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My synopsis: 1. The Apple Podcast app has been updated to longer automatically download episodes of a show if the listener has stopped listening to the show.
by jononomo 3y ago
My synopsis:
1. The Apple Podcast app has been updated to longer automatically download episodes of a show if the listener has stopped listening to the show.
2. This has resulted in the "download count" metric crashing for several high profile podcasts the publish frequently -- The Daily from NYTimes is mentioned.
3. This lowers advertising rates and is basically bad for the publishers of those podcasts -- the "download count" for some shows has fallen by 40%.
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Now to me this seems like an obviously good move because podcast episodes can be long and can eat up a lot of space on a device -- especially if they are never played, meaning that they never have the "delete after being played" opportunity.
Also, advertisers obviously care about how many people hear their advertisements, not how many people download the podcast episode, so the fact that advertisers even have to consider the "download count" metric at all means they are operating with inferior information.
Even when I do play a podcast that I have downloaded, I often skip the advertisements because it is so easy to hit the fast-forward-30-seconds button a few times.
But I have been assuming that podcast apps collect information about whether or not a podcast episode is ever played, and also on what parts of the episode the user rewinds or skips, and so forth.
For instance, it would be valuable information to know that of the listeners who actually download and start playing and listening to a certain 2-hour-long podcast episode, 99.4% quit listening within the first ten minutes.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago> But I have been assuming that podcast apps collect information about whether or not a podcast episode is ever played, and also on what parts of the episode the user rewinds or skips, and so forth. Why would you assume this? (Most) podcasts are RSS feeds. You can use any app to listen to them. You can even write your own app to listen to them. Why would you intentionally pick an RSS reader that told some rando everything you listened to?
- shiroiuma 3y agoThat's what people do with YouTube; why wouldn't they do it with podcasts?
- LeafItAlone 3y agoBecause: 1. It comes preinstalled and is the default podcasts app 2. It works pretty well 3. People don’t care 4. The “told some rando” is basically the default with mass-market technology 5. That’s kind of how web ads work
- nox101 3y agoI don't use the apple podcast app but I can verify I subscribe to 3-4 podcasts I rarely listen to. One is a news discussion podcast. Every episode is 1hour they post 7 days a week. Another is Escape Pod (scifi stories). I love but I rarely listen. There's probably over 100 back episodes on my app. There's also a few music podcasts that update 1-3 times a weeks each. Once in a while I'll play a few but never enough to catch up with what I've downloaded. I suppose I should turn them off but I'm always thinking I might listen
- diebeforei485 3y ago> One is a news discussion podcast. Every episode is 1hour they post 7 days a week. There isn't enough happening to fit 7 hours of news every week.
- brazzy 3y agoBut it's a news discussion podcast, and you can discuss nearly any topic for a nearly unlimited time.
- theshrike79 3y ago> Even when I do play a podcast that I have downloaded, I often skip the advertisements because it is so easy to hit the fast-forward-30-seconds button a few times. The best thing is that ad segments are _always_ multiples of 30 seconds, so it's really easy to skip them :D Overcast even has a "skip intro" option for podcasts that have a regular ad of the same length in the beginning every time.
- nmz 3y agoIt is their own fault as well, I for one have not skipped a single ad from Conan O'Brien needs a friend. That's how good the ad-reads are.
- TMWNN 3y ago>2. This has resulted in the "download count" metric crashing for several high profile podcasts the publish frequently -- The Daily from NYTimes is mentioned. >3. This lowers advertising rates and is basically bad for the publishers of those podcasts -- the "download count" for some shows has fallen by 40%. As I understand it, when YouTube about a decade ago started using more accurate metrics, it turned out that the viewership for some very prominent corporate channels was way overinflated. This is why The Onion, CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die all suddenly vanished. (And probably also why QCode has become way, way less active on producing new podcasts, or delivering on its goal of turning podcasts that hit it big into film/TV projects.)
- kalleboo 3y ago> CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die I was under the impression that these two died due to Facebook. Facebook massively inflated video views (a video playing for 3 seconds without sound as it scrolled past in your feed counted as a view), these companies believed the bigger numbers on Facebook, so they heavily pivoted into Facebook videos over YouTube, with no monetization strategy, completely cratering in the process. This is corroborated by someone who worked at CollegeHumor. https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/ https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/
- TMWNN 3y agoI was thinking of Facebook, not YouTube. Thank you for the correction and the cite.