As an extremely heavy listener of podcasts, there's no way I would listen anymore if I had to have 20 different apps to run to listen to them. It's an absolute non-starter. And then to have ads on top of that. Fuck that.<p>Maybe the author's right that what works for current users won't work for the masses. I don't know. But I do know that I will not listen to more ads (that's why I stopped listening to radio and I suspect I'm not the only one), and I will not go to the trouble of using more than a single app.
>publishers should offer podcasts through their own app that measures listens, and either sell ads themselves if they have the scale or outsource it to a company like Midroll. Midroll, for their part, should leverage their new player technology to offer skinnable apps for publishers who can’t build their own.<p>Here's my problem with this idea:<p>I, like many people, listen to a lot of different podcasts. Dozens, in my case. I have a podcatcher app that puts them all in one place. That makes it easy and convenient for me. Some of the shows I only listen to maybe once per month when there's a guest on that I enjoy, or if I run out of new episodes of everything else. If each show required its own app for me to listen, I'd only listen to the ones I really, really enjoy and support, and the rest I'll do without or bootleg. So, in a sense, the individual app per show idea would be limiting the potential audience.<p>I'm already seeing this happen with Libsyn custom mobile apps[0]. There are a number of shows I listen to that have paywalls for old episodes which can only be accessed through subscription plans available in individual apps. $1.99 or $2.99 may not seem like much by itself, but if it's 10 or 20 shows you're listening to this becomes an unjustifiable bill.<p>The only viable alternative I see is the further growth of podcast networks, where multiple shows are available for one price. But, currently, this model is still too small and fragmented. Until the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts comes out, I'll be left to pick and choose which deserve my support enough to justify buying into their distinct "ecosystem".<p>Edit: I see that my points here were addressed in the paragraphs following the one I quoted, but I'm still not buying the idea that siloing is the best way to monetize podcasts.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/" rel="nofollow">https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/</a>
Obligatory mention for the No Agenda podcast [1], by the "father of podcasting" Adam Curry and tech broadcaster John C. Dvorak. They have an interesting model in being 100% listener supported, with no advertisers or sponsors, and yet still managing to make a living off their show, putting out 2 shows every week (today show #832):<p>"Their funding model is strictly listener supported, and it's working. The premise being that keeping outside influences away from content development gives listeners untainted news, opinion and entertainment... they refer to it as a "value-for-value" proposition -- listen to the show, if you get something worthwhile from it make a donation. This model should change the face of podcasting.<p>More and more independent podcasters will probably take note of this new model, and they should. Open, unsullied content creation and delivery should be the goal of everyone in the media -- a free exchange of ideas, opinions and content is the cornerstone of a free internet and a free society.<p>Podcasting has always been a medium searching for a successful funding model. Curry was a pioneer in getting podcasters to band together to try and attract funding from advertisers and sponsors. Curry started a couple of companies to support this model -- he would probably be the first to admit that the main-stream media model is not the best one for podcasting... but his constant tinkering and experimentation with the medium he created is starting to pay off. Curry and Dvorak may be the first "professional" podcasters to make a living doing a show that is truly independent, insightful and listener supported."<p>[1] <a href="http://www.noagendashow.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.noagendashow.com/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-relevant-and-profitable" rel="nofollow">http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-r...</a>
I run a small podcasting network called TSRPN.<p>When I talk to non-listeners about podcasts, I hear two things:<p>----<p>1. "I don't know how to listen to podcasts."<p>2. "I don't know what to listen to."<p>----<p>There are many great podcatching apps out there, and for those of us who "get it" and are motivated to listen to podcasts, it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't.<p>Discovery is another issue altogether. NPR One, Pandora, Stitcher, et al have tried to do some level of podcast recommendation, but the lack of thorough metadata and text transcripts make it difficult to apply the kind of algorithm that works for blogs or music.<p>What makes it easy for the average non-techie to use a browser to read blogs, an app like Spotify for music, or their Facebook app, but not to use a podcatcher app?<p>Is it simple lack of familiarity? Or do we need an entirely new approach? I wish I knew the answer.
Podcasting right now seems to working wonderfully. It's one of the most expensive ways to advertise. If it's not broken don't fix it. Tracking and the targeting didn't save online advertisment, it won't safe podcasting.
I've been wrestling with the idea of how to enable monetization for smaller podcast producers since I decided to start building an AppleTV app for playing video podcasts this past winter. What I think could work is namespaced tags for specific players that offer ad-insertion. This allows for the platform to remain default-open and opt-in for publishers who want to go this route.<p>For example, much like <itunes:explicit> is not part of any RSS spec, a publisher could choose to include a tag like <castanet:monetize>yes</castanet:monetize>, which would tell the Cast-a-net app that the publisher of that podcast would like ads to be inserted. The publisher would then need to setup an account with Cast-a-net to share the ad revenue, verify ownership, etc.<p>There is a significant chicken and egg problem, of course. The player needs to have enough users for the publishers to consider setting up an account to be worthwhile. The ad experience also can't get so obnoxious that users move to other apps. This approach allows publishers to gain monetization and metrics without ceding ownership and control to the platform.<p>By the way, my player, Cast-a-net, doesn't yet offer this feature. I've been working on making the UI good enough to attract real users first, then hoping it can grow to be something worthy of specific attention from video podcast producers.<p>(edit: as was pointed out in a reply, Marco is very anti-ads, so I swapped the example tags. I had only meant to use Overcast as an example of a popular independent player that doesn't want to become a walled garden for just a subset of the total podcast universe.)
Comparing Podcasting with Blogging is a neat approach. I think there's more overlap than the article might be able - or willing - to address when discussing monetization.<p>To wit: In order to monetize, a lot of what is appealing about Blogging/Podcasting would be diminished - paying is the opposite of free content, commercials interrupt the listening, and authenticity corrupted by advertising perogatives.<p>Or, in other words, a lot of what the "Mommy Blog" sector seemed to try and keep under the surface: <a href="http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/" rel="nofollow">http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/</a><p>Just like in music, there will be a few case studies with large revenues, and thousands barely making anything, if not actually going into the red for their troubles.
<i>Podcasts are hot right now. Big Money is coming. Big Money isn’t going to sell nicely designed, hand-crafted, RSS-backed podcast players for $2.99 or ask you to pay what you want to support them, because that doesn’t make Big Money. They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue.</i><p>Hats off to that guy for succinctly summarizing why we can't have nice things.
I think the article's ideas on advertising, particularly the idea that brand advertising HAS to come to podcasting because direct advertising won't scale is a bit flakey.<p>Why won't direct advertising scale? Direct advertising opens up the long tail of companies. Small Business X can't spend money on branding but can spend money on acquiring paying customers.<p>In fact, direct advertising has become so popular thanks to things like AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. that companies need to find new places to address their target audiences and podcasts might just be a great place to do that. The stuff with coupon codes, special URLs, etc. are pretty trivial to set up and a company like Midroll is going to coordinate between you and the podcast so you can line up that stuff well ahead of time.<p>There was also this:<p>"The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top 100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct marketing variety."<p>I did not read the 538 article on this, but it makes a lot of sense for a company to carpet bomb their advertising. So if you're listening to all the top 100 podcasts in a one-week period, you might have an advertiser hitting a lot of those podcasts in a one-week period. However, if you listened to the same 100 podcasts three weeks later, you might hear another set. Presumably, the companies finding routine success are the ones who you hear all the time.<p>On the carpet-bombing strategy, if you deploy in relative isolation, you should be able to measure the real effect of the advertising and not just the people who came through a URL or used a coupon code. If I normally sell $100 per week and the week I advertise I sell $200, I don't have to rely on campaign tracking to assume attribution. Wait a few weeks and advertise again and see if the effect holds up.
> Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them directly from a podcaster’s server) and inserting ads.<p>Why would a consumer install such a program, when AntennaPod exists?
for another perspective, here's an interview with two early podcasters working outside of this recent race to monetization<p><a href="http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-dude-about-why-its-better-to-be-happy-than-rich" rel="nofollow">http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-du...</a>
If you're looking for a free, hyper-functional podcast app that will search _thousands of RSS feeds_, allow me to introduce [PodcastAddict](<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...</a>). I've been using it for some time now, and every day I discover something new to enjoy. It's indisputably the best podcast app for Android, and it's leagues beyond iOS's native app.
"They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue"<p>This made me realize that Midroll/Earwolf already tried this to an extent last year with Howl.fm. It was an iPhone exclusive app/service that launched with a ton of exclusive podcast series, some old comedy albums, and the thing that really showed how little they cared about their listeners-- Earwolf was taking down all the old episodes of their podcasts and putting it behind the Howl paywall.<p>Many people might not be familiar with Earwolf, but in the comedy world it's huge. improv4humans is hosted by a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade and it's basically like sitting in on a master class in long-form improv. Comedy Bang Bang has recurring characters that date back years and people love going back and listening to hear how they evolve by "yes and"ing their way through conversations. They don't get dated like maybe a tech podcast might, so taking them down just to help bolster some cash-grab podcast subscription service was just so insulting, and to make it only available on iPhones showed how out of touch they were.
It increasingly feels like we're living in the end of the "golden age" of podcasting to me. I've got my little homegrown podcatcher downloading files and sticking them on my server so I can stream them over my LAN or load them onto my devices for offline play. Presumably publishers will muscle into this market to "monetize" the entire thing and completely fuck it up. No more MP3s to load on my devices, etc.<p>Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I'll end up breaking out the old rig I built back in the early 2000's to timeshift public radio shows to MP3s.
One more model: the guys at Partially Examined Life used their content-rich philosophy podcast to build a participatory community of listeners. Now you can pay a subscription to be a P.E.L "citizen" which gives you the chance to participate in "not school" seminars with other citizens. Also, of course, access to their back catalog which is behind a paywall.<p>George Hrab leaves his 400+ episode Geologic catalog open, but pushes a subscription fee: be a "geologist" to get a weekly email and access to other subscriber-only material.
I've been using the Remarks social podcasting app for the past week. They are trying to address the retention (for sure) and monetization (I assume they're going to roll out an ads platform) problems mentioned in the article.<p>I've been posting my thoughts as I listen and really like when the host is on the platform and I can react to their posts. Only challenge for me is that I listen to a lot of my episodes while driving and can't scroll through posts.
That's a super depressing future.<p>My imagined future involves serving podcasts with different ads each time you download the episode. Maybe a subscription to ad-free versions. There's no need for a separate player for subscriptions, Rss feeds can already be password protected.<p>If anyone is working on the above, hit me up - I'd love to talk.
I'll take the (probably unpopular) advertiser-centric approach here...<p>I agree with a lot of what Ben says (and his podcast is the highlight of my commute these days). What is fascinating is that the space has been the domain of direct response advertisers for a while, and only a handful. I was familiar with all of the ones mentioned, but was absolutely shocked that they were such a large percentage of the mix.<p>Either podcasting ads are so nascent that only a handful of people are in on it, or there are performance challenges (whether it be attribution or overall poor performance). What I'd love to see is the # of advertisers to made a solid go of it and had dismal experiences despite having success in other channels. That would be very telling.<p>The conversion tracking piece is a big missing chunk of the equation. I could see ads embed audio tags that any reader could parse, but I fear the tracking restricted to individual platforms. That puts all of the control on the sell-side of the equation, and also conveniently impossible to audit or compare numbers against. I'd LOVE to see DoubleClick/Turn/etc. get into the game with some tracking solutions here. They are the industry standard and would integrate well into existing ad stacks. Anyone who provides good tracking solutions might consider them for possible acquisitions.<p>Beyond that, I think that podcasts make a lot of sense with the shift to native ads. Many people feel they have a relationship with the podcaster because it is in fact a real live person that you listen to because you like them. In speaking with Midroll for our own forays into podcast ads, it looks like you provide a list of bullets on your offering, and the podcaster works to craft the ad in their voice to make it more natural.<p>That is a win for both the advertiser and the listener. The more natural format likely boosts receptiveness (and thus performance) for the advertiser, and the listener gets something that isn't horribly disruptive to the listening experience as good podcasters (like Roman Mars on 99pi) make them fun and have found that people stick around to even listen to the post rolls because he's so good at them.<p>Anyway, that's my $.02. I think the space is nascent, and I hope that the inevitable power struggle between publishers and platforms doesn't kill it as it could be really powerful when done right. Advertisers have some challenges but that hasn't stopped them from testing before. I'm frankly just shocked at the lack of overall advertiser volume.
I've tried to built something to solve the discovery problem. It was featured on HN a while ago <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835</a>
My take - snippets will drive discovery. Take a ten second snippet of a podcast and you can find a hundred "keyword" searches or Facebook headlines that it will fit perfectly.<p>This can drive subscriptions to the podcast<p>That might actually make a workable business ...
tl;dr - facebookization of podcasts (one discovery process in one app) is the worst outcome for publishers (who already have this for actual text)<p>So the least worst alternative is for each publisher to have their own app for listening to their podcasts and drive folks to download said app by using star power and marketing. To get there we will see some podcasts bribed with huge gobs of cash.<p>Ok - seems plausible but frankly as a podcast listener I prefer the Facebook solution, and am unconvinced by his arguments that most people wont
> A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data: listeners still download MP3s and that’s the end of it; podcasters can measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to<p>That's not exactly true. Marc Maron always encourages his listeners to use his offer code (often "wtf") to get discounts. Surely they have data on that.
podcast stats, amirite?! I don't trust feedburner, libsyn, or blubrry -- but i've been _thinking_ about using keen.io redirects in my rss & itunes feeds so i can collect ip/agent info and analyze that.<p>i distribute my podcast (well, it's a video show, but still podcasty) via YouTube in part because I can actually get view/retention/source/subcriber stats + use links/annotations + I can also feed it into itunes. I even made a little jekyll repo that helps you make landing page & video/audio feeds: <a href="https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show</a>