And then we did a training for all of you out there, which we have if you need it. It's a podcast episode in feed you'd brand if you're watching this on livestream and if you're one of our clients, it's in our resource library. But you can ask anyone. But we've already done it for you, so you don't have to worry about that.

Yeah. If you're a done for your production company, we already did this for you.

Yes, it's already happened, but it's basically an episode on how to designate your podcast as a YouTube playlist. That's all it is. It takes literally one minute. Super easy. Now if you don't have your podcast as a video, that's going to take a lot longer. So let's think about that. We'll table that for later. But here's the thing. Once I converted our existing podcast playlist to a YouTube podcast playlist under the official model, all of our podcast episodes were being aired as YouTube podcasts because we do have a video version. And so that's already happening. It's available in the YouTube Music app now. It's on a different app anywhere that you watch it. It's not only available within the regular YouTube ecosystem as a playlist, but it's also available separately in the YouTube Music app now. It's giving us more focus. Keep in mind, this is us only because it's in beta. It's not worldwide. You won't get worldwide listeners. It is still a subset and it's still being tested out. But whenever someone watches one of our videos, you know what happens on YouTube when they watch a video? They get a whole bunch of other stuff that they sell them.

It drives me nuts. I watch a video and then that video ends and there's all this other stuff. And YouTube is like throwing all these tennis balls at me of all sorts of other content. And I'm like, whoa. Usually I'm just like, I'm getting out of here. I'm overwhelmed.

Here's the benefit to being a part of the YouTube podcast community. When you're on the watch page, you have a podcast badge, which you may not realize. And it doesn't always show up in everybody. They're testing the program, and sometimes it shows and sometimes it doesn't, I found. But for the most part, you get this badge that says podcast. And if you have been seeing it on YouTube shorts, you get a YouTube shorts badge. So it's very similar. But your playlist, the rest of your episodes are being served up. Somebody watches one of your podcast episodes, they're being served up the rest of the podcast episode playlist, first and foremost. So you're keeping your potential for getting subscribers from it much, much higher by participating in the YouTube podcast program as opposed to just putting up YouTube videos, you're giving yourself a benefit by doing it. Then the episodes that you have, the next episodes are clearer. The links to all of them are much clearer to anyone. It's all happening on that single video watch page that is happening. Once they watch one episode, they're getting all that other and they're seeing all of that. Secondly, when you go and have this double the footprint opportunity, I'm seeing a boost already. What I've seen is that my video view is about a third. If we have just a general video view or some of the older episodes that weren't in the podcast playlist, I'm seeing at least 2 to 3x minimum on the views that are happening in YouTube from previous to now.

So you've seen a lift already seeing a boost?

I'm seeing a lift.

You're seeing a lift in listenership.

Viewership, if you want to think of it. Not really listenership, because I'm not necessarily seeing that in my overall stats.

You're seeing a lift, and it's probably because of two key things. One, you mentioned that your viewers are not being distracted by other people's content when they're viewing it. That's probably number one. And number two probably is because YouTube is shining a pretty bright light on YouTube podcasts because it's new.

It's not only that. Here's a couple of reasons why I'm. I'm going to say bullish on YouTube podcasts right now. What we're seeing is that not only do you double the size of the footprint, we're seeing a lift in it that is at least double in terms of the viewership than what we were getting before from our regular YouTube videos. There are dedicated stats within the YouTube Creator Studio that are specific for podcasts. You'll be able to track your stats there. And in those areas, I'm already seeing that lift. I'm already seeing that. And they're giving you an overview on the number of views, the watch time hours, specifically to the YouTube videos. It gets muddy in our YouTube channels because sometimes we have a lot of promo videos that are landing pages and they have high viewing hours or things that were webinars. But they're not our regular production content. They're not our stuff that we do every week. And because this is separated, you can actually see that difference. I'm seeing a 66% lift in just the last month. And it's really only been, if you want to think, about 45 days even that we've been in this program. It's just over that. But I've seen a 66% lift in my watch time hours on my podcast episodes from prior the prior month. Wow, that's a big lift, right? I'm seeing at least twice as many views on some videos. I'm seeing three to four times that. But it's building over time. And I can also take a look at my audience when you're looking at the stats. So you can see when someone comes back who watched one video and returns to watch more. I'm seeing a lift in returning viewers, but I'm also seeing a lot more unique viewers than I used to see before. I used to see a lot of my subscribers watching those videos, and that was it. I wasn't seeing new people. I wasn't seeing a big percentage of new people. But now I'm seeing a larger percentage of new people, and I'm seeing more of those people return and watch more videos. That's a big deal. And they're watching all the way through for longer periods of time. Because if you're getting more watch hours, you're seeing that significant lift. Now, if you're going for YouTube monetization, this is essential, and there are three reasons for that. The number one reason is that your watch hours matter in terms of your qualifications. And you have to have a continual number of watch hours every single month. You have to meet a minimum in order to stay enrolled in a monetization program with YouTube. That's critically important. By increasing the number of minutes that someone's watching, you're increasing your watch hours without having to serve them up more content. You have to do a lot more work on YouTube shorts to get the same number of watch hours. Right?

Sure. Much shorter videos. Right?

Right. You can increase your views, but you can't necessarily increase your minutes. This is a great way to supplement that and make both happen. And so there's that. That's number one. Number two, the regular CPM for a regular YouTube video is somewhere between 2 to $10, depending on the keywords, depending on the demand, depending on the type of video.

For those new listeners to feed your band. Let's just quickly define CPM clicks per mill or per thousand. You're getting paid basically an amount of money for 1000 views is what that means.

Yeah. Think about it. On the low end, $2 for every thousand views up to.

You said what, 10? 10.

Okay, that's low. I mean, it's pretty average in the Internet in general, but it's low. Right. The CPM averages for YouTube podcasts is between 18 and $50 right now, nine to 10 times more.

When your YouTube channel, which is inclusive of YouTube podcasts, is, reaches the level of watching that you can monetize it. The views that are coming through your videos through YouTube podcasts, you're being paid a higher rate for those ads. Is that. Did I hear you correctly there?

Yep.

And it seems significantly higher.

And I think the reason is simply for what we know and we see everywhere else. And everything that I can find documented from YouTube is that they understand that conversion is higher on a podcast than it is in general Videos.

People are Choosing to watch it. This wasn't random.

Yep. Because of that, the conversion's higher, which is why the dollar amount is higher here. They're seeing that. But I also think it's because it's a new program, they want to encourage more creators into the program. Now's the time to get in because there are not as many people competing for those CPMs. And your likelihood for qualifying is high because there's more push happening right now as well. This is a time, if you're looking to monetize your YouTube channel, this is the time to make sure that you have a podcast. If you don't have one already, you better get one. And if you have one already, convert it. Like that's what we're telling you. Just convert it. Now. Here's the key. If you don't do video, if you have audiograms and that's what you're doing, they must be full length audiograms. It has to be the complete episode, not shorts or anything like that. But audiograms have half the viewership of ones with host feature.

You're saying videos that are like what you and I are doing right now, as obviously this is to those of you listening on Apple podcasts or Google podcasts or whatever you're listening on to us. We're recording this as a video actually live to our community right now. And it's being published as a podcast and a YouTube video later. We're using Zoom to record. It is two talking heads that we have here, you and me. But we put this out as a video in YouTube podcasts. And that's the kind of video you're saying is getting more engagement because it's actually a video of us as opposed.

To an audiogram, which is a static image that just has the audio file and the captioning running.

It's a still image with some motion for the. Yeah, the captions and the audio waveform. But you're converting what was an audio into video when you create that. But it has to be the full length, you said.

Here's my advice to you. If you don't have video recorded for all your older episodes, that's okay. Use the audiogram. It's better than nothing. But understand that you'll get half the viewership that you would get if it were real live. Switch over now. Do live video and start putting those videos in do. So do live action, meaning person. Do people. Okay. And then put those into your YouTube podcast going forward because you're going to double your potential for the listenership and then viewership. And that's essential, especially if you want to monetize. On the other side of it, the three reasons that I think that monetization is going is the CPMs higher, there's a bigger audience, there's the bigger push, but there's also the good stats to be able to be watching right now. And those stats, honestly, I think are better than the podcast stats that we're getting from Apple and Spotify and all the other places in terms of who's watching, what's happening. With that, we're getting more data than we are on who's listening. And I think that's valuable to you in the long run. If you truly want to take ads on your show eventually or you want to have a different model of monetization, I think it's a great proof that you can monetize. These are all the reasons I'm really bullish on YouTube podcasts, and you should jump on board, but make sure you have human video, like humans in your video, not audiograms. It's going to do better. It's more worth your time and effort.

About half of our production customers do record and have us produce and publish their videos on YouTube and on their website, and half don't. Usually, you know, some people are like, oh, it's just two talking heads. I don't want to do it. Right. Or I mean, I remember Tracy, in the very beginning when we started podcasting a decade ago, you're like, heck, no, I'm not recording video. I don't want to have to do my hair and makeup and worry about what I'm wearing every time. You remember that.

Yeah. And if you're not watching the video right now, you should check out my hair, because this is like what my hair looks like normally when I don't get it done. This is a post pool day hair.

Reality moment here on this podcast. Nobody was thinking your hair is not what it should be except you right now. So just putting that out there.

Right? Which is my point, that I got over it. Right. Like, I'll just show up like this.

Because how many podcast episodes do you record now in 2023, Tracy, that are audio only versus audio and video? How many?

I'm trying to think. I can't think of any.

Are there any? I don't think there are.

There aren't any. Yeah. It's never happens. And even if I'm not going to use the video for some weird reason, like occasionally in the resource library, we will use an audio Only, but it's just very rare. But it does happen. But I'll record the video just to have it.

And the majority of the tools people are using to record their podcasts have the capability to record video if they're not already automatically recording it. Just a lot of people aren't using it especially are having a discussion with someone or interviewing someone remotely. We want to see each other. You reading the emotion of the other person and you feed off the emotion of the other person, I think makes even the audio publication as a podcast episode much more dynamic than if you didn't see them. Most people have video.

This is really an interesting thing because I don't have the full statistics on it. The stats say that a lot of people watch with the sound off on their video, but they'd rather watch human beings than watch with their sound off and just straight look at the captions on an audiogram. That's such a weird like dynamic when you think about it. And I think it's because we prefer to watch people's emotions even if we're reading the captions.

It could be, but the reality is, look, some people ask me, well, if I publish video, am I gonna have fewer podcast listens or vice versa? And I actually can tell you from long hard experience here at Poditize, I don't believe so. Ultimately, people have their preference. Some people prefer to listen, some people prefer to watch. Now, on social media, video catches, I think, people's attention more because that's just in social media, the little video clips and things get people's attention when it's pushed to you. But for content, people are seeking to learn from, to educate themselves. They have a preference and they will want to either listen or watch or read if they are prefer to read an article or a blog. And while I do think that there is crossover and when we record a podcast, if there is a real visual moment that the podcast listener, it's sort of going to be over their head because they're not seeing it. I will make a point of saying, hey, all of you listening out there on your podcast app, you're really going to want to go to the blog post@feedyourbrand.com and look at this portion of the video. You have got to see the expression on Tracy's face or whatever it is. That is the visual thing. What we're showing something in a slideshare and we describe what we're showing. Hey, go to the blog post and watch the video and see that. Or we might actually just have a Screenshot of that as a still image there you can give people a reason to go watch part of the other medium when it makes sense.

I just want to reiterate and push that YouTube podcasts are succeeding at this stage. They're new, which is getting a little bump, and we've seen this happen before. But YouTube doesn't really do things that often where it isn't the case that they are dedicated to it. Like they rarely do something and then pull back on it. We've seen Apple pull back on their videos. We've seen Spotify not succeed with the videos at the same rate. They thought probably because they underestimated the fact that people join Spotify to listen.

Not to watch, especially to listen to music. More than anything, it's not.

They've got the wrong demographic, if you want to think of it that way. Right as you were talking about. They're auditory people and then they try to throw in visual. It just doesn't work as well. But YouTube already has the visual learners, right? They already have that audience and they've decided that this is something worth pushing and putting into their whole ecosystem. I'm bullish on it. I think it's really working right now. I suggest you go out there and try it. I think it's worth your time and energy and it shouldn't cost you anything extra. In fact, if you get into the monetization program, it should make you more money. If you qualify over there, it will definitely be worth it. Go ahead, join YouTube podcast. Make it work.

All right, Tracy, sounds like a great place to drop the mic on this episode. Everyone, you can go check out the blog post for this episode and all of our others is a great search feature if you have something you're looking for in podcasting. Once you're in within a blog, there's this great search text feature there on poditize.com there's a feed your brand page, so definitely go and check that out.

Well, thanks everyone for listening. Tom and I will be back next week with another live stream of our podcast tips and advanced tactics on here on feature brand and of course another episode which will follow.

We'll see you all next week with the next livestream.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed you'd brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.