Can You Podcast Without Reliable Analytics?

If reactions to very real privacy concerns remove our one way to track downloads, it’ll wreck the podcast advertising industry. But what about everyday podcasters who don’t rely on impression-based ad sales? In the not too distant future, we’re probably going to lose our reliance on IP addresses. And while that will have a chilling effect on podcasters and podcast businesses that rely on impression-based advertising revenues… what about the rest of us? You know, the vast majority of podcasters with different goals and objectives?

Well, it may not be as bad as you think.

Keep in mind that podcast media hosting companies can count requests to your media files. They’ll just no longer be able to group, sort, and filter those requests to give you an approximation of how many people are behind those file requests. 

Clearly, there will be much sturm und drang when this happens. Indeed, I predict the fallout will devastating for many podcasts. But I’m confident that podcasting will survive.  Hobbyist podcasters don't really care how “accurate” their statistics are. They just want to know that someone on the other end is listening. 

Influencers who podcast will be able to spin an engagement story for the brands they work with, and they’ll figure out a way to do this without downloads.

Business podcasters care less about downloads and much more about measurable business outcomes, so expect them to double-down on tracking KPIs that really matter to their business.

As such, I’m cautiously optimistic about what comes after the upheaval. More importantly, I believe podcasting will survive and will come out with better measurements and business models on the other side.

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Links:

• Advancing Podcasting community -  http://advancingpodcasting.xyz • Article on Sounds Profitable Who Wins When IP Addresses Disappear? - https://soundsprofitable.com/update/who-wins-without-ip-addresses  • Privacy-enhancing technologies - https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technologies-and-ads/ • Biggest podcast advertising spenders - https://www.magellan.ai/blog-categories/top-15 • Podfriend - https://www.podfriend.com • Fountain - https://www.fountain.fm • Podverse - https://podverse.fm • Support Evo on Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/evoterra

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/can-you-podcast-without-reliable-analytics.

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