Why IAB Podcast Stats Matter — How Blubrry Makes It Easy – PCI 467

0:00 Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry. And I'm Dave Clements, support and media specialist at Blueberry Podcasting. Today, we're gonna be talking about something that gets overlooked, but is really essential for podcast success, which is your podcast stats. And we're gonna talk specifically about why the IAB certification that we have really matters. Yeah. Especially if you're looking to monetize or partner with sponsors or join a programmatic app platform, your numbers really need to be accurate and trusted. And we're also gonna talk about how Blueberry has been doing this for twenty years, since '20 or '2 since 2005.

0:46 Twenty o five. Twenty o five. You know? And we actually help develop the current standards, and we continue to offer reliable certified stats for every podcaster. 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 Woodbury Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. Yeah. Whatever, you know, if you're brand new to podcasting or already, in process and growing your audience, this info for every podcaster, should be known.

1:26 Let's get started. So, basically, the big headline here is why IAB certified stats matter and how Blueberry can make it easy for you. And, like I said, when it comes to podcast monetization, your download numbers aren't just bragging rights. They're how you prove your value to advertisers or networks or sponsors, and, you know, not all stats are created equal. Yeah. And something that we talk to customers a lot about or really just podcasters in general, like, later Jan this month in January, we're going to Podfest.

2:08 We talk about IAB certified podcast stats, and they are the industry standard. That that's that's something that we always push so that people know that they're dependable. So I guess we'll just talk a little bit about what the IAB is, which basically, I think I've got this right, essentially a strict transparent guideline for how podcast downloads should be measured. Yeah. With and what it is is it's a set of standards that were put out by the by the IAB, the Internet or interactive.

2:48 It used to be Internet Advertising Bureau, but now it's called Interactive Advertising Bureau. Slight name change. And I thought that. I thought that. Yeah. And what it does is it tells, you know, anybody that's gonna be reporting stats. So it could be podcast companies, could be big networks, NPR, you know, all that. Blueberry was the first podcast hosting company to have IAB certification, and a lot of it was because our development team, was highly involved in that committee and definitely steered a lot of it. But, basically, it gives you a clear view of real human listeners. It filters out bots. It filters out farms of, of iPhones downloading stuff to inflate stats. It catches things like that.

3:39 It makes sure that, you know, say, I listen to your show on Apple Podcasts, and I only listen to half of it. And then I come back, you know, four hours later and listen to the other half, that only counts as one instead of two because it's one human, not two. And, you know, yes, the the you know, we do filter out a lot of, quote, unquote, hits. But you don't want that information because here's the deal. You know? And and I don't know if we have this in our notes, but this is this is how I always frame it. Say you sell an ad to somebody. You know? You you go to Joe Blow's, ski shop, and you do an ad for their skis.

4:21 Okay? And you tell them I had a thousand downloads per episode, and your ad got to a thousand of my listeners, and nothing happens, they're gonna say this podcast stuff sucks or say they sell one thing off of your ad. Okay? But if you tell them the actual number, which is maybe a 150, and they sell one, well, hey. This is worth it. You know what I mean? It it you don't wanna have inflated stats. You want the stats to be real because, you know, the performance of the ad is not going to do well. You know, if you say, I got a million listeners and you've got a thousand, you know, the the the performance of that ad is gonna be a lot less based on that million than it is on the thousand.

5:13 Yeah. That's something that we've really tried to hit home with people because sometimes we'll have people come to us and go, well, my Apple dashboard says this, my Spotify dashboard says this, but Blueberry says this, and, you know, we are really giving you the most accurate data that you can have. Because while it would be good to tell people, yeah, I'm getting a thousand downloads per episode, Like, that that makes your ego feel good. Oh, yeah. But then when it comes to monetizing, you're gonna ruin your reputation, you know, just like Mike said. So Yeah. Famously, back in the days when we were doing this, you know, we're setting you know, doing the the standards with the IAB, you know, there was one company, and I will they they shall remain nameless that we're talking about impressions.

6:11 Well, impressions are the same as hits, and hits just mean somebody hit something on the Internet. Doesn't mean they did anything with it. Right. Whereas podcast analytics, and if it's done right to IAB standards, there is a more accurate way of knowing that somebody at least downloaded the thing. Now a lot of times, nobody can tell whether they actually listened to it, but at least it got downloaded in some significant way. The current standard is at least one full minute of audio needs to be downloaded before it counts as a possible download. But then it gets filtered against a bunch of other things, and, you know, that's, you know, techy geeky speak for these are a lot this is a lot more accurate.

7:00 Yes. It's gonna be lower than, you know, your web hits. You know? Another another famous one we get in support is, I've got 50,000 people following me on Facebook, and I posted that episode, and I only got 200 downloads. Well, that's about right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people don't click on everything you post on Facebook. You know? And even if they do, they click there, then what do they do? Do they hit play? A certain percentage don't. You know? Your your social media size versus your download size is not as related as you might think. Right. You know? Gosh. I don't I don't wanna be negative Nancy here, but We just got we gotta dispel some myths here. Yeah. I know. You know? But, you know I mean, we've been doing this for a long time. Like, stats was one of the first products that we put out there.

7:52 Am I right? Yeah. That was misinformed. That was the very first product that we put out, as a company. We started out as an ad agency for podcasters, and then all the advertisers said, hey. You know, how do we measure this crap? Oh, well, let's build that. And then later on, we decided, well, you know, this stat stuff's pretty cool, but we wanna do, you know, we wanna help podcasters make podcasts. So here we are. You know? And it's sort of rolled into that. But right early in 2005, we started, developing our stat system, and we've always been pretty close to what the IAB standards came up with. Mhmm. You know? And that wasn't until, I wanna say, 2009 when the first, first version of the, stats, thing at IAB. I have to look that up. I don't remember.

8:42 But I I know it was pretty early that, that first, set of standards came out, and it was a big deal at the time. Yeah. We've been doing this for a long time, and, you know, when when I've talked to people at events, I'm like, you know, you may not be happy with your stats, but at least they're honest, you know. And if something does seem, you know, off, Mike, myself, Sean, we'll we'll go in and we'll look, and then we'll talk to the dev team and just be like, does everything look good? Yeah. So we'll always find you an answer so that, you know, you we're trusted. Yeah. And that's the thing. You know, it's you've got somebody you can call, you know, if if you're confused about something and and all of that. But, again, you know, the stats are the stats. You know? Todd, our, our founder was very famous in saying, I don't care what the number is as long as it's the number.

9:40 Right. You know? We don't, you know, we don't wanna, you know, blow smoke up your skirt. You know? Say, hey. You're super successful, and, you know, yeah, you know, you get more stats on Blueberry. Well, that's not a good thing. Yeah. You know? And and we've had that conversation before, especially when SoundCloud was a big thing. You know, my SoundCloud stats say I I've gotten 8,000,000 downloads. They're only saying we got 46. Well, yeah, we're probably more accurate. Yeah. And we call it, I think, ugly baby talk. Right. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is just we wanna make sure that you understand that we are dependable and, that you're not gonna put yourself in a bad position when you're talking to, you know, sponsors or or whatever.

10:29 You know, you got a a reliable company to talk to. You can talk to me. You can talk to Mike. So, I guess we could kinda talk a little bit about, the fact that we do offer stats to literally everyone. Sure. So it doesn't matter where you're hosting your show. There are some podcast hosting companies that don't allow, third party statistics, but, for the most part Most. A good majority of them do. Yeah. Spotify for podcasters or whatever they're calling it this week, does not at this current point, but I, just had a email from somebody at Spotify asking about that. So that may be something that happens. So you know? But we do if you're if you're hosting with us, we do collect Spotify stats as well. Mhmm. So that works out pretty good. But, yeah, we have a free basic stats that kinda gives you just a snapshot of the last thirty days.

11:28 That's free to anybody whether you're hosting with us or not. You can do our standard stats for $5 a month or $50 a year. That's, you know, and that gives you a really good, snapshot, and those are IAB certified stats. So there's no you don't have to pay extra for that. And then any, any Blueberry hosting customer, gets either standard if you're on the lowest plan or any of the other plans. You get the, advanced stats that give you a little bit more information. But, every every plan is IB certified. Now, like I said, the free stats are just gonna give you a basic snapshot of what you're doing.

12:08 They're not gonna give you a lot of deep insights, unfortunately, but but this gives you a taste to how how things are going. Yeah. And with, like, the advanced statistics that you get when you're hosting with us, like, you can drill down into, like, metropolitan areas, in The US. I'm I'm hoping to see that happen more globally at some point. I think it just has to open up. That's that's my understanding based on what I've talked to the dev team about. Yeah. Because I'm like, there are people, that I talked to last year when I went to my first events, and they were like, well, you know, I do a podcast that's non English, and so a lot of my downloads actually come from outside The United States.

12:54 I would love to see those metropolitan numbers, and I was like, they're not there yet. Yeah. We go to the state province, whatever they call it, to level in certain countries. I think Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Canada, a few places like that. In The UK, we go to the city level or county level, I guess it is. Oh, that's new. I have seen that. Yeah. That's, yeah, because they don't you you'll notice in the stats. If you go to The UK one, it it doesn't have a map. So because they do it by I I I don't know how they break it out, but it seems to be counties or cities, in there.

13:35 You know, in The US, it's the the Nielsen Metropolitan Broadcast DMAs. Yeah. That's geeky, but basically a metro area. So and, yeah, and that gets pretty insightful, you know, inside The States. Again, you know, Canada and Mexico and Germany or and Brazil are state level or province, I guess, Canada calls them, provinces and territories. I got a weird system up there. But, yeah, at some at some point, we may be able to dig out a little deeper. Yeah. One thing that we don't have in our notes here, but something that just kinda came to mind to me, You know, I think at this point in time, statistics and monetization are very they go hand in hand. And technically, they always have. But one thing that you might wanna think about when it comes to your stats is when you're able to look at where your downloads are coming from, especially in the advanced plans that we have, that would actually be a really good way for you to consider, you know, what events should I show up to. If I'm going to do an event, would it be good to go out of state or find, you know, you know, a a city near me where I'm getting a lot of downloads and have an event there or participate in an event.

15:01 I had to think about that a couple of years ago when I was doing a show, because I got invited to go to an event. I ended up not. But, you know, it was really cool to be able to go, oh, this event's taking place in Louisiana. How many downloads are we getting in Louisiana? Are people actually gonna show up at this event to check out my show or, you know, me at a booth? So just something to to think about. Yeah. For sure. And and there's, you know, lots of other little insights you can get, you know, like with our retention graph. If you're hosting with us in non advanced stats, you get a retention graph. And what that retention graph will tell you is of the people that hit play on a page or within Spotify, oddly, and they say they say they listen to half of your show. Well, it's gonna show as a partial download, and it's gonna show that they dropped off at 50% of the show. So you can know, you know, if you if you notice like this show, I notice every time people get to 75%, and then they drop right off.

16:10 And that's because the end of our show is the same every time. You know? So we have this little you know? So they know when we're about to shut up, and then they, you know, forward to the next show. And that's there's nothing wrong with it. It was just we know that because of this pattern. And that's something good to know. You know? If if people are dropping off, you know, after 25%, well, they like the beginning of your show, and they don't like the rest of it, maybe. You know? Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. But, you know, that that give you an insight, say, hey. I need to either shorten the show up or I need to do something more compelling at the 25% level. Yeah. Yeah. You can re you can reference the the previous episode Mike and I did together where we talked about changing up your format. Yeah. You know? So all of these things are connected if if you think about it and if you're paying attention. Yeah. But but, yeah, stats are stats are super important, and not just to see how popular you are. Yeah. And, you know, and and there is some good thing. You know, it keeps you motivated too. You know, if you see that number creeping up, you know, it's not gonna grow like a hockey stick in most cases. You know? Right. But, you you know, if as long as you say, hey. I got 20 downloads this episode. Hey. I got 40 this next one. I got 48 the next one, and, you know, things are heading the right direction.

17:28 You know, you're doing something right. And it just takes time to, you know, to for you to get more known. And I say 45. That that'd be pathetic to a lot of people. But think about this. If you had 45 people in a room and you had to entertain them for an hour, does that seem like a small number? Right. You know, if you look at it that way, you know, you're entertaining people. You're right in their head. Most people are listening on earbuds or in their car, you know, stuff like that. You know? Think about that. You've got a crowd even if it's only 40. You know? Very true. So, anyway, something to something to think about. And, again, like I said, if you're serious about podcasting and monetizing, you do need stats, and ever you know, advertisers and networks will trust IAB certification stats. So it's not just, you know, it's not just ego like Dave said. You know, you you gotta show that to somebody to get a sponsor. You know? A lot of times. Now sometimes, you know, you can get sponsorships that aren't even tied to stats. That's happened too. But, this is this is just good social proof that, hey. I'm actually getting somewhere here.

18:42 Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So So, yeah, just just remember that, you know, we've we've been doing this. Blueberry has been doing this for twenty years, so we've got a lot of experience. So so don't forget that as as we kinda close down the episode. And, you know, if you're serious about growing your show or making money with it, you you kinda have to have IAB certified stats. There's really not any question about that. Yeah. And blueberry, you know, like it's like Dave said, a 100 we say this all the time, two decades of experience. Come on. We got that written in the notes a lot here.

19:25 Anyway, whether yours are, free, standard or advanced stats, with hosting, you're backed up by industry trusted IAB certificate certificated Certified? Yeah. Whatever. Certified. You got it. Yeah. English optional. You know, think about this. We go through an audit every two years where they go through every line of code. The IAB tech committee goes through every little line of code, and believe it or not, our, our, dev team, you know, really has to jump through a lot of hoops to make them happy. So we we do that every two years. Anyway, let's finish this off.

20:08 Yeah. If you wanna learn more about our stats, go over to blueberry.com/statistics. That should be a shortcut that takes you, right to our stats page. But if not, you'll find it in the navigation. And if you have any questions, just reach out to the support team. That's me, Mike, Sean, and, you know, we're just a email or a phone call away. Alright. Well, thanks for joining us here on Podcast Insider. We'll catch you next week. And always, keep podcasting. 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 at podcastinsider.com. To check out our latest suite of services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com.

20:54 That's Blueberry without the e's.