5 ms·

As an avid podcast listener, and a recent attendee to the podcast festival in LA, I think this article has several flaws. 1. It never mentions gambling or fant

As an avid podcast listener, and a recent attendee to the podcast festival in LA, I think this article has several flaws. 1. It never mentions gambling or fantasy sports, which makes me suspect it’s a native ad for the NBA. I bet that a good percentage of the 745 Patreons are really into gambling on the NBA, in some form — how could the article not mention that!? https://www.patreon.com/DuncanLeroux https://www.patreon.com/DuncanLeroux 2. It starts off with some headline listener stats (e.g. “hundreds of thousands of listeners”) and later admits the hard truth that listener stats are not reliable. You only know if people have downloaded a podcast — not if they listened. 3. It perpetuates the myth that Serial is the most successful podcast. I also used to believe that, until I learned otherwise at the LA Podcast Festival. 4. It mentions, but doesn’t properly emphasize, that the $7 Patreons get to download a spreadsheet (which, again, they probably use for gambling). So, really, these guys are both podcasters and data providers. The podcast is how they market their data service. 5. It classifies them as a financial success, without saying how much they make. We know they get about $5,400 per month from Patreon (split 2 ways). I’m not sure how much they earn from Blue Apron, etc. I know $2,700/month doesn’t go too far in San Francisco. Also, they don’t divide $2,700 by the number of hours they spend watching NBA games, compiling their data spreadsheet, and producing the podcast. 6. Gives the obligatory main stream media reference to Gimlet Media, calling it “successful.” Does Gimlet make money? How much? How much does Gimlet pay its employees? 7. The headline is unnecessarily snarky, implying that podcast listeners are looking for vanilla, short, mainstream content. In reality, niches are the biggest areas for opportunity in podcasting. The headline should not start with “Even This...”

lghh 9y ago
Now I realize that I'm not necessarily the norm, but I'm a long time listener and subscriber to this podcast and a Patreon donor and I don't gamble. I just really like basketball and really like their content. Also, Danny writes for a few different places pretty regularly and has a book out, so I'm sure he's doing okay from that. He's also the host of a RealGM podcast. Nate is the actual host of the podcast and not every single episode includes Danny (though 95% do) so there's a chance it's not an even split.
- ccorda 9y ago
  I can’t recall the pod ever talking about gambling lines, or fantasy value. Not to say listeners don’t use the info for those purposes, but it’s not a value proposition they even hint at IMO.
  - lghh 9y ago
    And covering games after they happen really doesn't help at all for fantasy. I just think the top comment is making assumptions without understanding the landscape.
- retsibsi 9y ago
  > so there's a chance it's not an even split The Patreon page says that "we are each taking home half of what we bring in". In context that could be limited to the Patreon subscriptions, but it seems to indicate a 50/50 split of all revenue.
NHQ 9y ago
What did you learn about #3 Serial vs ??? at LA Podcast Fest?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SyneRyder 9y ago
You can do some quick estimates of ad revenue. (TLDR: their ad revenue likely crushes their Patreon by at least 5x.) The article says they get between 50,000 and 140,000 listeners per episode. They publish 5 shows a week. Episodes start with a 10 second pre-roll, 90 second mid-episode, and 30 second post-roll. The rates calculator at AdvertiseCast [1] suggest industry averages of $6/CPM for the pre-roll, $15/CPM for the mid-episode ad, and $11/CPM for the post-roll. That's $32/CPM total, or $1600 ad revenue. 20 episodes a month at $1600 per episode gets you $32,000/mth in ad revenue. [1] https://www.advertisecast.com/podcast-advertising-rates https://www.advertisecast.com/podcast-advertising-rates Edit: As a bonus, the Entrepreneur On Fire podcast has some similar math about CPM rates for their show, with the hint "now you can see why I love doing a daily show": https://www.eofire.com/podcast-sponsorships/ https://www.eofire.com/podcast-sponsorships/
- dogruck 9y ago
  How do you get listener stats for a podcast?
  - eropple 9y ago
    You can't, but obviously the podcast can, and a major reason why podcasters use third-party sites for hosting (podbean, etc.) is because advertisers trust their metrics. If you share your podbean/libsyn/whatever data with an advertiser, it's more well-regarded than "well, we pulled this out of our butts". The downloads-to-listens ratio is, of course, largely bullshit in one direction or another.
    - SyneRyder 9y ago
      On the downloads-to-listens, Apple is apparently working on that metric for people using their Podcasts app (announced at WWDC 2017). They're considering per-minute tracking, so podcasters can measure if people are skipping over ads, and what percentage of listeners finish the podcast. (If only 50% of listeners finish an episode, then an ad placed at the start will be worth more than one at the end.) https://www.recode.net/2017/6/10/15774936/apple-podcast-analytics-wwdc https://www.recode.net/2017/6/10/15774936/apple-podcast-anal... For other metrics, some podcasts take listener surveys, like the annual TWIT Audience Survey: https://twit.tv/survey https://twit.tv/survey
FireBeyond 9y ago
I think the challenge to your comments, which are well thought out, is that in the admittedly few (10 or so?) episodes of this, the amount of discussion of "games coming up" is approaching none. It's all reviews of games. Now, certainly, people have memories and pay attention and start to draw their own inferences, but I think the target market feels more like "Basketball Nerds" than gamblers or fantasy players. Is there a benefit to the latter two to listen to this podcast? Undoubtedly. But I just don't "feel" (yes, subjective) like that's the push they're making.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Yeah, sounds like I was wrong about an association between this podcast and gambling.
PascLeRasc 9y ago
So have you ever been to the LA Podcast Festival?

lghh 9y ago

Now I realize that I'm not necessarily the norm, but I'm a long time listener and subscriber to this podcast and a Patreon donor and I don't gamble. I just really like basketball and really like their content. Also, Danny writes for a few different places pretty regularly and has a book out, so I'm sure he's doing okay from that. He's also the host of a RealGM podcast. Nate is the actual host of the podcast and not every single episode includes Danny (though 95% do) so there's a chance it's not an even split.

ccorda 9y ago
I can’t recall the pod ever talking about gambling lines, or fantasy value. Not to say listeners don’t use the info for those purposes, but it’s not a value proposition they even hint at IMO.
- lghh 9y ago
  And covering games after they happen really doesn't help at all for fantasy. I just think the top comment is making assumptions without understanding the landscape.
retsibsi 9y ago
> so there's a chance it's not an even split The Patreon page says that "we are each taking home half of what we bring in". In context that could be limited to the Patreon subscriptions, but it seems to indicate a 50/50 split of all revenue.

NHQ 9y ago

What did you learn about #3 Serial vs ??? at LA Podcast Fest?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

SyneRyder 9y ago

You can do some quick estimates of ad revenue. (TLDR: their ad revenue likely crushes their Patreon by at least 5x.) The article says they get between 50,000 and 140,000 listeners per episode. They publish 5 shows a week. Episodes start with a 10 second pre-roll, 90 second mid-episode, and 30 second post-roll. The rates calculator at AdvertiseCast [1] suggest industry averages of $6/CPM for the pre-roll, $15/CPM for the mid-episode ad, and $11/CPM for the post-roll. That's $32/CPM total, or $1600 ad revenue. 20 episodes a month at $1600 per episode gets you $32,000/mth in ad revenue. [1] https://www.advertisecast.com/podcast-advertising-rates https://www.advertisecast.com/podcast-advertising-rates Edit: As a bonus, the Entrepreneur On Fire podcast has some similar math about CPM rates for their show, with the hint "now you can see why I love doing a daily show": https://www.eofire.com/podcast-sponsorships/ https://www.eofire.com/podcast-sponsorships/

dogruck 9y ago
How do you get listener stats for a podcast?
- eropple 9y ago
  You can't, but obviously the podcast can, and a major reason why podcasters use third-party sites for hosting (podbean, etc.) is because advertisers trust their metrics. If you share your podbean/libsyn/whatever data with an advertiser, it's more well-regarded than "well, we pulled this out of our butts". The downloads-to-listens ratio is, of course, largely bullshit in one direction or another.
  - SyneRyder 9y ago
    On the downloads-to-listens, Apple is apparently working on that metric for people using their Podcasts app (announced at WWDC 2017). They're considering per-minute tracking, so podcasters can measure if people are skipping over ads, and what percentage of listeners finish the podcast. (If only 50% of listeners finish an episode, then an ad placed at the start will be worth more than one at the end.) https://www.recode.net/2017/6/10/15774936/apple-podcast-analytics-wwdc https://www.recode.net/2017/6/10/15774936/apple-podcast-anal... For other metrics, some podcasts take listener surveys, like the annual TWIT Audience Survey: https://twit.tv/survey https://twit.tv/survey

FireBeyond 9y ago

I think the challenge to your comments, which are well thought out, is that in the admittedly few (10 or so?) episodes of this, the amount of discussion of "games coming up" is approaching none. It's all reviews of games. Now, certainly, people have memories and pay attention and start to draw their own inferences, but I think the target market feels more like "Basketball Nerds" than gamblers or fantasy players. Is there a benefit to the latter two to listen to this podcast? Undoubtedly. But I just don't "feel" (yes, subjective) like that's the push they're making.

dogruck 9y ago
Yeah, sounds like I was wrong about an association between this podcast and gambling.

PascLeRasc 9y ago

So have you ever been to the LA Podcast Festival?