Search for ‘Podsights’

September 27, 2024:

Exclusive: Spotify is to close the podcast analytics platform Chartable, as part of a re-focus at the company. Chartable users will receive an email a little later today detailing next steps. The tool, bought by Spotify in Feb 2022, offered “SmartLinks and SmartPromos” attribution tools; which we reported in 2022 were to be incorporated into Megaphone. That’s still the plan for Megaphone-hosted customers; though Spotify has also recently announced generally available attribution tools similar to SmartLinks for the Spotify app. Chartable’s co-founder Dave Zohrob left Spotify in July; Spotify’s other purchase at the time, Podsights, was integrated into Spotify Ad Analytics in June last year.

August 2, 2024:

The number of shows being tracked by attribution companies like Chartable and Podsights have increased by more than 21% year-on-year. More than one-in-five shows have trackers on them, with Podtrac and Chartable being the biggest companies.

June 13, 2023:

This new tool replaces Podsights, which Spotify bought in Feb 2022.

May 1, 2023:

Podsights has released its Q2/23 Podcast Advertising Benchmark Report. The average conversion rate in 2022 was 1.21%, a 9% year-over-year increase. Conversion rates for mobile app installs rose sharply by 44%, says the data.

February 22, 2023:

Podsights released the Q1 2023 podcast advertising benchmark report. It says that the average conversion rate in 2022 was 1.32%.

January 25, 2023:

Spotify's layoffs yesterday included some people at Podsights and Chartable, says The Verge. (We'd be happy to highlight those looking for new roles - editor@podnews.net).

January 11, 2023:

Brigid Judge is now Business Development Lead of USA at Audiomob. She had worked at Podsights since Dec 2019 as Director of Sales, and was the company's first sales hire.

December 9, 2022:

In Australia, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia claims the platform is outperforming the global conversion rate. Data from Podsights also shows ad spend is up 54% year-on-year.

December 8, 2022:

The Podsights Advertising Benchmark Report Q4 2022 has been released. Conversion rates are increasing: the company reports ads are performing 19% better this quarter.

December 2, 2022:

In other data, Podtrac remains the largest prefix tracking service, having signed iHeart's Spreaker. Spotify's Chartable and Podsights are #2. Amazon still runs podcasting: Cloudfront delivered 49.4% of all episodes in November (including ours).

November 10, 2022:

Open, transparent alternatives for download measurements proposed by others have included ODL from Podsights and OP3; alternatively, RAD from NPR and the podcast:events tag could measure plays, rather than downloads. Here's much more on podcast stats.

October 26, 2022:

In Sounds Profitable with Podsights Advisor this week, Bryan Barletta looks at the transparency issues around podcast downloads brought up by the recent revelation that podcast publishers have been buying plays in mobile games. "It’s clear that we are reaching a breaking point of confidence in the download," he says.

October 21, 2022:

Podsights Advisor, a podcast discovery tool to help advertisers find shows, is now free for all Podsights users.

October 18, 2022:

Spotify has added free access to Podsights and Chartable for Megaphone customers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The company has also announced that Reach plc is the latest publisher to join Megaphone and the Spotify Audience Network.

October 17, 2022:

Still with attribution, Podscribe has launched what they call independent, third-party attribution for advertising. The company already offers verification and reporting. (Independent? Third party? Both attribution companies Chartable and Podsights are owned by Spotify).

October 12, 2022:

Does podcasting have an ad frequency problem? In Sounds Profitable with Podsights this week, Bryan Barletta works with Podscribe to discover how big the problem really is.

October 6, 2022:

Spotify's Podsights ad measurement service has launched in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. The company is also testing Podsights tools on audio ads in music, partnering with Omnicom Media Group in the UK.

August 23, 2022:

Megaphone's integration with Podsights and Chartable is scheduled for September 19, according to the company's website. The company's announcement just said "September".

August 18, 2022:

Megaphone clients will get free access to both Chartable audience insights and the starter plan for Podsights ad attribution from September, Spotify has announced.

August 17, 2022:

Is podcasting's growth really a case of three steps forward, two steps back? In Sounds Profitable with Podsights this week, Tom Webster looks at the problem of churn.

August 15, 2022:

We're hearing the same podcast ad less often, says Podsights in its new Q3/22 benchmark report. Average frequency dipped from 6.3 to 4.7, which the company says improved ad effectiveness. The company also reports that programmatic ads work better than embedded ones.

August 12, 2022:

Advertising on ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is twice as effective as the global benchmark, according to new figures from Podsights.

August 11, 2022:

ICYMI: Sounds Profitable, with Podsights, published a piece on programmatic advertising for podcasters and how to get started.

July 6, 2022:

The number of times that podcast listeners hear the same ad has soared over the past year - more than doubling, according to research from Podsights. In a blog post, Westwood One's Pierre Bouvard suggests prioritising reach over frequency.

June 15, 2022:

In the weekly newsletter with Podsights, Sounds Profitable has announced "the first credible study of the profile of podcast creators in America". The research will be yearly, to track trends and changes in the creator space. The Creators, by Sounds Profitable and Edison Research, will be unveiled on Jun 28: you can register for the free webinar.

June 8, 2022:

In Sounds Profitable this week with Podsights, Tom Webster discusses the three different podcast rankers out there: and whether the calculation of total audience from them is accurate.

June 2, 2022:

The number of podcast episodes using Chartable, Podtrac and Podsights prefixes has increased. Of the top two, Chartable was seen on 4.87% of all episodes in May; Podtrac on 4.49%.

May 13, 2022:

Podsights unveiled an easier way for new users to install the Podsights Pixel. The pixel helps the company match people who've listened to an ad on a podcast, to people who've visited a website or purchased a product.

April 29, 2022:

How many times should someone hear your ad on a podcast? Between 2-5 times, says a new Podcast Advertising Benchmark Report, published by Spotify's Podsights. The data also says that brands should aim for at least 200,000 impressions when advertising on podcasts.

April 15, 2022:

Podcast advertising "needs solutions to reach full potential", says a piece by Chris Kelly in Marketing Dive. Morning Brew explains how Podsights, Chartable and other attribution solutions work. Meanwhile, improved ad-tech is one reason why the UK's Press Gazette suggests that the UK is on the cusp of a golden age for podcasts, but the article highlights that the country sees significantly less podcast ad revenue than other markets.

April 4, 2022:

Spurlock has also published the top episode trackers for March. Both Podsights and Chartable saw an increase in market share, despite their purchase by Spotify.

March 23, 2022:

Chartable is deprecating its SmartAds product, starting this week. June 30, 2022 will be the last day that new impressions tagged with Chartable SmartAds will be measurable; you'll be offered the opportunity to switch to Podsights. Both companies were bought by Spotify earlier this year.

March 9, 2022:

Podsights has unveiled a website redesign. Here's what's changed for publishers and brands - we hope you like flourescent colours.

March 8, 2022:

A few weeks back, but only surfacing for us now, Om Malik wrote analysis of Spotify's purchase of Chartable and Podsights. "In a few years, we will wake up and realize the immense impact of these two small tuck-in deals", he says.

February 25, 2022:

Noting that Chartable and Podsights have been bought by Spotify, Podtrac is owned by Authentic, and Triton Digital owned by iHeart, podcast analytics service PodInch has launched, offering "podcast analytics by an independent team which care about user privacy". (Blubrry remains independent, too).

February 23, 2022:

Responding to Spotify purchasing Podsights and Chartable, Bryan Barletta writes this week in Sounds Profitable that "Grading your own homework isn’t third-party measurement," adding "it’ll be a hard case to make to continue using Podsights when your actions in aggregate benefit a tool that is most beneficial to Spotify and their direct clients." You should subscribe to learn why he thinks we need to take collaborative action.

February 22, 2022:

iHeartPodcast Network Australia and Podsights have published their podcast advertising Benchmark Report for 2021. Conversion rate is 62% higher on iHeartPodcast Network Australia than the global average from Podsights, the data claims; and global data shows podcast ads are showing their highest engagement figures yet.

February 17, 2022:

Spotify has acquired Podsights and Chartable. Spotify describes Podsights as "a leading podcast advertising measurement service that helps advertisers better measure and scale their podcast advertising", and Chartable as "a podcast analytics platform that enables publishers to know and grow their podcast audiences through promotional attribution and audience insight tools". No terms were given.

February 1, 2022:

Podsights has released its Q1/22 Conversions Benchmark Report. Mid-roll ads work best, says the study, with the average conversion rate being 1.42%.

November 2, 2021:

After an incident we reported at one of their meetings earlier in the year, the IAB TechLab has posted an expected code of conduct for future meetings.

October 28, 2021:

In Sounds Profitable with Podsights today, Bryan Barletta says that Spotify's new offerings for buyers of podcast advertising will benefit all the industry, not just Spotify.

October 20, 2021:

Podsights has launched "Advisor", a tool to help advertisers uncover the hidden gems in podcast advertising. It's also released a new Benchmark Report, which is free to download.

October 13, 2021:

Sounds Profitable en Español starts today, as Bryan Barletta explains in Sounds Profitable with Podsights. The podcast adtech newsletter will be translated and produced using technology from Veritone MARVEL․ai: and so will the Sounds Profitable en Español podcast, with Bryan sounding as if he speaks Spanish fluently… but he doesn't.

September 16, 2021:

Attribution company Podsights is adding attribution for ads in streaming radio and music services, as well as podcast ads. The company pulled its contract from AdvertiseCast last month.

August 26, 2021:

Podsights has terminated its contract with Libsyn's AdvertiseCast, according to a notice on Podsights' website. Podsights attribution will not be available to advertisers attempting to run campaigns on Libsyn's AdvertiseCast from Oct 11. Podnews understands a notice of termination was sent after a Libsyn employee accosted a female Podsights staff member at a virtual event in April, but the banner only appeared after Podsights was called "malicious" and "ignorant" by the same person, Libsyn's Rob Walch, during a session at Podcast Movement. Walch accused Podsights of "f#cking this community" in an aggressive speech that we're told is part of a pattern of targeted behaviour against Podsights.

July 28, 2021:

Changes at Chartable? In May, CRO Christopher Calvi left the company, Account Exec Megan Johnson moved to Podsights, and COO Karo Chakhlasyan left this month to rejoin Wondery.

July 23, 2021:

Podsights and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network have released details on the ad conversion rates for the network, which they say are higher than social media channels.

July 12, 2021:

Podsights has launched an audience intelligence tool, allowing you to know demographic information about your audience. They've also added additional tweaks including a campaign approval flow.

April 19, 2021:

Podsights has released their Conversions Benchmark Report for Q1/21. The company has partnered with Experian to show demographic information for campaigns that the company ran over the past year, and which categories do best in podcast advertising.

March 24, 2021:

How do podcast prefix analytics work? Bryan Barletta looks into the tech used by companies like Podtrac, Podsights, Chartable and Blubrry, in Sounds Profitable this week, sponsored by Claritas. Subscribe here

March 17, 2021:

Use Chartable or Podsights to measure your traffic? Overcast will no longer appear in your data: Marco Arment, the developer, has decided to skip those redirects entirely, after they have, he claims, become increasingly affected by ad-blocking DNS servers. "Most download links that would otherwise redirect through these widely-blocked domains will now try to skip that hop and go to whatever’s after them", he says on Overcast's Slack channel. "I keep getting emails and tweets from people whose downloads are being blocked at the network level by these DNS blocklists, and they’ve gotten frequent enough that I need to do something." Podtrac is currently unaffected by this action, though.

March 3, 2021:

Podsights has launched Podsights for Publishers. They are using their recent acquisition of pod․link to create measurable ways for publishers to grow their shows, whether by promoting them in other podcasts or via social links, all quantified and measured within Podsights.

February 11, 2021:

Podcast link-sharing platform pod․link has been acquired by Podsights. The deal also includes its founder, Nathan Gathright. The product is now free to podcasters.

January 26, 2021:

Jordan Harbinger is spending almost $40,000 every month on host-read ads for his podcast, according to Sounds Profitable, Podnews's ad-tech newsletter with Podsights. Bryan Barletta describes how Harbinger does it: and what he looks for from podcast hosts. "For every $1 invested, Jordan sees approximately $3 back in advertising revenue and an increase in downloads in the tens of thousands every month". (You should subscribe).

January 19, 2021:

Podsights has shared their Podsights Benchmark Report, a free report showing data from podcast advertising lift reports and conversions. In it, we discover that the average CPM of all Podsights campaigns in 2020 was US$25, ads for automotive lead to the most purchases, and podcast ads heard on iPhone outperform those on Android devices.

November 20, 2020:

Experian has bought Tapad for $280m. Attribution company Podsights describes them this way: "A number of providers have sprung up in the last decade offering … massive [databases] of every household IP mapped to identifiers they have seen at that IP. Tapad and Drawbridge are two of the largest." Acast, AdsWizz, Podsights and Chartable use them among others.

November 10, 2020:

ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia have signed with Podsights to enable podcast measurement and attribution for every campaign.

October 28, 2020:

TWiT has announced they're to test Podsights for attribution data.

October 19, 2020:

Podsights has released data about "sequential advertising" - when you put ads for the same client in more than one spot in your podcast. One of the data points: buying both pre-roll and mid-roll works 43% better in terms of return on ad spend than a midroll ad alone. The rest of the research is free on their website.

September 21, 2020:

You're incorrectly identifying up to 50% of your user agents - increasing visibility into what player the user is actively engaging with in both web and streaming, where we were previously blind, is a massive win — in today’s Sounds Profitable, our new adtech newsletter, with Podsights

September 15, 2020:

Advertising on podcasts more than doubles your money according to new data from Podsights - giving an average return of $2.42 for every dollar spent.

September 14, 2020:

Open Podcast Analytics Workgroup (OPAWG) shows that our space can come together to better document and improve an area that takes considerable effort to manage: user agents. — in today's Sounds Profitable, our new adtech newsletter, with Podsights

September 8, 2020:

The digital ad space is watching as the bottom falls out of their data collection methods. But how exactly does Apple’s Age of Privacy impact podcasting? - in today's Sounds Profitable, our new adtech newsletter, with Podsights

August 3, 2020:

For advertising, how well do podcasts convert? Podsights has posted their Conversion Benchmark Report, based on 1.2 billion ad impressions from $28m of advertising. Podcasting converts significantly better than social media, says the data. Embedded ads work twice as well as dynamically-inserted ones, the company also reports.

July 8, 2020:

Megaphone will now offer attribution for ads booked through the Megaphone Targeted Marketplace, following an agreement with Podsights.

May 6, 2020:

Podsights dives deep into state-by-state data. In New York State, morning listening dipped by half during the pandemic; Iowa, however, is seeing much less impact. "If downloads at 7am drop, and stay down, people are staying at home", say Podsights, adding that a drop in download numbers is therefore a good thing. (The biggest change? Those safe people in New Jersey.)

March 30, 2020:

Podsights has published a piece about the current effects on podcast advertising from the coronavirus. It reports downloads are holding steady; but that many downloads have moved to later in the day. The company estimates that advertising revenue is going to be down for Q2 by about 20%. (Also: almost half of all podcast publishers surveyed said they were making podcasts about the coronavirus.)

January 28, 2020:

Podsights has merged its analytics and research service, launched a set of new functionality, and raised $1.5m. They've also added a number of new team members, and have a new logo with a kazoo. The company offers analytics and attribution services for podcasters and advertisers.

December 19, 2019:

Podcast host Libsyn is restricting its publishers from using some analytics companies. The company's recent platform update to add "URL prepends" for companies like Podtrac and Blubrry does not allow publishers to add Podsights, a company that measures the effect of podcast advertising. Attempts fail with an error, saying that the prepend is not compliant with privacy legislation. Podsights, however, say in a statement to us that "Podsights is GDPR and CCPA compliant, and data privacy is core to our business." Libsyn tells us: "We are taking these steps to help Libsyn, our customers and Libsyn partners better comply with CCPA and data privacy best practices globally, and because we feel it is necessary to protect listener privacy," though their statement does not mention Podsights by name.

August 7, 2019:

Posting on Medium, our Editor, James Cridland, has written his analysis of the recently announced Open Downloads initiative.

August 5, 2019:

Podsights have released an Open Downloads specification, designed to be open and comparable with others. They have cited their problems with the IAB v2 standard, and explained that they have "decided to open source a spec for how we count downloads and share our blacklists with the podcast community as a whole." The company has also released code to calculate downloads according to the simple spec on Github.

April 1, 2019:

Our friends at Podsights also point us to The Weekly Skip: a podcast of hosts from hundreds of shows just reading brand names. The Quip episode is our favourite.

December 12, 2018:

Podsights Research has been made free for everyone. The product continuously samples episodes from hundreds of podcasts, and offers insight into how brands use them to advertise. Their announcement notes that Apple advertised using podcasting briefly at the end of September.

November 20, 2018:

Podsights is a company tracking advertisers and sponsorships within podcasts. Here's their view of what Quip, an electronic toothbrush company, is buying.