Do IAB certified stats really matter for your podcast?
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
You might have heard people talk about IAB podcast stats, measurement guidelines, compliance
and certification.
Here's what all of that means and whether it even matters.
If you would like to follow along in the notes for this episode, and I have some links that
you might be interested in.
The notes are a simple tap or swipe away or at theaudacitytopodcast.com/iabstats.
First who is the IAB?
Story time.
Once upon a time, podcast measurement was considered the wild, wild west.
Without standards, everyone measured what was right in their own eyes.
But like most things that start with "once upon a time," that was only a fairy tale.
And yet, a fairy tale that many corporate podcasting companies believed.
Many years ago, there was the Association of Downloadable Media, or ADM.
That included Blueberry, Libsyn, PodTrack, and other podcasting companies way back in
the early days of podcasting.
The ADM came up with standards for measuring podcast downloads, even though it was still
way back in those extremely early days.
And many of those standards that they came up with have influenced the current standards today.
The ADM eventually dissolved and top podcasting companies then built on top of those standards
and improved with those standards and building things into it in their own proprietary systems
and not necessarily sharing those algorithms with their competitors.
But then along came the Internet Advertising Bureau, involving many of the same original
podcast hosting providers, but also large distribution networks like Podcast One and
other podcasting involved parties that weren't even around back when the ADM existed. And
as its name implies, the IAB, Internet Advertising Bureau, is all about internet advertising.
And the podcasting industry actually did need a standard way to measure podcast downloads
so that they could measure ad impressions for advertisers. And thus, the IAB podcast
measurement guidelines were born with version 1.0 in September 2016.
So what are these IAB stats? IAB's podcast measurement guidelines are actually not rigid
standards but mere guidelines for podcast analytics providers to use. Like Elizabeth
Swan said in Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, "Your pirates hang the
code and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway." Boy I love that quotation.
Now getting into the technical details, these "guidelines" are intended to filter out
any kind of invalid podcast download in attempts to get an accurate count of how many people
are actually downloading or streaming the episodes, and then with the hopes, backed
by survey data, that most of the people actually listen to most of those episodes. And a side
note, podcast streams are also downloads. They're simply not downloaded until the
person presses play, but they do still count as downloads. That is streams in a podcast
app, not other places that aren't podcast apps like YouTube and Rumble and other places
like that. Those have their own systems, their own measurement, their own distribution protocols
and everything. But here inside a podcast app, streams are also downloads. They're
just delayed or progressive, but they do count in the download stats. So it's all basically
downloads. And these guidelines from the IAB try to then properly measure those downloads
and streams involving certain criteria and rules like the following. And this is not
an exhaustive list and it's not even a very detailed list. But it might include some of
these general principles. Ignoring all downloads from an IP address blacklist, such as data
centers, bot farms, and such. Ignoring all downloads from known invalid user agents.
A user agent is how an app or service identifies itself.
So some user agents are instantly known, this is not a legitimate downloader.
It could also be ignoring duplicate downloads that look exactly the same within a certain
period of time, usually 24 hours.
It could also be ignoring downloads that don't reach a threshold, like right now it's 1
minute of audio.
And also whitelisting some IP addresses known to have a lot of users behind those IP addresses,
Like public wifi, businesses, colleges and such where there's a single IP address, a
public IP address, but lots of people are behind that.
And so these whitelists will then allow such downloads to be counted separately with the
reasonable assumption that it is separate people downloading that same file.
Even though maybe some of these other things might look the same, it's probably someone
different because there are a lot of people on that same IP address.
There are a lot of other rules and guidelines and all of the stuff that's built into it.
You can certainly read all of that technical information if you want to, but I didn't
want to get very technical in this episode.
The top goal here is really to count people, not simply downloads.
Because it's only people who buy things from ads, engage with the podcasters, and
listen to or watch the episodes.
IAB guidelines get updated every few years.
As of March 2024, the latest version is 2.2, still in a proposal stage and available for
public comment.
If you'd like to go over there and contribute to it, you certainly can.
I've got the link in the notes for this episode.
Tap or swipe away or at theaudacitytopodcast.com/iabstats.
So what is IAB compliance versus IAB certification?
When the IAB guidelines were first released, many in the podcasting industry, including
myself, expressed the importance that all podcasting companies that provide audience
analytics should not only follow the IAB guidelines, but even get certified to be following them.
But there were also many others who disagreed with the guidelines. Some people thought the
guidelines were too conservative. Others thought they were too liberal. Because the guidelines
are publicly accessible, anyone can build a tool that follows the guidelines. And that's
the term IAB compliant came in. It was companies simply claiming compliance based on how they
implemented the guidelines. Then along came the certification program. This was a costly
process both in time and money for a third party organization to conduct tests and review code
to ensure the companies were truly following the guidelines and then certifying that they
are doing it. And you can see a complete list of the certified podcasting companies in the
link that I have in the notes for this episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com/iabstats. Not only
does it cost to be certified, it also costs to be a member of the IAB, and it costs to
be re-certified, which the IAB was pushing in 2023, and it costs to have updated access
to the IAB's white lists and black lists of IP addresses so that you can instantly
populate your own database with how things should be filtered in or out.
But with the high cost of these things, and we're talking tens of thousands of dollars,
it seems that several companies are not so concerned about being "certified" anymore.
And you can see that list of certified podcasting companies under the podcast compliance tab
of the link I've got in the notes.
And many of those companies are still certified to only version 2.0 even though some of them
are certified to 2.1 and we've got 2.2 just around the corner.
And some companies might not care about keeping up with the certification.
But before we get into whether that even matters, here's why IAB certified podcast stats are
actually a good thing.
I agree with the premise of the IAB podcast measurement guidelines and that is to have
a consistent measurement "standard" across the podcast industry. The dream of this standard
is that no matter who you use for podcast hosting and analytics, the statistics you
get will be essentially the same. Or put another way, 100 people downloading your latest episode
would be counted as 100 downloads on Blueberry, or 100 downloads on Captivate, or 100 downloads
on Buzzsprout or 100 downloads on any other provider because they're all measuring it
the same.
That's the dream.
If everyone is following the same standard, then there wouldn't be the heartbreak and
confusion if you switch from one provider to another and see a significant drop in your
stats because there shouldn't be much of a difference if everyone is measuring the
same way.
So it's definitely a good thing for a podcasting company to follow the IAB guidelines and being
Being certified means that a neutral third party can confirm the guidelines are being
followed correctly.
It's just like when you meet someone and they say, "You can trust me."
Well, how do you actually know you can trust them?
Unless someone else you know and trust says, "Yes, you can trust this person."
Then it's that other person's reputation being attributed to that person that you're
not sure if you can trust, but because someone else says you can trust them, you know, "Alright,
I can trust you because someone else I trust says I can trust you.
That's the whole thing about no like and trust factor that comes with podcasting.
And when I recommend a product or service and I say I really like this, I suggest that
you use it, that comes from, I hope, a history of gaining that trust.
But if I was just a nobody telling you something, then you would have a very good reason to
be skeptical.
Just like with podcast stats, if there isn't that third party actually certifying, yes,
stats are legitimate, then you do have good reason to question them. So that's why the
IAB certified stats are a good thing, especially to have them certified. But, every standard
will have loopholes. That dream of how all of the companies measure exactly the same
way, there's no variation between them or very little, that's a dream. And so thus
it's unfortunately not the reality. The biggest reason is that, going back to Ms.
Elizabeth Swan, the IAB measurement guidelines are exactly and only that, guidelines. As
such, some companies will implement those guidelines differently, or they use different
white lists and black lists. And over the years, there have been multiple loopholes
found that some podcasting companies independently patch, even though the IAB guidelines might
not require those patches, at least not yet. For example, Twitter bombing was a problem
several years ago. That's where someone would post a direct link to their podcast
media file, like their MP3 file, on Twitter, as it was then called, and then repeatedly
post that link all day, every day. Companies like Blueberry and Libsyn caught this behavior
fairly quickly and were able to filter it out so those misled podcasters, or maybe even
outright deceptive podcasters, wouldn't have fraudulent stats. Because that's what
really were. They were fraudulent. I even caught a podcaster guilty of this crime, we
could call it, when they were twitter bombing my own guest appearance on their podcast.
When I politely tried to share the truth with them, they deleted my episode. I think they've
maybe seen the light since then and certainly I know who they were using for their hosting
and their analytics. So certainly they've seen that those fake downloads were not being
counted anymore. Or more recently, some podcast networks put ads in mobile games where the
podcast audio would start playing automatically and enough of the audio would pre-download
or buffer that it would actually get counted as a legitimate download even for IAB certified
providers. Because in most platforms where you press play, even though it might be called
a stream, when you press play it just starts downloading usually at whatever speed it's
capable of downloading through that internet connection, sometimes with no file size limit.
So you might press play and listen to only two seconds of audio but in those two seconds
if you have a fast enough internet connection, the entire episode might have been downloaded.
So even listening to only two seconds could result in that download being counted and
that's basically what was happening in these mobile apps.
But that was not legitimate. Even though it is technically an IAB certified download,
and these were from IAB certified providers, still, it's not really a download. And I
think that goes to the problem of having to consider the context of the episode. Not necessarily
how it's measured, but where is it being played? And should that really be counted
if it's being played in a context where people don't actually intend to listen to it.
Some of that the IAB can address and they're trying to, some of that they really can't.
It's a loophole and we may never be able to patch that. It's more the behavior of
where you put these podcast episodes that makes the bigger difference instead of trying
to patch and make sure that we block every possible illegitimate download that could
be where someone pressed play for only two seconds. There are ways around that in certain
cases and the IAB is trying to solve that in some of these cases. In my past research
for testing the fastest podcast hosting, an episode that I did in 2019, I've got the
link to that in the notes, I also discovered that some hosting providers counted some or
even all of my bot downloads. And I didn't even attempt to disguise my bot downloads
as real people using podcast apps. Now please note, if you look back at that episode from
2019, some or let's hope all those previously guilty companies have probably improved their
measurement algorithms since that test way back in 2019. But we can probably assume not
SoundCloud because I don't think anyone works in the podcast department at SoundCloud
anymore. They are archaic. They haven't updated in years. They are years behind on
podcasting innovations. Don't use SoundCloud. Just don't do it.
But moving on, does it really matter anymore if your podcast hosting provider has IAB certified stats?
Well, here's why I think you don't actually need IAB certified podcast stats.
I think it's nice to know your numbers are certified, especially if you get paid by advertisers
based on your downloads.
You want to make sure that you have as accurate as possible of a number so that you're not
overcharging your advertisers.
getting the value that they expect for advertising on your podcast.
But at this point, I think it's safe to assume all the good podcast hosting providers
are following the guidelines and seek to filter out the non-person, non-human downloads.
They could probably better invest that money.
It would have cost to be certified and be part of the IAB and buy the whitelists and
blacklists and all of that stuff.
Probably better to instead invest that into building better features for their customer.
And here is what I think is the even more important approach to this.
Do IAB certified stats matter to your audience?
The answer, if you ask your audience, is most likely a big fat "huh?"
Because your audience probably doesn't know or doesn't care about IAB certification.
And they shouldn't have to know or care about it either.
Your audience can celebrate milestones with you no matter whether those milestones are
certified by an expensive neutral third party.
Your audience cares much more about the value you deliver through your podcast than they
care about how many downloads you're getting.
In other words, the answer to the audience's question of "what's in it for me" when it
comes to IAB certified stats, the answer is probably nothing.
Yes, more downloads could mean more profit, P-R-O-F-I-T, that's popularity, relationships,
opportunities, fun, income, and tangibles for both you and your audience.
And it can mean a bigger community for your audience to engage with each other, but that
comes with the actual people in your audience, not the standard by which you measure them.
So even if the numbers say you're getting a thousand downloads but only ten people are
listening, then you have an audience of ten, not a thousand.
And that bigger number is not going to do you any good.
It can actually harm you, especially if you're taking it to an advertiser and they're expecting
for a thousand people to hear their ad when you have only ten people actually hearing
your ad.
The actual difference is not like that.
That's an exaggeration, so keep that in mind.
It's not actually going to be that big of a difference.
So I've changed my mind about IAB certification.
Because IAB certification really doesn't matter to your audience, I've stopped considering
it a requirement for any podcast hosting provider or analytics tool I recommend. It's nice
to have, but not mandatory. Instead, I'm far more interested in the innovations podcasting
companies are making, so that the whole experience can be better for you and your audience. That's
why I consider Support for Podcasting 2.0 to be my new litmus test for podcast publishing
tools and no longer IAB certification. It's nice to have, but do you really need it? Probably
not. Unless you've got an advertiser, then you might want to consider it. But there are
some really good alternatives these days. You'll need to decide this really for yourself.
I've mentioned several resources and links in this episode. If you want those links,
go to the notes for this episode a simple tap or swipe away or at theaudacitytopodcast.com/iabstats.
Now here's a new feature that I want to include in episodes of the Audacity podcast.
I'm calling it the Community Corner where you engage back, give some kind of value back,
or a message back, or comment, a review, anything like that.
This is not a pay to play, pay to get mentioned.
Although in the past I had said something about a 10,000 sat limit if you're using
a Podcasting 2.0 app and boosting there.
I've decided, no, I think I'd rather just engage, whether you send stats, a donation
or not.
And by the way, I didn't realize until just recently, my podcast was not using the funding tag.
So in some podcast apps now, when you look at The Audacity to Podcast, you might see
a little dollar sign that you can tap on.
And if you'd like, send a donation of whatever amount, whatever value you feel the Audacity
to Podcast has given you.
Or if you're on a modern podcasting 2.0 app, then you can send a boostogram or you can
stream Satoshi's back to The Audacity to Podcast or just send a message through castfeedback.com/audacity.
So that's the kind of stuff I want to start featuring here in the community corner.
First of all, 2,033 sats from Aquileth, Aquileth?
I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but he's saying.
And this was one of the things that got me thinking about this.
He said, "10,000," talking about the number of sats I previously said, anything that's
10,000 sats and above I'll mention in the podcast.
He said, "10,000 can be a lot for someone who doesn't feed their fountain wallet or
equivalent with outside funds and not currently podcasting themselves, despite engaging with
the app daily."
That said, thank you for this episode and this list.
I immediately shared it with someone who's setting up their first podcast.
Go podcasting!
I believe that was in reference to my episode about micropayments.
Then Steve Webb sent 7777, I believe that's the rush boost, in response to my episode
How to Use Podcast Transcripts.
He said, "Great episode, Daniel.
While I have been using transcripts for some time on my shows, I wasn't really sure I
was doing it correctly.
This episode will help me to make some changes going forward.
Thank you and may God bless you richly."
Thank you, Steve.
333 sats from Alan C. Paul, also on How to Use Podcast Transcripts. He said, "Couldn't
help but notice this episode doesn't have a transcript. LOL but great info." And you
know, actually what it turns out is that I had said in that episode I was going to use
VTT transcripts from then on and it turns out that some apps actually don't support
VTT yet. In fact, Castamatic, the app that I'm trying out for a month, and I believe
that's the same app that Alan C. Paul is using. Castamatic doesn't or didn't at that time support
VTT but it will soon. So I switched back to SRT until Castamatic supports VTT then I'll switch
back to VTT and so you'll see those transcripts in there. And also Alan has been giving the
Audacity to Podcast a bunch of five-star ratings on good pods. Thank you very much for those.
I get to see those now because Podgagement shows me all of those. And AJ the second from the United
States gave me a five-star review in Apple Podcasts saying, "Advice is stellar. His
style and topics, along with the way he speaks and communicates, is terrific. Thanks!"
Well, thank you so much, AJ. And Dave Jackson responded to my myth information in my last
episode with this voicemail.
[Dave] Daniel, absolutely. Myth information, and that is hard to say. Definitely made me chuckle.
[David] Thank you, Dave, for that. Dave is from the School of Podcasting, and that voicemail
and transcript were powered by Podgagement.
So if you would like to send a Boostogram, a message, a voicemail, or anything like that,
I've got the contact information and links in the notes for this episode and probably
every episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com/iabstats.
And I'd love to engage with you.
This is a little bit of an experiment.
It might be longer, and sometimes it might be shorter, but I wanted to have some fun
with this and engage with you a bit more here, even inside these episodes.
So boost away!
Or stream those Satoshis, or send the audio feedback, or written feedback, or a 5-star
rating and review in whatever app you use and Podgagement should pick it up for me.
And now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's
time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis from Theaudacitytopodcast.com and on ex-Twitter as @TheDanielJLewis.
Thanks for listening.
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