- There's a huge incentive to fast-forward through ads: False. Listeners are gnerally tied up doing something else while listening to podcasts. They're not sitting there with their thumbs on the fast foward button. I totally agree with Greg. This is a myth that has been created out of nothing and has grown to ridiculous proportions.
- You can't know the profile of listeners: False. I'm on the fence with this one. Greg correctly points out that podcasters have not only been successful in getting their listeners to fill out surveys, but that many directories have social components built in. Having said that, I think Greg misses the mark with this statement: "Every single media file download can be tracked to determine where people are downloading from and what type of software they're using to access the podcast." It's not that he's wrong, it's just that advertisers don't care what software people are using - they want to know gender, age, income, and interests.
- There are an abundance of phantom downloaders inflating statistics: False. Greg seems to think that iTunes is the only podcatcher on the planet as his primary rebuttal to this point is that iTunes will now unsubsribe users from podcasts that they haven't listened to. iTunes accounts for about 20% of my listeners so relying on it to do cleanup is naive. He does make a good point that the stats provided by terrestrial radio are quite suspect, however. I'll go one step farther and say that magazine, newspaper, and radio stats are patently made up numbers. There is absolutely NO way to gauge radio listenership, yet it's done all the time.
- Creating an effective podcast is cheap and easy: True. I agree - but Greg is correct in focussing on content. The gear may be cheap, but the content needs to be good.
- You need to fdo distribution deals for a podcast: False. I agree. As Greg states: "At least for now, all of the meaningful podcast distribution is free".
I know Greg and he's a nice guy but he also has an agenda being that he's in the biz of selling advertisers on podcasts.
His first point is not a myth. I listen to a couple of audio podcasts that include ads and I almost always fast forward through them. My brain knows where that forward button is and my finger hits it like pavlov's dog responding to a bell when those ads hit.
Greg's take on podcast metrics is wrong in my opinion. You can't 'profile' a listener by knowing their download location and aggregator. I might be able to find out if people are listening who work at Microsoft for example, but I won't know if they occupy a cube farm or a corner office. You'd also have to make some pretty wild assumptions to gather demographic data based on their aggregator of choice.
Posted by: Rob Safuto | September 21, 2006 9:55 AM | Permalink to Comment