Image source: Casey Fiesler via Wikimedia Commons
Podcasters, advertisers and marketers will gain more data and greater insight about listeners in Apple’s new podcast analytics.
Apple’s podcast app is the most common venue for listening to the online audio programs. An upcoming version of the app will reveal when listeners play individual episodes, what sections they listen to and what parts they skip. Podcasters and media observers say the impact will be enormous.
Podcasters have asked for that kind of data for years. Until now, Apple has provided little data other than what podcasts listeners download. Some podcasters may be nervous about what they may learn.
Is Anyone Listening?
Podcasters will be able to know if people listen to the entire program or turn it off after the first few minutes. Advertisers will know how many listeners skip though their ads. Depending on what they learn, that could be either disastrous or beneficial for podcasters.
“In the long run, of course, more data is better: You’d rather make — and pay for — stuff people want to consume. And knowing how they consume it gives you the ability to make more of it,” comments Peter Kafka, senior editor at Recode.
PR and marketing pros will likewise obtain useful information. Brands that produce their own programs will be able to better ascertain their effectiveness and find how many listeners heard the brand’s key PR and marketing messages.
Apple will provide aggregated data, not information related to individual users, mainly due to privacy concerns, Kafka notes. That means podcasters or advertising won’t be able to create programs or ads targeted to particular listener groups.
An Inflection Point for Podcasting
“It’s an inflection point for the industry,” Matthew Lieber, co-founder of podcast studio Gimlet Media, told Wired. “This is the first time that producers and publishers are going to be able to see how audiences are actually responding to their shows.”
Nearly 80 percent of all podcast consumption happened on Apple devices in 2015, Wired reports, citing research by Clammr. Google Play, Amazon’s Echo devices and others are beginning to challenge Apple’s dominance.
The addition of more analytics is especially important since podcasts are becoming more popular and moving into the mainstream. Bridge Ratings Media Research calls 2017 the breakthrough year for the audio programs.
Moving into the Mainstream
More than a third of all Americans will listen to podcasts on a monthly basis by the end of this year, up from 20 percent last year, according to its forecasts.
James Boggs, an Apple business manager who works on its podcast team, mentioned the new features at a session at Apple’s WWDC developer conference. The company will release more information later this year, he said. Other revisions to the Podcasts app in the iOS 11 include new interface as well as some changes to how podcasts can be structured.
Bottom Line: New analytics from Apple will be a boon for podcasters, advertisers and marketers. For the first time, analytics will reveal how many people listen to — or don’t listen to – entire programs or specific sections of the podcasts. Brands will be able to gauge the effectiveness of podcasts they produce or sponsor.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
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