A Tool to Tally Podcast Listeners

Carl Bialik writes "The company Audible is making an effort to measure podcast audience, which could make the audio shows more attractive to advertisers. From the article: 'Currently in podcasts, "there's no measurability," says Matt Feinberg, a senior vice president for radio at Publicis Groupe SA's ZenithOptimedia. Advertisers have no idea if people are actually listening to podcasts, or if they're just downloading them and never playing them back, so there's no guidance for pricing the accompanying ads. "Prices -- people have been making them up," he says.' The service will cost podcasters: 'The company will charge three cents per downloaded podcast to report whether a downloader listened, and for how long. Audible will also offer tools that will stop the podcast from being emailed to others. It will charge five cents per download to track listening and attach the access restrictions. For half a cent per download, Audible will insert an ad relevant to the podcast.'"

Comments

And for zero cents,

[n0dalus]

I will simply not download that podcast. I have better things to do with my time than listen to DRM'd podcasts, and I'll let the podcaster know that.

Re:And for zero cents,

[forkazoo]

With this as DRM'd as it apparently is, can you even listen to these podcasts on your iPod? That would sort of be important to a lot of people. Podcasts often make a good substitute for radio while you are out and about. You can catch up on the world of romanian pink dog wrestling while you do your grocery shopping, with any normal MP3 player. If you have to actually sit in front of your computer, you naturally have access to other forms of entertainment, so This Week In Romanian Pink Dog Wrestling (With Yanoush and Steve) suddenly seems less compelling.

Re:And for zero cents,

[shbazjinkens]

Why is everyone referring to this as digital rights management? This isn't here to stop you from illegally downloading podcasts, but to monitor when and for how long you listen to them. That would be spyware.

mental waste companies

[Device666]

Advertisers have no idea if people are actually listening to podcasts, or if they're just downloading them and never playing them back, so there's no guidance for pricing the accompanying ads. "Prices -- people have been making them up," he says.' Let's keep it that way. Now the advertizers know how to feel how it is to be cheated. Please.. Why not just podcasting for the joy of it.. Keep yous shows real and ban out all the advertisement and privacy problem shit. Lets keep up raising the prices for advertisers-> the more we will actually hear and see what we really want to hear and see. This message was sponsered by The Dump-Mental-Waste Company.. Please see our website at http://www.microsoft.com/

won't fly

[snappy316]

im sorry, thats a dumb idea. i really dont feel like being "watched" as to which podcasts i listen to and which ones i dont. and who wants to pay?

i just dont see the draw to this...if there is one, someone point it out to me please.

iDogs Aplenty

[sunoxen]

I'm a podcaster, and this model is not only DRm'ed, it's also behind closed doors, and not open.

Feedburner seems to have a better tack on it, as it can reliably provide stats for free. Audible's model is a little scummy on the skim job. Feedburner coudl be the source for reliable stats for advertisers in the future.

As for revenue, I think that people are turned off by ads, but that seems to be where everyone is turning. It seems that listeners support is better, as if people like what you are doing, they might be willing to give you a couple of bucks a month via a Paypal subscribe.

The whole podcast expo seemed to be about how to sell Preparation H and iDogs in your podcast. If you feel people want to listen to that, go ahead, but podcasting's success is based largely around non-commercial radio and niche.

If there could be a non-annoying way to advertise, fine. But it seems that a ton of people are going to be begging for corporate dough, and wondering why no one is listening to their show anymore, as it has been changed to the Fibercon iDog Gizmondo Hour, fueled by Dew.

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http://www.75minutes.com/

Re:Why. (RTFA)

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

Because podcast clients automatically download content and the user may not actually listen to it.

Turn in your Geek Badge.

[chris_mahan]

Carl, turn in your geek badge.

Podcasting is for people who do not want commercials.

If commercials are put on podcasts, guess what's going to happen to podcasting.

a better, free idea

[gcnaddict]

"'The company will charge three cents per downloaded podcast to report whether a downloader listened, and for how long.'"


I have a better idea

How about this: podcast makers tag their podcasts with a special "podcast" mp3 tag (what were they called again? ID3 tags?) which have the podcast site and date. The software which transfers these things to mp3 players then report this data to a central site (heck, apple.com or microsoft.com is fine :P) which processes the data and reports which podcasts had the most listeners/viewers (video podcasts) and which site has the most popular podcasts. The media access control address (MAC address) of the computer would be attached to every filed report so that the site can discard it if the MAC address already downloaded a certain podcast onto their ipod, thus not allowing for duplicates.

of course, everything would need to adopt this format, even explorer.exe if the mp3 player does drag and drop :-/

hmm, maybe a firmware update can allow mp3 players to report the stats while theyre plugged in...

Just track downloads?

[FuryG3]

While it's true that some podcast client software just keeps downloading stuff you've pre-selected, I'd say that tracking the downloads of the files themselves is a pretty good way of estimating how many times something is listened to.

Not to mention, podcasters have a whole lot more statistics than, say, radio broadcasters do. This can even include a profile of the user based on all of the different podcasts he/she is subscribed to.

I interpreted this announcement as "Hey, instead of free and open podcasts, how about PAYING money for DRMed podcasts so that we can add ADVERTISEMENTS to them!"

Thanks, but no thanks.

Podcasts or Blogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder whether fewer people read blogs or listen to podcasts? Both are hyper self-indulgent mediums for whiny, self-absorbed adolescents who actually seem to think that people besides themselves care what they are saying. And both are almost entirely wasted bandwidth.

How would this be done, exactly?

[Ciaran_H]

So, let me get this straight.

These guys want to measure how often people listen to podcasts.

Podcasts. As in, things you listen to on an iPod, or other mobile music player.

Can these things even connect to the Internet at the moment?