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.
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.
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.
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
IAB, the Internet or interactive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's Blueberry without the e's.