by Gavin Gaddis
YouTube's recent change to how it counts views has thrown fresh confusion into podcast measurement, and Oxford Road CEO and Founder Dan Granger argues that might be exactly what the industry needed. By stirring the pot, YouTube is inadvertently proving why podcasting needs cross-platform measurement it can actually trust. Bumper co-founder Dan Misener ran the numbers and found the new metric counts nearly double what the old one did, meaning a show can appear to have roughly twice the plays overnight with no change in actual listening. The shared takeaway is simple: When a single platform can redefine a core metric on a whim, creators and advertisers are reminded how important consistent industry-wide standards can be.
The new media company Everywhere is founded by former Adelicious CEO Andy Goldsmith, former Adelicious COO Craig Eastwood, and Mike Wooller (formerly of DAX, Acast, and dmg media). Everywhere’s goal is to respond to the growing prevalence of audiences that follow creators across platforms instead of staying in one silo. The company launches with an roster of creators, with names set to be announced in the coming weeks.
Podcast advertisers who fixate on cheap reach and low CPMs are missing what actually makes the medium work, according to Earmax Media co-founder Andy Maxwell on a recent episode of PodBiz. He argues brands should put the focus on tangible conversions along with brand affinity and uplift, rather than the biggest possible audience. A smaller, tightly focused community can be worth more than raw scale, Maxwell says, because once you double down on a niche the reach figure matters far less than the community you build around it. He also points to the intentional nature of podcast listening, where audiences actively seek out shows and stay with them for one to three hours, as a rare advertising environment. Creative still has to earn its keep, though. A weak ad will underperform no matter how good the placement, and Maxwell advises brands to sponsor established shows rather than launch their own unless they are ready to commit for years.
…as for the rest of the news:
Rebecca Sheir and Eric Shimelonis are launching the independent family podcast Lions and Legends, a weekly run of fantastical retellings of myths, folktales and fables.
East Coast Studio has a cautionary tale for anyone leaning too hard on one platform, detailing how Spotify pulled its award-nominated Cassette Culture for ten weeks over music content despite proper licensing, a delisting the show survived only because no single platform drove more than 39% of its downloads.
New Cumulus Media and Westwood One research makes the ROI case for brand building, finding that every five-point lift in brand awareness drives a matching gain in share of search, with small brands seeing nearly seven times the benefit of large ones.
Buzzsprout has rebuilt its distribution page so podcasters can submit to Apple, Spotify and 14 other directories in a single click.
On the latest Podcast Perspectives, Voxtopica's Richard Fawal and More Equitable Democracy's Colin Cole explain why mission-driven organizations need a different podcast playbook, one that measures success by audience action and peer recommendation rather than download counts.
