160 | Is Your Podcast Really as Popular as You Think It Is? Rob Walch of Libsyn Helps Us Separate Hype from Reality

[00:00:00] Have you ever seen any of those podcast promoters on social media? Of course you have, we all have. The question is, have you ever taken up on their offer? Well today I'm going to tell you why that

[00:00:12] is not a good idea and how the rest of us can find out if you did. Sound Matters Be Heard Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind-the-scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio.

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[00:01:47] you get 15% off your subscription. Don't wait. Head over to Riverside.fm today and create something spectacular. Have you ever been on social media? Perhaps maybe you follow a few other podcasters or a few other content creators. It could be YouTubers or whatever they are. And you see them

[00:02:09] post these amazing accomplishments. They'll say something like, we just hit our first 10,000 downloads or 100,000 downloads or a million downloads. We just hit our first 50,000 subscribers on YouTube and you're like, wow that is amazing. Congratulations. I always say congratulations.

[00:02:26] That's quite an accomplishment. Then you kind of wonder and you look into their show and you look at their show and you listen to their show or maybe even watch their thing on YouTube

[00:02:36] and you see it and you're like, wait a second. This stuff, this content is getting 50,000 views. This thing right here, this hot garbage I'm watching right now, you're trying to tell me this thing is worth 50 to 100,000 subscribers? No way. And then perhaps maybe you look at

[00:02:57] your own content. You look at your own show and you wonder what am I doing wrong that they're doing so right? Well, maybe didn't ever occur to you that all of their followers

[00:03:09] and all of their subscribers and all of their views could possibly be fake. What? Yeah, I know. That's crazy, right? So today I have Rob Waltz, the VP of podcaster relations at Libsyn. He

[00:03:25] dives deep into this stuff, figuring out which shows are really telling the truth about their stats and how you can tell which ones are really not. So the first thing I want to know is what is

[00:03:38] podcast fraud and how long has it been happening? Okay, so first off, I want to say this, this is not something new. Right? There have been people that have been lying about their numbers

[00:03:50] forever. When I started at Libsyn, just to put it in perspective, I started in August of 2007. So we're talking 17 years ago, I started at Libsyn. And the thing I did on the very first day on the

[00:04:05] job was I said to Dave, I'm in suede, I'll go Dave, how do I get access to look at a show's stats? There's this one show I want to check out that Libsyn hosts and this guy is running around

[00:04:15] saying he gets 60,000 downloads an episode. And this guy shows horrible. There's no way in mind, this is 2007. And I went and I looked and his best episode ever was 600. Wow. Right. That's a far off from 60. Yeah. Yeah. And most of his episodes were well below 500.

[00:04:36] It's just that people exaggerate tell falsehoods. Now, if you're going around saying I caught a fish that's 12 foot long and you're telling it to your buddies at the bar, it's no, it doesn't hurt anybody. But when you start getting bogus numbers that you're presenting

[00:04:54] to advertisers and sponsors, it hurts everyone. Lying about your numbers to advertisers is the same as shoplifting. It hurts the other consumers that have to pay a higher price for the goods when they go to the store to cover the shoplifting. It's the same thing here

[00:05:12] except of the opposite direction. The more people lie about their numbers to advertisers to lower the CPM rates are and that's stealing money from other podcasters who are doing it legitimately.

[00:05:22] So I want to put it from that perspective when we think about this, like, oh, what's the big deal? Someone's bow, get, you know, hiring this service that inflates their numbers. Well, if you plan to monetize via advertising, they are taking money out of your pocket.

[00:05:37] Right. So the CPM rate, what do you think it is? I know it fluctuates a little bit. What's like the average CPM rate? Yeah, we report that at Lipson, Lipson ads team. And in the average CPM rate right now is around $22, $23. So for a host read,

[00:05:58] 60 second ad, that's $22 for every thousand downloads. So CPM is cost per thousand and being milli. Right. So if a podcaster were to inflate those numbers, you know, 10 times or even more than that, then essentially they're lying to the sponsor advertiser that my numbers are bigger than I

[00:06:23] really, than they really are. So that CPM rate, if it's per thousand, they got multiple thousands when really it should only be a lot less than that. Right. And there's different ways that people do this. There's different services that they hire. There is the one that Ashley

[00:06:38] Carmen called out where it's loot coin marketing basically, where people pay to get promotion in apps. So like if you're playing like Candy Crush or Watermelon, the Watermelon game which my wife

[00:06:53] likes, you have to shake it. You can unlock this shake feature and to do that you click on it and you go and it takes you off and you watch an ad or see an ad or in some cases hear a podcast.

[00:07:05] And that is a direct link to the media file and it is total BS on the numbers. And we've seen people that have hired these services that quote will instantly grow your show. And what happens is they're directly marketing the episode URL. And once that service is turned

[00:07:24] off, the audience goes right back to where they were before. In some cases even lower. So we can see in our stats like all sudden the show was doing 500 downloads an episode and all sudden the next episode it's at 50,000 or you know, or even more in some cases.

[00:07:45] We call it the hockey stick. And if we see your numbers hockey stick up, we know something's not right. And then we go and look at the user agents and we look at the geographic regions where the downloads are coming from. There's so many little things that

[00:07:59] we can look at for red flags to see if it's bogus where I saw one recently where South Carolina was 22,000 downloads for the show. But North Carolina they only had six. Interesting. For the whole, you know, for that episode I'm like, yeah, what's the chances of that?

[00:08:20] You know, so there's definitely ways for us to tell and look at. And my job at Lipson is when I come across one of these shows is to have your baby's ugly conversation. Oh, how does that go?

[00:08:33] Oh, you know, I mentioned this to you in the green room or the prep before the show that there's two kinds of people, the podcasters that are having these services, those that know their bogus when they signed up for them and those that think they are actually buying

[00:08:50] a service that's actually legitimately growing the show. And when I talk to the folks that didn't know it, didn't realize they were being scammed, they usually are mad at the people that they paid. Of course. Yeah. It's like buying snake oil or whatever, you know?

[00:09:08] Right. But when I tell the person that knew it was bogus and they get mad at me, you know, that's validation that they knew it was bogus from day one. If they get mad at me when I deliver the news, I almost always know that they're guilty.

[00:09:22] Now, have you ever had to pull a show off Lipson, cut it off because of these numbers? Absolutely. I did one last week. So, okay. So if a show comes up and then you obviously can spot that they're faking their

[00:09:36] numbers and they say they want advertising and they argue with you about it, you have the authority to get rid of them? Yeah. No way. I turn off the ads. Normally we won't boot them off the service,

[00:09:48] but what we'll do is we'll boot them off any monetization options. Okay. I'll put a thing in the system. In almost all of those cases, the people move off on

[00:09:58] their own, right? Because they may move a lot of times they move over to be on our auto ads and we see it. And when that happens, by the way, we don't pay them. Anything that's

[00:10:07] outstanding, we don't pay them because we put that aside and they pay back to advertisers that got ripped off. No way. Yeah. So when that happened recently with the show, there was a couple thousand dollars worth of revenue they're not going to get paid for.

[00:10:24] No way. Because it was completely bogus. So I was just wondering what does it cost? I have no idea. I've never explored this option. What does it cost to get these places to pay? You pay them to give you big numbers.

[00:10:36] What does it cost for that? I mean, how does it... It's all over the place. Okay. There really is all over the place. There's some services that will charge multiple thousand per month. There's some that are over 10, 15,000. Some less. There's some that will say we guarantee

[00:10:52] you. I mean, I saw one that literally said guaranteed 6 million downloads for the year for $3,299. Wow. But okay. So how does it actually work? When you pay them and they actually give you... How does these... Where do these numbers come from? They've got to come from

[00:11:09] somewhere. Well, a lot of it's bots. They're running bots or if anyone ever watched the television show Silicon Valley, there was a scene where they had all... They had... Where they were buying traffic out of Southeast Asia and it has all these computers and

[00:11:24] server acts. And that's how some of them work. Early on, some of them, we knew the ones who were coming in because they were coming in as iTunes downloads. Well, guess what? Nobody uses iTunes. When iTunes is number one, it means it's probably from a

[00:11:37] Windows server. And did you also say if you see something from an actual web based like a Chrome or something like that? Chrome, browser, Firefox and any browser-based ones, those are red flags. So if the top four of your... Four of your top five user agents are browsers,

[00:11:55] it's not a legitimate audience. Matter of fact, if more than one of your top five user agents is a browser, it's not a legitimate audience. Interesting. If Apple podcast and Spotify aren't number one and two in your user agents, that's usually a good indication something's bogus

[00:12:14] going on. But then again, some of these services will then go ahead and spoof Apple podcast or Spotify as the user agent. No way. Yes. No way. But then when we dig in, there's ways to

[00:12:28] tell on that as well. I won't get into some... I don't want to give away too many secrets. But we have ways of knowing even when that spoofing is going on and again, looking at

[00:12:39] geography and other things, when you combine it, you don't just look at one thing. You look at multiple things. And part of that's the history of a show. When you say history, what do you

[00:12:49] mean? Like how? How the show did long term, right? If a show is with us for, now, say 15 years and the most downloads they ever got in a month was 10,000, but they signed up for

[00:13:03] Auto Ads. And now all of a sudden two months later, they're getting 150,000 or 200,000 downloads in a month. Yeah. I don't think ads brings in the audience. I think it's that way around.

[00:13:15] Yeah. That's exactly the point. And so we look at those things. And part of my job again is looking at the ones that are in Auto Ads and making sure that we're vetting out people. And for

[00:13:26] HostRed Ads as well, making sure we're vetting out folks that audience something's wrong, whether something wrong. It goes with any industry really. If there's a way to spoof the system, there's always going to be somebody trying to do it. Absolutely. And I think it goes with...

[00:13:41] Not just with podcasting, I think it goes beyond that. You got Instagram followers. That's a big one I hear about. And social media stuff. And of course, with YouTube, because YouTube, I think some of the same things happen with YouTube followers and subscribers. Do these...

[00:13:58] Some of the same tools or techniques to get more listeners? Yeah, some of them are. And in a matter of fact, the one guy that I... Last week that I had kicked off, he was one of those ones

[00:14:07] that didn't know. He thought he was getting a legitimate service. It was a new service I hadn't heard of. And he gave me the name of it. And I went and looked at what they were

[00:14:15] doing. But he legitimately thought that it was growing his audience. And boom, it was turned... It was turned off and immediately his audience went to nothing, back to where it was beforehand. And everybody wants this magic silver bullet that's going to grow your show. And the reality

[00:14:37] is this, there is none. So just if you're listening right now and someone comes to you and approaches you and says, hey, we've got this marketing service that guaranteed to grow downloads. It's BS. It's just BS. There is none. None of them work. Here's what works.

[00:14:55] Advertising your podcast on other podcasts. Advertising your podcast on Banners inside Overcast app or Pocketcast or Cast Box. Where podcast listeners live and advertising in your genre. And then again, advertising your podcast on other podcasts in your genre. Those are proven

[00:15:17] marketing methods that work. They're not instant either. It takes some time to ramp up when you use those services. But anything that is promising instant on for growth is BS. And anything that

[00:15:31] promotes or markets the direct media file is BS as well. What do you mean by that? There's some services out there like we mentioned the loot coin one where you got to listen to

[00:15:45] part of a podcast to get coins or unlock a feature. Yeah. Right. First off, anybody that's playing a game that has to go and go listen to your podcast is not going to become a listener

[00:15:56] of your podcast. They're actually going to be annoyed by your podcast. Of course. That they had to spend 30 seconds listening to something about bird and beekeeping when they have no interest in beekeeping. And they had to listen to that for 30 seconds or 60 seconds

[00:16:10] so that they can then go back to their game and play that they're addicted to and get a more another endorphine hit. Right. You cost them time on their endorphine addiction.

[00:16:22] So I look at it that not only don't they work long term probably a net sum negative. Now, if you do hire a service that is going to promote your podcast, don't ever let them promote the direct media file URL. Have them promote a trailer.

[00:16:43] When movies go out and they advertise on television for a movie coming up, they don't play the first 30 seconds of the movie. Yeah. They have a trailer put together that gets you excited about what that movie is about. The same thing should be done when

[00:17:03] you're market your podcast, market a trailer for your podcast, not a direct URL and not a trailer that has ads being in stitching. That's the other thing. If you're directly marketing an episode that has ad stitching in and you know it's bogus, that's called fraud.

[00:17:19] Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, a lot of fraudsters out there. Let me tell you, I see it a lot and it frustrates me to death because I'd see some shows that are just struggling to get attraction going

[00:17:31] and I see some other shows that literally like really your shows, your claim your show has got 300,000 downloads this year. Really? But your ads, I mean titles are horrible and your show

[00:17:40] notes are awful and you don't, I mean, it just kind of blows me away. But I think that I think it's just a big popularity contest with all these guys and I'm sorry to say they want

[00:17:50] to try to get money out of it and it sucks. It sucks for the whole industry. And again, that's where I came back to all of these services. They're not just ripping off the podcasters,

[00:18:02] they're ripping off every podcaster because each one of these people that they sign up that is in an ad campaign somewhere is taking money out of your pocket. Yeah, yeah. If you're taking, if you're advertising because it's bringing the ROI down and lower ROI means lower CPMs for

[00:18:23] the podcast space overall. Now have you had any advertisers pull out directly because they see that like, oh, we're not getting physical sales from our thing. This podcast or claims to 100,000 downloads an episode. I mean, you should see some sales out of this. Why were we seeing

[00:18:40] these sales? Well, we will hear that from advertisers from time to time like, hey, this show is not converting. Is everything okay? And we go and look at that. Have I had any advertisers that have

[00:18:50] got out of podcasting specifically? Not that we've dealt with, but I do have a story about one where they had been out and this is back in the days before the IAB had certification for numbers,

[00:19:06] which now at least numbers are, again, if the hosting company is IAB certified, the numbers are believable. Again, if the person's not doing anything illegitimate. And I got a call one day from an advertiser and they wanted to advertise on Hardcore

[00:19:23] History podcast and they wanted to advertise in the next month or two. And Dan's episode was already sold out, so we couldn't get him on that show. And I said to the advertiser, I said, hey, but

[00:19:34] we've got these other history podcasters. And they said, no, no, no, we've tried podcasting before and it didn't work. And I said, did you use ABC network? Not ABC, but let's say QWARTY

[00:19:52] network. It was a, I'm not going to say the name of it wasn't ABC, but the point is this other network. And they said, yeah, how'd you know? I said, well, you said it didn't work and we

[00:20:05] know those numbers are bogus from them. That's why we created, we were creating the IAB. And she's like, oh, I knew it. I knew something was wrong. And so this other network was notorious for

[00:20:20] inflating their numbers eight to 10x what they really were the way they counted was just way off. No way. So we had them then go and buy ads on some history shows that were legitimate and

[00:20:32] that worked out for them. So that was a case where it had caused an impact on podcasters because of bogus, because they had stopped buying ads. And then we were able to get them back into

[00:20:43] podcasting. Luckily, you know, the, that buyer would not have reached out if the advertiser that the, that buyer was working with hadn't specifically asked for hardcore history. And that was the only reason she, they, she had reached out. Wow. So let's talk about the IAB. Now what

[00:21:00] me, what does the show have to do or to meet IAB standards? And what does that really mean? A show just needs a host on a podcasting hosting company that is IAB certified.

[00:21:12] Don't go by one that says they are compliant and if they have not been IAB, officially IAB certified where they have the little sticker from the IAB, the numbers aren't legit. There is a

[00:21:26] service out there that will say that their numbers are close to, you know, they do it the way the IAB does it, but they just haven't gotten the certification. Their numbers are not the same.

[00:21:36] We move shows over and we see that numbers are way off. And really another company that got IAB certified beforehand, they were saying, oh, our numbers are just as good. And when they got

[00:21:46] certified shows numbers dropped 60 to 70%. Wow. That's a big, it's a big cut. Yes. That's a lot. Yeah. So if a company isn't IAB certified, their numbers are not legit. And advertisers

[00:22:01] at the big agencies know that and they won't use those shows from those hosts. So all you have to do is a podcast or just make sure you're hosted on Libsyn or Blueberry or Art 19 or a company

[00:22:12] that is actually legitimately certified. Yeah, that's fascinating. I know that now the reason why the IAB certification came out was because people are trying to like say their numbers or whatever they want and give me some money. It's just to dener it down. It's going to crack

[00:22:26] down on all the fraud, so to speak. Right. And part of it was that one company I mentioned that they were going around with these bogus numbers and we knew it and we said, you know, we got to get

[00:22:37] together. We got to get the IAB to come up with it. And I was one of the people along with Todd Cochran at Blueberry, Rob Freelinder from PodTrack. We had gotten together and we talked

[00:22:47] and we said, you know, we need to talk with the IAB and see if we can get this certified. And a few other companies joined in with us and we got the IAB committee to start and it was

[00:22:57] version one and eventually version two, which was the really good one. If you are certified at an IAB company, those numbers are close. Again, I should point this out. The IAB specs aren't

[00:23:15] specific. So exactly, it's not going to be exactly the same. A hundred at one place, maybe 99 at another place and a hundred in one another, but at least you're doing it the right way and you're within a few

[00:23:25] percent of one another. And part of that is filtering down to a specific IP address and user agent combo for a 24-hour window or a calendar day. And, you know, Libsyn does it based on the

[00:23:40] rolling 24-hour window, which is the more accurate way to do it. And that also allows you to have the IAB stats update in real time. So if I understand for one download, the IAB has to be, was it

[00:23:53] one minute of download? One minute at a time? At least one minute of content is delivered. And again, filtered out, certain user agents are filtered out and a unique IP address user agent combination. So like the same device? Like you can't play your show on

[00:24:12] four different devices and you expect to get four different downloads, basically? Well, if you did play it on four different devices, it would come up as four different because it would... Oh, okay. Yeah. But if you're on this computer or you're on your smartphone

[00:24:28] and you request it and you start listening in on the way to work in the morning and then finish listening on the way home, it's going to count as one, not two. On that same device though, right? Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, that does make sense.

[00:24:42] It makes sense in quite a bit. So I love Apple gear. I love Apple stuff. My first garden of podcasting or at least listening to podcasting was about... Was all on Apple because

[00:24:50] I had my first iPhone and it was there. It was easy. And I still just stuck with it. I know people have their favorite apps and all that. But when it comes to

[00:24:57] Apple podcasts, you showed us in your presentation a few tricks to look out for within the Apple... Just Apple podcasts in general. Like you scroll down to the bottom of the show. Those other suggestions at the bottom of each podcast? How are those linked directly to that

[00:25:13] show? So at the bottom of Apple podcast today, there's a thing where it says you might also like. And you think as someone that's going through Apple podcasts that you might also like means Apple's got an algorithm and they know you and here's what you might also like.

[00:25:32] But that's not what Apple has. Apple, what they've done is it used to be called... And they changed the name. It used to be called listeners also subscribed to. So they changed listeners also subscribed to too. You might also like. So really what that means is

[00:25:49] they look at, let's say the feed podcast and they look at other people that are subscribed to the feed and all the different podcasts that are subscribed to feed. And what are some common podcasts that when people are subscribed to feed, they're also subscribed to? So

[00:26:06] Podtastic would likely be one of them. So that tells us if there's nothing recommended at the bottom, like you might also like if there's only one or two shows showing not a whole list of

[00:26:20] them. That show doesn't have a lot of subscribers. Interesting. So if you scroll down the bottom on a random podcast show and there's nothing at the very bottom of it, that means that either they have no subscribers or... They have almost none, right? Very few. Interesting.

[00:26:39] Interesting. So that's one way. I mean, I've seen that. I've seen it where it shows that they had 25,000 numbers for the downloads and we go in and we look in Apple Podcasts and it's got one show

[00:26:51] which is recommending. I'm like, okay, no, those numbers aren't legit. So theoretically though, if the number... The show is at the very bottom that they suggest at the bottom. Now, the subscribers of that show are the same subscribers of the show you're on

[00:27:05] in theory. Right. So when you go and you look, we'll go and look at... Let me just grab a podcast here randomly. Well, I'll do the feed. So we do the feed

[00:27:19] and if I click on the feed and I go to the bottom, some of the shows it says you might also like is Ask the Podcast Coach School of Podcasting, The Future of Podcasting, New Media Show,

[00:27:31] She Podcasts. Because guess what? They're all podcasts about podcasting and then it goes on and then there's others in there as well. But the reason why that first group is in there is is because the people that are subscribed to the feed are also subscribed to those others.

[00:27:48] But if it's a small show, a show that really has no listeners. So like let me go look and see it. Meta Monday Murder. Let's see. Let me see if we can find it.

[00:28:04] Murder Cast. Okay, let's see. Where is it at? So there's a podcast that I created called Meta Monday Murder Cast. That's it. And Meta Monday Murder Cast, if you scroll down, you'll see more from Wizard Media, but you won't actually see a recommendation for you might also

[00:28:24] like because the show has no audience. It's a show I created. It's a show I created, just a spoof show I created that to see if I could create a show and launch it in Apple

[00:28:35] Podcasts in less than an hour. Okay. And record the first episode and come up with artwork. And I was like, go. And I had an hour to create artwork and launch a show

[00:28:45] and get a trailer up and get it launched. And I had one, I've had one episode and I've never promoted it. And so it has no audience. And that you can see in Apple Podcasts as an example

[00:28:55] of a show that has no ratings and reviews. It has one. So this is one rating and review. Okay. I was actually me just testing it. Yeah. Just testing to put a review on for it.

[00:29:09] I was looking at that. I was like, oh wait, that's me. So how powerful are ratings and reviews? Do you do anything to help this algorithm or help us out at all?

[00:29:17] Ratings and reviews are the most overrated thing. There is no help in the algorithm. The top charts and the top episode charts and top show charts do not use ratings and reviews in any way, shape,

[00:29:29] or form. They are a social validation. They are an ego validation. But overall, they're not something I recommend podcasters spend their time asking for. I always recommend if you're going to ask your audience to do something, ask them to do something that matters

[00:29:47] like actually follow the show. Click the follow button. Tell your friends to follow the show. If you're going to ask your audience to do something, do something that matters. And the top ranks in Apple Podcasts at the show level are all about how many new people have

[00:30:03] clicked follow in the last seven days with a weighted average for the last 24, 48, 72 hours. And then you've got the other side of it, which is the episode charts. And that's another way to see if a show is really says the numbers they say. Like if a show says...

[00:30:18] Where do you find the episode charts? So if you go into charts in Apple Podcasts, if you go on Apple Podcasts on desktop, it's easy as you can do it in...

[00:30:27] Oh, I see right now I'm on charts right now. So I'm on charts, but this is show, obviously, top episodes. Top episodes. So what you want to do is actually go in instead of all categories,

[00:30:35] pick a subcategory. So let's just say education. And then you can go and say see all for the episodes. And those shows that show up in there, they're based on consumption. It's actual consumption

[00:30:50] in the ranking for the last period of time, but it's a scaling weight. The most recent day has a higher weight for consumption than something that happened two weeks ago, that happened two months ago. So if you see an episode in the top 200 episodes and the date

[00:31:11] is from like Jordan Peterson is in here, June 17th he has an episode that's ranked 77th. Well, Jordan Peterson has a legitimately large audience and that bears out in here. Mel Robbins also has a legitimately large audience. She has one from June 16th and she said ranked 76.

[00:31:29] I see that. Yeah. But the first one, she's also number one, I think I saw here too. That one says I think one day ago. So does it depend on whether this thing was released

[00:31:38] like yesterday or today, would it be pushed up higher in the rankings? It doesn't really matter just based on numbers. It's based on again a high weighted average for the most recent 24 hours. So that's why Mel Robbins who is number one, the episode was launched one day ago.

[00:31:56] Jordan Peterson is number two, that episode was launched 22 hours ago. And then number three is Mel from four days ago. Right. Yeah. Then she has, she's number nine from one from July

[00:32:08] third we're recording this on July 12th. So that's nine days ago. So you can see that rolling off of the numbers and then Jordan also has one at number five, which was three days ago. So the

[00:32:20] reason why his one 22 hours is higher ranked than the one that's five days, three days ago is because of Apple using this weighted average for last 24, 48, 72. The number goes down further out

[00:32:33] you go in time. So when you see a show that's in the top 100, 200 and it has a date rather than how many days, right? You see one day, it actually says one day four days. Right. But when you

[00:32:46] see a date, you go, yeah, that shows legitimate. If you see a date that's more than seven days ago and if you see something in the top 200 more than seven days old, that show has a legitimate

[00:32:56] audience. What a trip. Very fascinating. It's all good to know because you can say people are fluffing different things and they're believing whatever they do. And what are your thoughts on those like chartable charts? People suddenly will brag like I'm number, I'm the top 100

[00:33:12] India or wherever country it is. Yeah. I don't buy it again. It is what it is. I look at these numbers. What is consumption? And that's what the beauty of Apple is. It really is around consumption and this is really hard to gamify this. Not impossible.

[00:33:34] And again, you got to look at other things. But when I'm looking at a show that's not on our network that's telling me they have these numbers before they move over, I will go in and I'll

[00:33:43] look at the top charts and I go, I'll know based on another show that released an episode around the same time that's in the same category. Where are they ranking? So I've got some insight to a

[00:33:54] lot of shows. So I'll look at another show in the education category so I could look at aware and aggravated because I've got access to their data and I would be able to say, okay,

[00:34:03] two days ago, aware and aggravated launched an episode. How many downloads did they get? They're ranked 43. And okay, in this other show is claiming to have this number and they launched two days ago with their episode and they're not even in the rankings. So it should compare

[00:34:17] within theory. It should be based at the same then. Right. And it is pretty close when I look at that. So I'm able to look at that and it got a feel for it. But I know not every most

[00:34:29] people don't have the access of numbers that I've got. I've got access to 70,000 shows. I can look up numbers and compare. But just if you don't even see the show in there and they're telling you that they're getting 50,000 or 25,000 an episode and they release an episode and

[00:34:45] 24 hours after the episode launched, if you don't see them in the top 200, they don't have 20, 25,000 any sub categories or these categories, not the overall chart. You want to look in the genre of the specific category they're in. Yeah, definitely. Now, do you think at some

[00:35:02] point somewhere, I know we can't really do this because of the way the podcasting is set up, but is it possible someday that we will be able to see numbers from shows? No. Never. And a lot of podcasters don't want that. I mean, I'll give a perfect example

[00:35:16] of why a company wouldn't want their numbers out there publicly available. Let's say the CEO of Google does a podcast and his podcast is getting X number of downloads and all of a sudden the numbers start going down, well, then the stock's going to take,

[00:35:32] people could look at this as something that, hey, the stocks, what's wrong with Google? No one's interested in Google anymore. So there's a lot of companies that do podcasts, branded podcasts, Trader Joe's, Microsoft has a lot of podcasts, Intel has one,

[00:35:50] Intel on AI podcast, but there's a lot of them out there and they wouldn't want that information out there from a company perspective. It looks bad for the company if people knew what

[00:35:58] the numbers were and the numbers go up and down for it. So there's reasons why there'll never be public metrics for all these podcasts. But what about those shows that want to do things on YouTube also, because YouTube is like

[00:36:15] an open book, you can see all the numbers, all the subscribers, all the stuff. Does that kind of play a role in that too? Well, in some of these people, yeah. We call it simulcast when you have the podcast available,

[00:36:28] both as a podcast and then also on YouTube and we'll combine some of those numbers for advertisers and we'll look at that. It really depends on how that show is really doing in YouTube. There are some gamifications people do on YouTube as well. You can buy services to

[00:36:44] run those numbers up. So there's some things that have to be looked at there as well. And Rumble is another service, right? Depending on what side of the spectrum you are politically, there's a lot of podcasts that do quite well on Rumble. Roseanne Barr does much better on

[00:36:57] Rumble legitimately than she does on YouTube because she got de-algorithmed on YouTube for of all things being anti-Semitic. No way. Yeah, and she is Jewish so I never could figure that one out.

[00:37:13] What always gets me is that people want to throw all their eggs into the YouTube basket. You know, like I'm going to be just do it all on YouTube because YouTube's free. I get that.

[00:37:20] You know, spending money great, free, easy, you can do it on your phone. You don't have to do any kind of design. You kind of record video and call it a podcast or whatever. I see that.

[00:37:29] So I was kind of wondering like the shows that I don't want to make an audio version. I think you said on the feed a while back that some shows, even though they want to push

[00:37:41] video, but you try to tell them audio will outperform videos. Is that true? I'll say there's more time in the day to consume audio than there is video. And if your thing is

[00:37:53] creating audio and you're not good with video and you're not comfortable with video, don't do video. The worst reason to get into video is because you think it's going to magically grow your show. And when podcasts, and this is on the podcasting side, not looking at YouTube,

[00:38:07] but on the podcasting side, when a podcast has both audio and video available, it's 20 to 1 downloads. 20 to 1? Yes, 20 to 1. That's crazy. Audio versus video. Again, it comes back to people have more time in the day to consume

[00:38:22] audio than video. And in the podcasting world, when you look in the top charts for the top 200 episodes, none of them are video. There hasn't been a video episode crack the top 200 that I've seen in less seven or eight years, not even Apple's own

[00:38:37] video podcast cracking the top video podcast. Now, YouTube is a different story, right? There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. But when you're on YouTube, even with dynamic video, you're competing against Mr. Beast. You're competing against all these other folks that have this

[00:38:54] really great and built up audience on video. And when you do video, you're also competing against Netflix and Hulu and live TV and sports. Whereas in podcasting, when you're just doing audio, you're competing against other audio podcasts or you're competing against radio.

[00:39:13] And no offense to radio, but podcasts, in my opinion, are much better than talk radio, because you're getting into a niche topic that is more inclined to be listened to by your potential audience than radio where it has to be more broadcast, which means it's

[00:39:28] less specific and less geared to the listener. And they're always trying to reset the room, reset the audience like, hey, welcome back. We're talking to so-and-so and all this stuff. I wonder about the engagement rate when it comes to, I know that YouTube engagement rates are

[00:39:42] like horrible. Like you're lucky if you get like 50% to stick through your entire episode, half an episode or whatever it is. Do you see the engagement rate with audio podcast be much higher, I would think, right? Yeah. I'd say if you have over 80% of the people listen

[00:39:59] 90% of the way through your podcast, that's, I consider that a good number. I consider a bad number when you're below 60%. Yeah. The majority of podcasts are getting the majority of listeners going 75, 80% are listening 90% of the way through episodes.

[00:40:18] Wow. That's great. At least from the data I looked at, from the shows I've looked at. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, I can't say for every, I don't have the charts for everything,

[00:40:27] but I have a lot of podcasts that we have access to. And looking at that, the consumption and the engagement rate is really high in podcasting. It's definitely well, well above 50%. Yeah. Yeah. That's something to think about, you know, that

[00:40:45] a lot of podcasters, you know, they, at least with YouTube too, when you're on YouTube, you see all these views on your show and then you actually look into the data of it and you realize that they're only listening, they're only watching the first two minutes of it.

[00:40:57] And, and then you're like, Oh, well, these numbers look good, I guess, but but no one's really listening or anything like that. That's probably why I think a lot of YouTubers will put all their call to action at the very front, like the very first thing

[00:41:08] to say, hit subscribe, hit whatever, all this stuff. But then I was thinking like, you haven't done anything we haven't, I don't know what the show is about. I don't know what your episode is about. Why would I subscribe to this yet until you consume it first?

[00:41:17] It's like test driving a car, I don't buy it before I at least look at it, you know? In podcasting, you want to hook them early. I always look at the James Bond way of the

[00:41:28] way they do the movies, right? Oh yeah. The beginning of a James Bond movie isn't credits. It isn't just going over some vistas, some beautiful vistas. We slowly get into the movie. James Bond starts out with action right at the beginning and then they get into

[00:41:43] the theme music and then they get into the main story. And I recommend the same thing in podcasting, especially since the update to iOS a couple of years ago where they put this big follow button, right? That's what Apple wants you to do when they discover a podcast.

[00:42:00] They want you to follow that show or listen at least when you come to it at first and then you want people to then click follow, I should say. And having something that

[00:42:11] hooks them and wants them to click the follow button is really important. So if you're trying to grow your show, the first, I always tell people the first 30 seconds of your show are the most important of the most recent episode are the most important 30 seconds you've ever recreated.

[00:42:25] So that's like every show really thing about it. So every single show, the first 30 seconds are the most important. So don't waste it begging for Patreon followers or whatever. I always think of like analogy of a restaurant. If you go to restaurants, sit down, the first thing

[00:42:43] the waiter says, instead of taking your order, they say, give me a tip. Whatever. You're like, give him anything yet. You haven't done anything for me yet. Why am I giving you anything? So deliver me something then we'll think about delivering you something.

[00:42:56] Yeah, I mean, you want to put something in front of the listener right away that gets them hooked. But because when you come across a podcast or someone stumbles across your podcast and Apple

[00:43:08] podcast, there's that big button that says listen to the latest episode, right? And that's what's going to happen. Fascinating, man. So Rob, I got to ask you this question. I always ask everybody the same question is what do you think personally, what do you think

[00:43:23] makes a good podcast versus a bad podcast? A good podcast is one that you as the host would want to listen to because you should be interested in your topic and you shouldn't worry about what

[00:43:38] everyone else thinks. You need to be doing content that you as a fan of your own content would be interested in listening to. So if you're doing a podcast on Star Wars

[00:43:47] and you're a fan of Star Wars, then your content needs to be something that you are interested in. So when you take the time to go and create that episode and research and pull that data

[00:43:58] together, you are happy and satisfied with what you actually put out there as a listener of your own podcast. That's interesting. That's good advice, man, because why make something you hate? Otherwise it's like a job. There's eight billion people out there, right? And

[00:44:15] there are going to be audience, there's going to be an audience for your show. There's other people that have the same interest as you. So don't worry about what is the latest fad or the

[00:44:26] latest thing. Don't chase that. Just do something that you are interested in. Yeah, definitely. That's actually just doing, yeah, make something you would actually want to watch or see or listen

[00:44:37] to. Be a fan of your own show. You know, be your number one fan, your number one supporter of your own show because if you don't like it, how am I going to like it?

[00:44:47] Things like that. So Rob, this has been so fantastic having you on the show today, man. I really appreciate you spending your time with me today talking all about fraud and podcasting and all the nitty gritty things that happen within the podcast community. This has been

[00:44:59] fantastic, man. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate it. And if anyone by the way wants to reach me, email me rob at lipson.com. And I should put this

[00:45:08] caveat in here for things we talked about earlier. All the podcasting hosting companies that are offering up advertising are seeing fraud. I talk with them. So it's not just a Libsyn thing. So I want to clarify that it's everybody, you know, and there is even this

[00:45:24] one podcast that people in the industry tell each other about like, oh, and stay away from this show. They're bogus. And they're like, no, no, I've had them on my network. Yeah, they're bogus. Yeah, don't don't use these guys. So everybody's seeing this. We talk about this in

[00:45:41] the IAB committees and we talk amongst each other. The fraud is an issue that's industry-wide. It's it's not going away. We understand it's going to get worse because as more money comes in, there's more incentive. But we're getting better at recognizing things. It's always going to

[00:46:01] be a cat and mouse game, whack-a-mole game. But understand this, there is no magic silver bullet. And if a company comes to you and says, hey, we can grow your show guaranteed, they are ripping you off and they're ripping off the industry. Definitely run away. Run away.

[00:46:20] That was some amazing advice. I really appreciate Rob for stopping by today. That was great. Who knew that all the cool little tricks that you can do right now if you have Apple

[00:46:30] Podcasts and figure out possibly whether a show is really as popular as they claim to be. Now, if you're listening to this right now and you have purchased, whether it be followers or downloads or some kind of statistics from some company, just realize that those are always

[00:46:48] from bots and they're never from real people. And maybe you just don't care. Maybe you only like looking at those big numbers. Like you've got 100,000 downloads this month. It looks amazing.

[00:47:01] But what makes it wrong is when you take those 100,000 downloads and you put it in front of a potential sponsor or advertiser and they really do think you have 100,000 downloads per episode

[00:47:16] and you really don't. You are lying. That is fraud. People go to jail for that kind of stuff. Just keep that in mind. Hey, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to tell you that

[00:47:26] instead of wasting all that money, time and energy on buying fake bot downloads, maybe take some of that energy and create a better show, an amazing show. And that is what this show is all about helping you not waste time on gaining the system, not waste time on

[00:47:47] different bot downloads and things like that, but actually use real resources organically to help you make an amazing show for your audience. And that is what it's all about. And until next time, happy podcasting.