Podcast Statistics: What to Pay Attention To – PCI 340

0:00 How come I can't just use Google Analytics or use my web stats? And the problem with that is they completely measure different things. You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast, bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting. With the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting, welcome. Let's dive in. This is Todd Cochran, c e o and co-founder of Blueberry. And I'm Mike Dell, VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry. Today, we're gonna talk about podcast analytics, you know, stats, and, uh, what stats you need to pay attention to.

0:43 Hey, Todd, we got a juicy subject today. Uh, we're gonna talk about podcast analytics and, uh, you know, what do you wanna pay attention to? What's important, what's not so important but fun? You know, that kind of thing. You know, it, it's funny because, uh, I've been having a series of meetings about this with the I E B N, which our stats are certified compliant by. And what is important to someone on, uh, an advertising deal may not be important, is what someone that's just trying to grow their show. So it really depends on, on the use case. But, you know, from the beginning of podcast measurement, you know, podcasters are really, really focused on really that play, listen, download, and they say, okay, if, you know, if I've got, uh, 700 plays, that's, you know, means 700 people are listening. But I think there's a much, much bigger picture you can derive from your metrics than just, uh, looking at plays. And, you know, one of the things that I like looking at is really that, that long-term growth line, you know, how the show is doing over, uh, months and in my case years and, uh, you know, it's been an ebb and flow for me over the over time.

2:00 Oh yeah. And, you know, stats go up, stats go down, and there's not always a particular reason for that other than, you know, people get tired of a show and they take a break and then they come back. Or you may get a big burst, uh, you know, if you get mentioned something in the news or something like that. But, uh, yeah, a question I get a lot is, uh, you know, how come I can't just use Google Analytics or use my web stats? And the problem with that is they completely measure different things. You know, web stats are really good at covering pages and how many visits you have to your site and all that stuff. But if you put an MP3 on your web server and somebody starts playing it or downloading it, you're gonna, you know, it's gonna take it in chunks.

2:51 And each of those chunks will be considered a hit in web stats. So if one person downloads your show, it might take 2030, you know, hits on the file to get the whole file. So your web stats are gonna say, that was 20 or 30 downloads and podcast stats. We, we filter that stuff out. You know, we won't get into the geeky part of it, but suffice it to say, uh, they're just different metrics. You know, we, we combine those 30 hits or whatever it was on that file and condense that down into one. We can do that, you know, via various geeky things.

3:33 And I think one thing that, you know, has thank goodness gone by the wayside is for a long time people thought they could look at the traffic to their podcast r s s speed and say, oh, I had, you know, 82,000 hits to my podcast feed. Well, that's exactly what it was. It was a, a hit, it was basically a crawler or a bot or something like that, looking at that, that geeky data that's in RSS feeds. And that really caused lots of folks to over-report in the early days of podcasting. But, you know, I think we, we broke that seal where folks aren't doing that anymore. But, you know, I think one thing you have to just remember is that web stats, again, are great to look at your web analytics, so what's happening on your site, but podcast stats is specifically about that media delivery and where it's going and how it's being delivered and, and what apps and, you know, where in the world people are consuming your content.

4:33 So I think that the web stats piece is good in its own right, cuz I like looking at that data too. You know, you kind of wanna have both if you're, you know, running your own website, you do wanna run web stats, but four web stats things, you know, how long people are sticking around on your site and, you know, a lot of that kind of stuff that you can't really get from podcast stats directly. But, uh, you know, and, and one of the other questions I get a lot is how many subscribers or now followers do I have? Well, fortunately we've, uh, we've made available our way of, of, uh, calculating that and that's available through the Thrive package.

5:14 But it's been a very difficult figure to actually put your pencil on. You know, it's one of those things that there's never an exact number and, and we have a little bit of methodology that we're using. And a lot of it is just looking at averaging. And, you know, if you get the Thrive package and look at the subscriber data, there's a full explanation of how we're calculating it. It's not complicated, but it does do averaging over about 12 episodes. So it's one of those things where we kinda look at over time to give you that, that subscriber number. Now, before we had that fancy graph in Blueberry stats, oftentimes what I would, would do is I would take the total downloads for each episode for the last 12 episodes after it had been delivered for at least two weeks, add those number up and divide it by 12.

6:07 And I would get a pretty close number to what I would think would be my average plays or downloads. And then I would kind of back that off just a little bit and then kind of come up with a subscriber number. But there's nothing perfect. Our methodology is using pure math. Yeah, I used to do it a different way and I still kind of do is I'll take an episode that's say a month old and look at just that single episode and then go down and figure out where they're coming from. If they're mostly, you know, the number of people that are coming from a mobile app and something called Podcatchers, which are PC apps, uh, like iTunes, the original, uh, desktop software or Apple Podcasts on your device, although that'll come up as Apple podcast, but it still will show up as something, as a pod catcher in our stats.

7:02 You add those two numbers together and that gives you kind of a rough idea as well. But it's, all of them are kind of a rough idea. Guess. One thing to also understand is there's the difference between true followers, someone that has followed or subscribed to your show and those that are coming in via, let's say Spotify or they're just loading the Apple Podcast app up, or they're loading and they're looking for your show and they hit play. A lot of people do that today without, without ever following your show. So what happens is, is if someone has followed your show, as soon as it basically becomes available in the RSS feed, if you have your podcast application set up to automatically download that episode so it's available for you really anywhere you are on demand, if, even if you're in an airplane that is really a true quote unquote follower, but it doesn't, we don't wanna discount those folks that are coming in via Spotify or wherever and just hitting play.

8:07 There's a different level of commitment there, there's still, there's still listeners of the show. I mean, part of our calculation that we're doing in the subscriber stats is really looking at that first 24 hours as well of how many immediate plays or downloads happened right away. And that is usually a good sign within that first 24 hour period in episodes available that that is probably someone that is followed or subscribed to the show. Again, in the end, what we really care about is that that grand total number. And, um, I think that's what oftentimes we can use as a pretty good indication where the show is going. So I don't think people should get hung up on subscribers.

8:50 I think they really should just focus on overall what's, what's my line graph of my show doing overtime? Is it growing? Yeah, you want people to, to listen. You don't care whether they hit subscribe, although subscribers do download the thing automatically and and that's cool. Or you know, followers and subscribers by the way are the same thing. We just, the terminology has changed over the last few years. So, uh, excuse us, uh, oldsters here by saying subscribe all the time, but. And in people, I call 'em active listeners, there's, you know, that's kind of an you think what's an active listener, Todd? Well, active listener could be, and kind of in Todd's definition, and you can call it the way you want it as a podcaster, but it's that listener that comes in again, hits, hits play, and just listens to it immediately. I know Mackenzie does this.

9:42 She doesn't really a follower subscribe to shows she use, she just hits play on the, on the shows that she follows. So again, every person that consumes content is different, but it doesn't mean that Mackenzie's even less dedicated to that show. It means that she still follow over that show. She just uses the app in a different methodology. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with any of that. So you, again, total listens or total downloads, that's another thing. The term that's been changing a little is the important number, you know, per episode. But again, it's, it is kind of neat to check out your estimated audience and, and all that. Of course that's available at uh, blueberry in the stats.

10:23 And speaking of blueberry stats, most hosting companies have basic stats. Some are better than others. Ours we like to think is the best, you know, but from almost any uh, podcast hosting company, you'll get some basic stats, but you might want to get a second PI opinion. So I've got, you know, third party stats here on the list and you know, companies like Charitable and Pod track and of course Blueberry, we have standalone stats. If you're not hosting with us, prefixed stats are not always available for use on some platforms, what used to be called Anchor, which is what Spotify for podcasters, there's really no way to, uh, put in any prefixes there.

11:07 Let me add something about anyone running a prefix, including blueberry. When we did our IB certification, the first certification we did was basically on raw log valves for our customers that hosted with us. And we held back on getting the redirect, or some people call it pre Penn certified into our second round when we went back. Because what happens in a pre penned is we don't see everything that happens with that, uh, with that playback cuz we handed off to wherever the media file is hosted and if we don't have the raw log data, there's certain data that it's not there. So we had to build a model, and I won't go into the complexity of that, but it, it was very, very complicated and it actually, actually, it has to be verified as part of our certification every 30 days.

11:57 So we have to run some scripts and do some testing. So one thing you, you need to know if you're running on a prefix with any company, and I can compensate with blueberry, that number's gonna be a little bit lower than it would be if you were had our hosted stats. And it could vary depending on your audience makeup and how they're listening to the show. Cuz every app and device and, well, not just mostly every app has its own yes. Better way kind of way of doing things. And we have had to build a model that basically says, all right, it came from this, I can count it came from that. No, I can't. So typically a prefix stats will run five to 12, maybe in as high as 13% lower from a metric standpoint in getting total your, your numbers on your show. Uh, just because we can't qualify the, the download to, to meet the certification standard.

12:56 So one thing to remember is as usually hosted raw log stats with er, with blueberry are the most accurate. Even if you're running the prefix with us, we still look at your raw log files and that's what we report to you. So, um, that's the main thing to to know here is if you're hosted with us, your stats that you get are, are the most accurate. If you're not hosting with us and using the prefix or even if you are using the prefix and hosting with us, you still get the hosted reporting. Whereas if you're not hosting with us, then you just get strictly the, the prefix reporting and it allows us to keep our model in line cuz we get to see both sets of numbers. We're kind of unique in the space and being able to do that. But as, like Mike said, it's not a terrible idea to have a second opinion, but there could be some differences.

13:45 And the main reasons there's differences is really methodology. We go above and beyond and maybe go beyond this, the, the specification of IB in qualifying the number. When we, when we created the blueberry stats platform, we basically had a little motto. We didn't care what the number was as long as we know what the number was, we don't wanna under count, we don't wanna over count. We, we've worked very, very hard really over the past. I I guess when did the stats become available? 2006. So, you know, we worked very, very hard to make sure they're very, very accurate. Yeah, just, just to know that, you know, if say you're hosting with blueberries, so you've got our hosted stats and you want a third party for a second opinion, so you do charitable or pod track or whatever, it's gonna be different. Not, you know, they're never gonna be exactly the same. As Todd was saying, the methodology, you know, we filter probably differently than all the rest of them. And you know, that's nothing wrong with that. It'll still show you the trending.

14:47 It's really about bots and da it's stuff, stuff coming from data centers, you know, that kind of stuff gets thrown out and, and we try to stay on top of that. So again, everyone should be relatively close, we would hope. But especially if you're going from hosted to a redirect, you could see a drop. Now if you see a much higher number, I think that would be caused for a concern and definitely drop us a note. It support asking about this and maybe the vendor you're working with, how do you use metrics to grow your show or improve your show? And what we've tried to do here at Blueberry recently within the last year is to provide you actionable information within your podcast stats to help you grow your show, to know what works and what doesn't to basically measure growth.

15:37 You can see if you're going in the right direction, insights on where and when people listen. So we, we've put a couple of, uh, new charts in. One that's been really, really popular is obviously the retention graph that's been in the system for a while. Yeah, that's been a, that's been a big one. And, and what's nice about that is if you see some, you know, see that a lot of your listeners are dropping off at a certain point, go look at that certain point of your show and say, you know, is this feature or this, uh, segment of my show is that turning people off? And just remember the retention graph. If you look at it, remember this point, if it's above the blue line, that means someone is click play and we've been able to track how long they've listened and it's good within, you know, 10 or 15%.

16:27 And everything below the blue line is where someone has definitely completely downloaded the episode. It'd be either followed or subscribed to the show. It's, uh, more than likely where someone has, uh, opted in. So really that data above the blue line and the retention graph is important. Of course, we've got the some new graphs in the system now where you can see pacing, you can basically see how one episode compares against the other As far as uptake in listeners, and I love this because you can now go and say, okay, I did an episode on a, B, C, I did another episode that was similar to it and then I did another episode that was completely different. And you can do a, an A, B, C, D or e comparison of episodes to look at over time how they paste.

17:18 And if all your shows are pacing almost the same, that's not a bad thing, that's actually a good thing. That means that you're getting good take up on the episodes that you're putting out and people are listening to all your content. Now if you have some shows they're pacing much, much lower and they're all over the place, then maybe you gotta think about how you can tighten up your content a little bit to get that, to get that pacing squeezed together where they're all tracking, uh, within maybe five or 10% of each other. So you'll wanna look at that. So again, if the, if your lines are almost on top of one another, again, it's not a bad thing, that means you've got good, good consistency. Whereas if they're really separate, then that is actually where the challenge lays is where you may wanna look at what did I do different in one episode or another.

18:06 Yeah, it's like if you have a YouTube channel, you'll see that certain videos do better than other videos. So maybe it's a, a title issue, you know, you titled this episode in in a way that turned people off or you know, things like that. You, you just want to, you know, look at your stats and then just, you know, hey, what can I tweak here? Or is there something I should tweak here? Or, you know, whatever. But, you know, basically stats tell you what happened and it's up to you to figure out why. And we give you the tools to do that and, and a lot of other stats systems do too. But, uh, I think we're, I think ours is better.

18:46 And there's, there is definitely one chart in our stats now that I'm surprised we haven't got as much feedback on it. It, it, you look at it and you're like, oh my god, I'm, I'm doing horrible. But really you have to read the definition of what the stat is providing and how we're calculating it and the averaging that we're using. And the main thing to know is that as long as that chart line is over time moving upwards, it gives you a good indication that you're growing. And if it's flat, it's basically your show is, is kind of treading water and it gives you some ideas on things you can do and, you know, tie that in with the audience survey data that's in the stats system.

19:27 You can build a pretty big picture of your audience and maybe things you need to do to help grow your show. But I, I think the stats are just one thing to think about on, on your show. There's an, you know, there's obviously lots of other components here that we're not gonna talk about today, but, you know, just look at those metrics, don't get obsessed with them and, uh, use the data we've, we've provided to make logical decisions about your show. And if there's something you do not understand, then uh, that's where our support team comes in at blueberry. Yeah. Get ahold of us. We'll, uh, we'll try to explain as best we can and uh, and that, and that'll even help us explain to other people. So it's kind of cool. And if you're one of those folks that comes in and hits the stats refresh button every 15 minutes, don't obsess, come look at it once a day and focus on the content. Focus on people.

20:15 Usually they're obsessed with their stats. If you take that energy and move it into other things, social promotion, increasing your content quality, that'll pay much more benefits than sitting there and hitting the refresh button every 15 minutes cuz we know some of you do. Yep, for sure. And you know, one of the fun things which, you know, I don't know how important it is, but it, uh, is the maps that you can see, you know, where your listeners are, you know, you were saying you had, you had a listener down in uh, Antarctica. Well, you know Yeah. And not that that's useful for growing your show, but it's really cool and gives you something to talk about. Yeah. And you know, and I did a call out for this individual said, Hey, where, where are you listening? You know, how, you know, what are you doing down in Antarctica? It was a scientist, it was down there on the ice and he'd load his phone up with podcasts and go out and do research and then about every two weeks he was back to do a refresh and get more content. And that's when I heard from him. So it's, it's kind of cool to have those kind of, uh, call outs as well.

21:13 That's some of the fun stuff you can get from stats when you see that listener that's in some where wayward country and you're running, why are they listening there? You know? And it's always good to get that response from that audience member. Yeah, for sure. Well, I I think we, we got a nice overview here of stats and if you have any questions, of course you can get ahold of us and, uh, ask the question and we'll try to help you. Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime, for more information to subscribe, share or follow, check out the show notes@podcastinsider.com to check out our latest suite of services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease.