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Chasing the Numbers with Trent Anderson · We Built This Brand

0:00
And
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it's something like 360, 000 business podcasts that have
0:02
ever been produced are now no longer producing new episodes.
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That number is up almost 150, 000 since this report we did last year.
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Welcome to We Build This Brand.
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I'm your host, Chris Hill.
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And today we're talking with Trent Anderson,
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the head of growth and strategy at PodChaser.
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Now this subject is very near and dear to my heart.
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If you know, I run a company called HumblePod.
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We are a podcast production company.
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We actually rely on Podchaser for a lot of data
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and analytics and reporting for our clients.
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They've been really useful over the years in helping us strategize
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on how to approach markets, approach new shows, and what other
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shows already exist in the industry to get us a feel for.
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The potential for a show, the size of a show,
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or what other folks are doing in the industry.
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They are essentially the IMDB of podcasting,
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or at least that's, that's their stated goal.
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And I love that goal because you can go and put your own profile up.
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And get credit for all the work that you do on podcasting.
1:03
So if you're a producer, if you're an editor, if you're a host listening
1:06
to this, or if you've even guested on a show, go check them out.
1:09
And you can actually go and list yourself wherever you've been a
1:12
guest on other podcasts and get yourself registered into their system.
1:16
Today we talked about the business of podcasting,
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a lot around the growth of Podchaser itself.
1:24
We really got into a deep dive on what's
1:27
happening within the podcast industry right now.
1:29
So I think you'll get a lot out of this one.
1:31
It's a really insightful conversation.
1:34
They had some really interesting data that they were able to present.
1:37
Some things that actually surprised me.
1:38
I actually learned a lot through this
1:40
interview with Trent and I think you will too.
1:43
So without further ado, let's get into it.
1:45
My interview with Trent Anderson of Podchaser.
1:53
Welcome back to We Built This Brand.
1:55
I'm your host, Chris Hill.
1:56
Today with me, I have Trent Anderson from Podchaser.
2:00
Trent, welcome.
2:01
I like to start these conversations off just getting to know a
2:03
little bit about you, a little bit about your background, and
2:06
then we'll talk a little bit about Podchaser and the work you've
2:09
done there and the brand you've helped to build, very honestly.
2:11
With that said, I'll let you take it away.
2:13
Tell me a little bit about your background.
2:15
Where are you from and what led you to Podchaser?
2:17
Yeah, so my role at Podchaser, I'm the head of growth and strategy.
2:21
What does that mean?
2:22
I do a lot of the marketing efforts as well as a lot of our data strategy
2:25
and identifying which user groups are going to be our most impactful.
2:29
And it didn't always start out that way.
2:32
I actually came to Podchaser as head of RevOps.
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So I got to see all parts of the business,
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including sales, marketing, customer success.
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And what we really tried to identify is Figure out what kind of through
2:42
line existed between our customers and how can we best serve them?
2:45
My background actually is in the agency world.
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So I spent about a decade in the agency landscape
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before I made the move over to Podchaser.
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I'd always worked kind of on the periphery of the podcast industry.
2:56
And when I.
2:57
Join Podchaser.
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It was like a full fledged baptism into all things podcasts.
3:03
So with that, I think there's a lot of interesting
3:05
things that are happening in the space today.
3:07
And it's certainly undergone quite a few changes since I jumped
3:11
in, but there's one thing that remains constant and that's how
3:14
many different ways brands, agencies, advertisers earn media
3:18
opportunities can, can exist and win in the podcast landscape.
3:22
So looking forward to unpacking some of those learnings with you.
3:25
Yeah, excited to hear more because I know a lot of our audience are going
3:28
to be marketing professionals and advertising agencies and folks like that.
3:32
Learning how to dive into the world of podcasting, especially the podcast
3:35
advertising side, I think is really challenging for most folks because it
3:39
just seems like such an anomalous area and you don't know what to pay people.
3:42
You don't know how much revenue could be generated from
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doing a deal and it's just risky for a lot of people.
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So I think a lot of the.
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Smaller organizations typically keep their distance, but I've
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seen just on our side of the business, like I've seen a lot with
3:56
marketing and advertising and paid ads, especially with, with
3:59
our clients be really successful on both sides of the aisle.
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So it's, it's really cool.
4:04
And yeah, really excited to dive into that.
4:06
So let's, let's do dive into that a little bit.
4:09
So tell me about Podchaser.
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What, what was it's Origin story basically tell me
4:15
the origin story as all good origin stories, uh,
4:18
start happened on reddit of all places, right?
4:20
Really?
4:21
Yeah.
4:22
So one of our founders, Bradley Davis was trying to
4:26
find a podcast database and he couldn't find one.
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So he took to reddit and.
4:30
Just started messaging random subs saying, Hey, is there anything that exists?
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That's kind of like an IMDB, but for podcasts.
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And the answer was no, but this kind gentleman in Australia named Ben
4:43
ended up becoming our CTO and actually building this alongside Bradley.
4:48
And then we had a couple more casts of characters, including Cole
4:51
Raven, one of our co founders and Ryan Stock, who's our chief brand
4:56
officer, kind of, you Build this thing from, from soup to nuts and
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effectively that's, that's what we set out to do is build a database
5:04
that was going to allow podcast listeners to find their next favorite
5:07
podcast in a concise, clean way, which we all know databases can do.
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So that's how it all jumped off was from a Reddit inquiry.
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That is crazy.
5:18
And so it was really more of an IMDB database to begin with.
5:22
So what does that, what does that mean for podcasters?
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Am I on there as a celebrity basically?
5:27
Of course.
5:28
Well, you, Chris, of course, are a celebrity.
5:29
No, but you know, we, we took into account a couple of different things, right?
5:33
So as, as we all know, the podcast industry is
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notoriously difficult from a discovery perspective.
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And why is that?
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Well, it's a highly fragmented industry with
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relatively low NPS or net promoter score.
5:45
What do I mean by that?
5:46
From a fragmentation perspective, of course, you've got your four major
5:49
platforms in the Apples, Amazon, Spotify, and then Google slash YouTube.
5:54
And from the NPS perspective, I'll take myself as an example.
5:58
When I'm at the gym, I'm listening to podcasts on
6:00
Spotify, but when something catches my ear or tickles
6:03
my brain, I pop over to YouTube to go deeper into that.
6:07
That episode.
6:08
So you've got a lot of context switching between
6:09
different platforms and different devices.
6:12
And what that means is there's no central aggregated place
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to get all of this podcast information in one fell swoop.
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That's effectively where Podchaser began is.
6:23
Almost as like an aggregator across the entirety of the industry.
6:25
So we take information from here, pull it up from there, and
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then dump it all into this one central database, which is, which
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is Podchaser and then Podchaser Pro, which became our first
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commercial utility product from a brand perspective as well.
6:39
Yeah, it's, it's, uh, really solving for the
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discovery issue within podcast landscape.
6:44
That's really cool.
6:45
And, um, I mean, I've seen some of it myself
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as, Just full disclosure for anyone listening.
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I am a customer of Podchaser and we've done work with you all for
6:55
quite a number of years now and love being able to use your back end
6:58
analytics and data to understand things deeper about the audience
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and about about everything that goes on within the podcasting world.
7:05
There's just so much perspective that you all have because you are
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starting to aggregate, more and more of that data, to that point, like,
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where, I'm probably getting ahead of myself by asking this at this point,
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so this is contingent, this is a bit of a tangent I guess, As we think
7:20
about that data and that technology, that's another big part of what
7:23
you're doing too, because it's not just taking all this information and
7:26
putting it places like on the back in the pro, like I can see estimates
7:30
for download numbers and they're verifiably relatively accurate.
7:35
So, what is all that about?
7:37
Again, when we were first starting, To build a database product
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that's going to have commercial utility, you have to do something
7:43
a little bit more than just being an IMDB for podcasts, right?
7:47
And we go the route of raising venture capital, which, which we're able to do.
7:51
And of course, VCs want to see, well, how the heck are you going
7:54
to make money off of this thing outside of being just IMDB?
7:57
That's when we started to add different layers of discovery.
8:00
And the first one that we brought in was reach.
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So how many people are listening to a podcast on a monthly basis?
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We had a couple of different means of doing this.
8:08
We had data partnerships with podcast player apps, with
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hosting providers, with, with verified publishers as well.
8:14
And that was a really good first, first step.
8:16
And what was interesting to us is that first kind of.
8:20
Product market fit deal that we got was actually from PR agencies that
8:24
were looking for earned media opportunities for, for their clients.
8:28
So we took the reach information plus the publicly available RSS feeds.
8:33
So for anyone who don't know the underlying tech that kind of
8:35
powers the podcast industry is this RSS feed and Apple had an
8:40
email address that was associated with every RSS feed, right?
8:43
So we initially scraped those emails and then added the reach information.
8:47
So now PR agencies were using the database to find earned media opportunities
8:52
for their clients by pitching the contacts that were associated with it as well.
8:56
So that was kind of like that first foray.
8:58
And then we started to add additional data layers.
9:00
So you talked about audience insights.
9:02
That's one of the kind of bigger features that
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our pro users enjoy and deploy on a daily basis.
9:09
So what we do from an audience perspective is we pull in the social
9:13
handles for the podcast and now actually the podcast hosts as well.
9:17
And that, what that allows us to do across YouTube, Instagram,
9:20
Facebook, and Twitter is essentially create a social graph.
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And the social graph is going to show us things like age and
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gender splits, household income, marital status, parental
9:27
status, interests, affinities, and even geographies.
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So now in a, in a, Kind of like a commercial utility sense.
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We know how big a show is.
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We know who's likely listening to a show and we
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now know how to get in contact with the show.
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This earned media landscape kind of starts to evolve into more.
9:46
Utility for advertisers as well.
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And that's where we introduced that next layer of data, which is our brand
9:52
sponsor data, which we collect by transcribing every episode in the top
9:56
5, 000 shows and through equal parts, AI and ML, we're able to identify.
10:02
Brand sponsors identify who's spending, how much they've
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been spending and how long they've been spending.
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Again, for the top 5, 000 shows.
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So again, if you're familiar with tools like Zoom Info from
10:12
a B2B perspective, they're providing contact information, org
10:16
charts, revenue estimates, news, scoops, that sort of thing.
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A lot of ways.
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Podtracer Pro is kind of like a Zoom info, but for the podcast industry as well.
10:25
Then you layer in some of these additional, um, kind of
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features and our, our PR use case often call us like a scission
10:31
or a muck rack, but purpose built for podcasts as well.
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So in any case, data is king in our world and
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we're always striving to, uh, get more data points.
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And I think for the last time I checked, we're up to like 1.
10:45
7 billion data points and that's across 5.
10:47
4 million podcasts.
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So
10:48
That's crazy.
10:50
The podcast has a pulse.
10:51
Uh, we've got data on it.
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I, I'm sure your data goes a lot deeper than what you all even disclosed
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in the research and things, the estimates and things you could probably
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get a lot closer to just because I don't know how all that legalese works.
11:05
I won't bait you into something there about telling
11:07
me something you shouldn't about the algorithm.
11:09
But I am curious, like, or I'm surprised when you
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said, Hey, we just use transcripts for the advertisers.
11:14
I figured it was more like, If you had to strategically
11:17
have a partnership and all that, but you did the obvious.
11:20
I mean, you're already pulling in all this data.
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Why not use ai, auto transcribe it and pull out the advertiser names?
11:26
That's really interesting to know that, that y'all are doing that.
11:29
And of course, for people that want to advertise on shows, it helps
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them figure out where, where they're similar advertisers are, right?
11:36
Or their competitors are at the very least.
11:38
That's a really useful tool in that respect.
11:40
Where are you finding benefit to like, because all of
11:43
what we're talking about is in the pro package, right?
11:44
Like someone who just has a free account wouldn't have access to this.
11:47
Where does someone get started with the pro package?
11:50
Or more importantly, I guess, is like, who are the people that
11:53
are finding the most value out of the pro package right now?
11:56
I think there's a couple of different use cases.
11:58
Of course, there's going to be the earned media use case,
12:00
which is where we see a lot of our PR professionals and
12:02
agencies, and even brands directly, using the pro package.
12:05
Pro to find podcast opportunities for their key opinion leaders,
12:09
their clients, their thought leaders to go out and what I like to call
12:12
evangelize their market at scale or evangelize their category at scale.
12:17
And we've seen some pretty interesting research
12:19
and insights from what we've looked at.
12:21
So even looking at like the Some of the top VC backed B2B SaaS
12:26
organizations, they typically enjoy a greater level of product market fit.
12:31
And their biggest goal is to be able to say, we built this
12:36
product for this reason, for this user group, for this use case,
12:39
and we now we need to go out and evangelize kind of this, this.
12:43
Thought or this idea or this process or this product at scale.
12:47
And that's, what's really interesting about podcasts is, you know, Chris,
12:51
so many years have gone by where if you wanted to gain audience from a
12:56
speaking perspective, you had to fly out to a trade show and you had to
12:59
sit in a dusty motel in Reno, Nevada with 50, a hundred, 250 of your peers.
13:05
But with podcasts.
13:07
Depending on the show, of course, and depending on the audience and that
13:10
sort of thing, you can have that same level of engagement and have that same
13:14
kind of like public speaking element, but you can scale it almost infinitum.
13:19
I think that's one of the really interesting things for organizations
13:23
that have prioritized thought leadership is using like this
13:26
podcast guest speaking circuit, if you will, to reach the audience.
13:30
They're target buyers in the place where they're consuming information,
13:33
which oh, by the way, has undergone a seismic shift in the last 10 years,
13:37
partly pandemic related, but also just consumer preferences have changed
13:40
considerably and where we're getting our information and news has changed.
13:43
And, uh, actually we.
13:45
participated in a Pew Research study last year, and some of the
13:49
data from Pew's research suggested that 87 percent of podcast
13:53
listeners tune in to learn something new, and 77 percent of podcast
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listeners tune in specifically to hear other people's opinions.
14:00
When you talk about peer review, when you talk about
14:03
getting information and insights and kind of this uh,
14:08
double layer of, of authenticity and thought leadership.
14:11
It makes a pretty compelling case that if you're not doing
14:14
any sort of guest speaking on podcasts, what are you doing?
14:17
And where are you spending that money instead?
14:19
That's always going to be in play for this earned media use case.
14:22
And then with the paid media use case, you mentioned this at the top.
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There's a lot of brands that are hesitant to throw
14:29
money into the podcast advertising landscape.
14:31
And for good reason, we've been better or worse brainwashed into
14:35
thinking that if we can't track something in Google Analytics or Google
14:38
AdWords, then it probably isn't moving the needle for us whatsoever.
14:41
And with podcasts, of course, it's not really a Click based attribution system.
14:47
It's an auditory system.
14:48
And as much as we want to throw links into show notes and
14:51
that sort of thing, I mean, I'm sure you've seen this, the
14:54
data suggests like a lot of people just aren't clicking.
14:57
There's this on trackability in some ways that I think
15:01
prevents a lot of brands from, from moving forward.
15:04
But we actually just did a pretty interesting research
15:06
study and looking at our audience data, specifically looking
15:09
at senior executives and how they're consuming podcasts.
15:12
And this was inspired by Signal Hill Insights.
15:15
So Jeff Fidler and his team did a survey based study on about
15:18
12, 000 senior executives and how they listen to podcasts.
15:21
And then we kind of came over the top and layered in some of our data.
15:24
And what's really interesting is the senior executive, which, you
15:30
know, most B2B brands are trying to reach in one way, shape, or form.
15:33
They love podcasts even more than the general consumer does.
15:36
And I think that spells some.
15:39
Pretty significant ramifications for how folks are
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going to reach their, their, their target audiences.
15:45
So more to come.
15:46
Definitely check back with me when that, that research is
15:49
published, which should be in the next couple of weeks here too.
15:52
Do send that my way so I can include it in the show notes for folks
15:55
because that, that's the stuff I nerd out on is like seeing how
15:58
that influences people and seeing the effectiveness of podcasting
16:02
really play out, I think is really cool to be able to, to witness.
16:06
But yeah, you don't know a lot of times it does feel like that, like you
16:09
said, the black box of advertising where we have found and help clients or
16:13
guide clients on advertising is if you're getting an advertiser, they need to
16:17
go into it, at least right now, mainly knowing it's a branding and awareness
16:20
play, they're going to make people aware about their product and their service.
16:24
It may be a very small audience, but you've got the person, but with
16:28
the microphone endorsing it, and that's going to have a lot of value.
16:31
That's going to have a lot of weight.
16:32
Well, I've got a small audience here, but if I were to endorse something,
16:36
it would be something that people would say, Hey, you talked about this.
16:39
I would at least get a one on one.
16:40
Hey, you recommended that I go and get a Harry's razor.
16:44
Should I really do that?
16:45
And I was like, yeah, of course you should.
16:46
Or people will come to me and say, well, you recommended we do
16:48
this, or I've even had from podcasts I've worked on in the past.
16:51
Well, we went there because you talked about it on your podcast.
16:54
So, anecdotally it works, you know, it's finding that actual hard data, um,
17:00
that people are always dying and looking for, but I think you all are on the
17:03
right path with how you're structuring it and helping people think about it.
17:07
If only we could just track people down to the nth degree and figure out
17:10
where their eyesight goes and nobody would freak out about that, right?
17:14
Right.
17:15
Not at all.
17:15
Yeah.
17:15
I mean, that's, that's the thing with the deprecation of third party cookies
17:19
and this behavior based targeting that that's going away in all respects.
17:23
Now, Google's kind of punted this a couple
17:26
times, but it's still going to happen.
17:28
And I think consumer privacy is only going to increase, not decrease.
17:32
And what's interesting is in working with some of these Madison
17:34
Avenue types of agencies, the cream of the crop, they're
17:38
looking for ways to kind of revert back to what we would.
17:42
Typically call like the classical or traditional marketing and advertising.
17:47
Think about like Don Draper, Mad Men era, right?
17:49
They, they didn't have click based attribution there.
17:52
And I think in a lot of ways, brands, organizations
17:56
have been kind of lulled to sleep with.
17:59
Well, if I can't click it, if I can't track it, then it just doesn't exist.
18:03
And really that that's not the case.
18:05
So we've, we've advised, especially clients in the B2B space to put what we
18:09
call self-reported attribution on high intent landing pages on their website.
18:13
And it's, it's quite simple and seems so rudimentary,
18:16
but you just ask how they hear about you.
18:18
And you'd be shocked with how specific some folks can get.
18:21
And I mean, there are, there are a few agencies in this world,
18:25
like Refine Labs and Chris Walker that have kind of evangelized.
18:28
Uh, this, but he can say confidently that 60 percent of his
18:31
agency's revenue comes from people listening to his podcast.
18:34
And again, like they're saying, I listened to 67 episodes
18:39
before I actually raised my hand and requested a demo.
18:42
Obviously the results not typical, but if you're
18:43
not collecting these qualitative insights absent the
18:47
quantitative insights from podcasts specifically.
18:49
really kind of shooting in the dark.
18:51
Let's, let's revert back to some of those, those
18:53
classical marketing principles that really are.
18:55
Um, you know, first order impact.
18:58
Yeah, I mean, similarly and we have a client who's talked
19:00
about this publicly on his podcast, so I'm not saying anything
19:03
that's proprietary, but they had a client where They had an
19:06
advertiser with them, and they had stopped advertising with them.
19:09
And then they came back, and they asked them, Why did you come back?
19:12
And they said, Well, we noticed sales dropped off, and we
19:15
did a survey of all our recent sales over the past year, and
19:17
we realized how many of them were coming from your podcast.
19:20
So we're back, and we're going to put money into this.
19:23
Definitely requires a little more due diligence,
19:25
but it definitely has a lot of benefits.
19:27
Something else I've noticed, On the site is this thing called a power score.
19:32
What is a power score aside from, I know if I'm at 100,
19:36
I'm like the best podcast ever, and I'm beating Joe Rogan.
19:39
Our industry is really dominated by the north star metric of
19:43
downloads and Especially for most podcasts, if you're obsessing
19:48
over the download number, you're probably measuring the wrong thing.
19:51
We definitely think reach and downloads are important,
19:54
but our power score is comprised of 30 different data
19:57
points, which are all kind of unique to what we do.
20:00
And we'll take into account things like popularity over time, velocity
20:03
of popularity, engagement across some of the major platforms as well.
20:08
And really, this power score aims to be like a
20:11
popularity metric as opposed to just a pure Reach number.
20:14
And this also is, is inclusive of things like chart positions.
20:19
A lot of people look at podcast chart positions
20:21
and think it's only a measure of reach.
20:23
It's actually not, it's also looking at the
20:24
velocity of growth and popularity over time as well.
20:27
This power score really aims to be more of
20:30
more of a signal for, is this podcast popular?
20:34
And, and if so, how can I as a brand or an agency tap into it, whether
20:39
it's from an earned perspective or a paid perspective, in short,
20:43
Power score is a popular popularity metric that aims to kind of be
20:47
a more inclusive metric as opposed to just a pure download number.
20:50
Yeah, I think that's really helpful.
20:52
We've used it as we've guided clients on how they build
20:54
their shows and what shows even compare themselves against.
20:58
Because one thing I've found interesting, and maybe you can help shed
21:00
some light on this, is that sometimes I'll see a power score that's
21:03
really high and their show isn't doing that great in terms of total show.
21:07
So it sounds like, Some of that popularity score has a lot of
21:10
weight in that number that may not translate to total show audience.
21:14
Definitely.
21:15
Yeah.
21:15
That's a really good insight.
21:17
And if I'm a brand or if I'm a PR person and I'm trying to judge a portfolio
21:24
of shows, and let's say two out of the three have 10, 000 plus downloads a
21:29
month, but have 50 to 60 power scores versus another show that might only have
21:33
5, 000 downloads a month, but has a power score and close to the 70 range.
21:38
I'm always going to prioritize that smaller show, but higher power
21:41
score, because it's going to be more indicative of engagement.
21:44
It's going to be more indicative of velocity of popularity.
21:46
It's going to be more indicative of potentially
21:48
reaching the audience that I want to reach as well.
21:50
You're always going to want to pair this data with the
21:52
audience data and kind of build a more kind of comprehensive.
21:56
View of a podcast as well.
21:58
It's not ubiquitous within the industry quite
22:01
yet, but we definitely think it's well on its way.
22:03
So we've talked a bit about Podchaser and the nuts and bolts there.
22:07
Part of We Built This Brand is talking to the people behind the brand.
22:10
So I want to talk about you for a little bit if that's okay.
22:13
Yeah.
22:13
And we'd just love to get into more about about your role
22:16
as, you know, head of growth and strategy there at Podchaser.
22:19
We'd just like to know, like, what, what do you do on a daily basis?
22:23
I know that's kind of a basic question, but I would love to
22:26
know, like, what is your day in, day out like there at Podchaser?
22:29
We're a data company first and foremost, so it's kind of
22:32
incumbent upon me to find data and trends that are going to be
22:36
interesting and actionable for the entirety of our user base.
22:41
What will this look like?
22:42
We've got data on which podcasts are active versus idle.
22:46
And a couple weeks ago, we published some data talking about
22:49
the number of business podcasts that have gone inactive.
22:52
And it's something like 360, 000.
22:54
Business podcasts that have ever been produced
22:56
are now no longer producing new episodes.
22:59
That number is up almost 150, 000 since this report we did last year.
23:03
Make no mistake, there's obviously huge opportunity in the podcast
23:07
landscape, but if you go in with the wrong intentions for why you
23:09
want to start a branded podcast and use this as part of your own
23:12
media strategy, the podcast graveyard is littered with These podcasts
23:18
that don't make it past six episodes or, or even fewer in some cases.
23:23
Well, that's when "pod fade" hits is about six or seven, right?
23:26
That's right.
23:26
We'll use that kind of data and information to help guide our clients
23:31
or prospects thoughts and decisions on, am I getting into this field?
23:36
for the right reason.
23:36
Is this something that I can create as a bankable
23:39
kind of content pillar for my organization?
23:42
So that's, that's one example.
23:44
Another recent one that we did is in looking
23:46
at some of the podcast advertising landscape.
23:48
We like to segment it by different category types as well.
23:51
So we just released some data on reality TV podcasts.
23:54
Now, hand up.
23:55
I've Probably watch more Bravo than I care to admit.
23:59
I'm my wife's companion for, for Bravo watch alongs, of course.
24:02
What was interesting is I started to realize like a lot of these
24:05
reality shows have these pseudo influencers, celebrities as, as
24:10
quote unquote talent within the show and one way, shape or form,
24:14
they're all promoting some sort of product kind of on the backend.
24:17
So we wanted to do a deep dive to see.
24:19
In the reality TV space, how many of these influencers have their own
24:25
products and how many of them kind of utilizing this as a channel?
24:29
And then, oh, by the way, they're also standing up their own podcasts in
24:33
conjunction with their appearances on these reality TV programs, right?
24:37
And so we took a look at, of all the reality TV shows,
24:41
how many reality TV podcasts exist, and there's thousands.
24:44
And then we'll look at what the overall audience Composition
24:47
looks like across the whole spectrum of reality TV podcasts.
24:51
And some interesting things that we pulled out of that is, yeah, of
24:54
course, 70 percent of the reality TV podcast audiences identify as female.
24:59
So not necessarily surprising, but 20 percent identify as male hand up.
25:04
That's me.
25:05
And then, uh, another 10 percent are about mixed.
25:07
Then we'll also layer in things like, what is the
25:10
average income of these listeners to reality TV podcasts?
25:13
And we're framing all of this up contextually.
25:17
So advertisers that are spending money on reality TV, whether it's through
25:21
cable or connected TV or, or other digital channels can see that they probably
25:27
are missing out on a significant opportunity in the reality TV podcast space.
25:32
Lo and behold, we looked at some sponsors and yeah, they
25:35
were putting in six, seven figures into TV and then.
25:40
Maybe 25, 000 in reality TV podcasts, when in fact those
25:45
same fans that they're trying to reach can be reached at a
25:47
significantly lower cost through the podcast advertising medium.
25:51
In any case, we're always doing data stories like this as an
25:55
aforementioned senior exec data story as well, uh, which is under embargo.
25:59
But, uh, You know, this is what I do day in and day out.
26:02
Try to read the cultural zeitgeist and figure out what's
26:05
going to be of importance and how can we build some insights
26:09
and actionable ideas off of the data that we provide.
26:13
You mentioned, you know, you've, you've been in this industry for a while now.
26:16
What changes have you seen just in the time you've been with Podchaser?
26:21
What changes have you seen in trends in podcasting?
26:24
The biggest difference is the era of minimum guarantees, or what we call MGs
26:30
in this space, has gone away, which is, I think, is largely a good thing,
26:34
and look no further than some of the Spotify exclusives, which effectively
26:38
Spotify paid Trader's Top Dollar to be exclusive on the Spotify platform.
26:42
And of course, Joe Rogan is one of them, Alex
26:45
Cooper of Caller Daddy is another one of them.
26:47
And recently we've seen Spotify doing about face on this kind of closed podcast
26:52
ecosystem to now opening up their content to all platforms and channels as well.
26:58
And what happened with that kind of closed ecosystem is
27:02
that Spotify's of the world tried to Basically be the single
27:07
source of truth for very, very popular content creators.
27:10
And this also included like, uh, Harry and Meghan and
27:14
some of the Royals, which, you know, I'm butchering.
27:16
In any case, these minimum guarantees got
27:19
a lot of big tech companies in hot water.
27:21
And even some of the podcast production companies probably,
27:24
you know, no greater example of this in cast media
27:27
who got into significant hot water for not paying out.
27:30
They're creators and comedians like Theo Vaughn took to Twitter and
27:34
other places and said, Hey, I'm driving significant value for these
27:38
organizations, but I haven't been paid on a single thing that I've done.
27:41
I think now as we're exiting kind of that minimum guarantee world.
27:46
What you're going to continue to see is just like talented
27:48
creators are going to be able to effectively write their
27:51
own checks by having this more open podcast ecosystem.
27:54
So that's really from like a macro level.
27:56
Now on a more SMB mid market side of things,
28:01
you see a lot more podcasts start and then.
28:04
Don't see through to the finish line, whatever that finish line might be.
28:07
And obviously that, that data that I just referenced
28:09
with the number of business podcasts that have gone idle,
28:12
uh, in the last year, those are some staggering numbers.
28:15
So I think if, if you're starting a branded show or want
28:17
to have this podcast be part of your content pillar,
28:20
you really have to answer in with the right intentions.
28:22
And it's not a sales channel.
28:25
It's maybe not even a marketing channel.
28:27
And in many ways, I think people should view
28:29
podcasts as like the platform, which they can.
28:33
Kind of share their secret sauce.
28:34
And that's going to have some of the added benefit
28:36
of attracting the right kinds of customers.
28:38
If they tap in, it's going to have the added
28:40
benefit of serving as a sales enablement function.
28:43
So sales teams across the globe can understand what's most
28:47
important to the CEO, whoever is the host of the podcast.
28:50
I do think that there's significant.
28:53
Opportunity that still exists for brands that enter the podcast space
28:56
from an own perspective when they enter it in with the right intentions.
29:00
These are some of the things that I see, try to
29:03
approach it from a macro and a micro perspective.
29:05
I think when I see all these businesses failing to, or not
29:09
businesses specifically, but podcasts in the business space,
29:12
failing to succeed, I see a lot of that as folks that didn't
29:15
come into it, like you said, with the right intentions.
29:17
I see that same thing all the time.
29:19
If you just want a podcast to have a podcast, you're going
29:22
to end up in a place where you're almost guaranteed to fail.
29:25
If you just want to have one, you just want to do it.
29:27
What's worse in a business setting is when the marketing
29:30
team wants the CEO to have a podcast and the CEO just
29:34
is going to be drug tooth and nail through it to do it.
29:37
And then five episodes in the marketing team is exhausted
29:40
because they realized, Oh, shoot, I've got to edit all this.
29:42
And that took an entire day.
29:44
And on top of the interviews and the editing, we had other things we had to
29:47
set up and then running through all that, I think is a big, is a big challenge.
29:51
I would say, I would question like podcasting as a sales
29:55
channel though, because I've seen a lot of success.
29:58
at a smaller level, at a much smaller level with podcasting
30:02
on a one on one basis, being a relationship development tool,
30:05
being a business tool on some level for, for businesses,
30:09
even personally, and then with clients that we've seen.
30:11
So, just anecdotally again, a lot of this is right now, but
30:16
like, we've definitely seen some benefit for folks in that area.
30:19
Totally.
30:20
Is it going to be your sales pitch?
30:21
No.
30:22
But is it going to be a tool you can use?
30:23
A marketing tool you can use?
30:24
Like I've definitely seen a lot of people use it to success.
30:27
And even like specifically like medical field folks were really helpful.
30:33
We had a plastic surgeon client for a little while.
30:35
He was using his podcast to talk about different types of surgeries because
30:39
he knew people would search for those surgeries and want to know if there
30:42
was any additional information out there and try to draw people in that way.
30:45
Now that led to some of the most interesting podcast titles I've ever created.
30:49
Things I won't even repeat on this episode, but they're just some
30:52
very fascinating things that we've done and seen in that market.
30:55
So I just wanted to point that out.
30:57
But I do understand like if you go into it thinking this is going
31:00
to make me a lot of money or I'm going to get a ton of downloads.
31:03
Like, it's a long game.
31:05
Podcasting is a marathon.
31:06
The podcasts that are real successful, you probably have a lot better
31:10
data than I do on this, but I'm sure the podcasts that are most successful
31:13
are the ones that are sticking with it consistently for at least
31:17
six months to a year before they start to gain any sort of traction.
31:21
So, just my two cents.
31:23
At least.
31:23
No, and I don't disagree with you.
31:25
I think it's, it's more so the podcast that gets started up and it's
31:29
under the guise of, we're going to do account based marketing and
31:32
we're going to invite our key prospects onto the podcast and basically
31:36
use that as the discovery call and then have our SDR team follow
31:40
up with the guests for the next 12 months until something happens.
31:44
I've seen a lot of that, unfortunately.
31:45
And again, it's really, it's a brand building.
31:49
Exercise as, as you know, so well.
31:52
And by, by proxy, like, yes, sales opportunities are probably going to come.
31:56
You're going to entice the right people to dig deeper into your content and uh,
32:01
understand who you, who you are and why you do the things you do, et cetera.
32:05
Yeah, definitely all aboard with that.
32:07
I think, uh, again, the ones that are doing it from this kind of, uh,
32:12
backhanded view are the ones that, that have the wrong intentions.
32:16
Yeah, the ones that are going after purely for profit, basically,
32:19
and scheming and scamming, if you will, to try and draw people in.
32:24
Yeah, that's, that's definitely, definitely not going to bring you success.
32:29
I mean, because also, like, at some point
32:30
people are going to go, how big is your show?
32:33
And if you don't have numbers to back that up,
32:35
you don't have an audience to back that up.
32:36
At some point, that's going to get people going, well, either I won't
32:39
guest on it or they'll start to realize, well, that went out to two people.
32:43
Why did I do that?
32:44
It takes time.
32:45
Like all things, small podcasts are small podcasts too.
32:48
They need time to grow and they need guests, so
32:50
there's always, always that balance you're facing.
32:53
But yeah, I hear what you're saying there.
32:55
I mean, it sounds like you've got a lot on your plate.
32:58
Yeah, that's awesome.
32:59
Um, well, what would you say, as far as Podchaser
33:03
goes, where are you kind of like focused at the moment?
33:07
Where do you kind of see the future of Podchaser going?
33:11
Is there anything new and exciting you can share with me?
33:13
If not, it's okay.
33:15
Yeah, no, we're really excited about our
33:17
recent update to the Podcast Charts hub.
33:20
So,
33:20
Right.
33:21
Yeah.
33:21
A couple years ago, we had acquired a company called
33:24
PodCharts and it really stood as a standalone platform.
33:27
And it was just a way for folks to find which podcasts are charting
33:31
in any given day, across any category or any country or platform.
33:36
And now that we've brought that into the full fledged kind of Podchaser
33:39
suite The adoption has been great and it's just another means of discovery.
33:45
And whether you're an advertiser or an owned podcast, or you're
33:49
looking for earned media opportunities and podcasts, being able
33:52
to understand kind of where a podcast charts, especially over
33:55
time is really important because the example I always give is.
33:59
Man, if you were a brand that was trying to tap into the podcast space and
34:05
you knew that the Kelsey brothers, Jason and Travis, had a podcast and it was
34:10
interesting and it was aligned with kind of your target audience, but then
34:14
you started sponsoring them before, Taylor Swiftamania, you would have had
34:19
this kind of parabolic rise in your brand's exposure to certain audiences.
34:25
I think that is something that is going to be a game changer
34:29
for a lot of advertisers and or, you know, earned media.
34:32
Opportunities too.
34:33
So really excited about that in that same sort of vein, how we've
34:38
got a proprietary metric with the power score, and now we've got
34:42
the charts kind of all full fledged into the product as well,
34:45
stands to reason that we should probably come up with our own.
34:48
Charts methodology and use that as an, as an additional indicator.
34:52
And we already do something like that, uh, with what
34:54
we call our podchaser 25, which comes out every month.
34:57
And we look at which podcasts have hit the charts for the
35:00
first time and are rising significantly in terms of popularity.
35:04
Just a little teaser, a podchaser charts, which will be a full inclusive.
35:09
Kind of a data set.
35:11
That'll be something coming down the road as well.
35:13
Other things we're looking at, how do we continue
35:16
to enable time to value moments for our users?
35:19
This is one of the things that a lot of folks who don't have intimate
35:22
knowledge of the podcast industry don't understand, is we've, we
35:25
have no Control over a production cycle of a podcast, you know this,
35:29
and for a lot of brands and agencies that are tapping podcasts for
35:32
the first time, they think their client's story is most important.
35:34
It should be published today.
35:36
And they don't understand how much goes on in the background
35:38
and how much batch recording gets done and that sort of thing.
35:41
In an effort to help these folks satiate some of their, their hunger
35:45
for the podcast landscape, how do we build these time to value moments?
35:49
So they are.
35:51
Enjoying the medium and enjoying the platform
35:53
in between some of these episode release dates.
35:55
So we've got a couple of things in the works when it comes to that as well.
35:59
Yeah, just a little teaser for what's coming down the pike.
36:02
That, that is really, I'm intrigued by the time
36:05
to value stuff and what you're doing there.
36:08
So maybe that's an offline conversation.
36:10
I'm really, I'm really nerdy about that because yeah, I have a lot of
36:12
opinions, as you can imagine, being in podcast production and everything.
36:16
But yeah, that's really neat.
36:17
That's really exciting.
36:18
I've been through this whole conversation
36:20
and I have neglected to ask this question.
36:22
We may filter this back in, or we may just leave it here.
36:25
You know, what the heck.
36:25
But I am curious to know, this is a branding podcast, why the name PodChaser?
36:32
That would be a better question for Bradley Davis, our CEO and founder.
36:36
But from what I know about the origin story, there
36:41
are probably six or seven different podcasters.
36:42
Brand names that were thrown out there in some of the early use cases with our
36:47
users or prospective beta testers, that sort of thing, they always felt like
36:50
they were chasing numbers when it came to podcasts because they didn't exist.
36:54
There was no place to get them outside of
36:56
going directly to, to a podcast themselves.
36:58
So we're going to take the pod from podcasts and use that.
37:03
And then we're going to chase the numbers with the chaser.
37:06
That's the trend spin on the pod chaser brand name.
37:10
Again, that's, that's really cool.
37:11
Um, I mean, the name does make sense in that regard.
37:14
And I have always kind of thought about it in those terms
37:17
of like, Oh yeah, I'm chasing after information on podcasts.
37:20
Where can I go?
37:21
Podchaser.
37:22
Chase the podcast.
37:23
It's a very comprehensive platform.
37:26
I think if folks on here haven't checked it out, I think they absolutely should.
37:30
Definitely want to make sure people go do that.
37:32
Before we get into asking where people can find you and
37:35
get connected and all that, I always ask one last question.
37:38
Of course, this is a branding podcast.
37:39
I'd like to ask the question, what brand are you loving right
37:44
now or what brand do you really admire most at the moment?
37:48
Yeah, great question.
37:50
There's one brand that I think is really interesting in
37:53
the, uh, CPG or food and Bev space, and that's Supergut.
37:57
Full disclosure, Supergut was a client of ours for a while, and I think
38:01
what's really interesting about them is they're a gut health company.
38:04
When you think about the name Supergut, that implies We're
38:09
going to take our guts to, you know, the, the ultimate level.
38:12
And I think what's interesting about what they do is they're
38:14
marrying kind of the CPG space with like some rigorous academic work.
38:19
They're one of the only gut health brands that have done
38:23
very significant clinical studies about their product.
38:25
And you see that play out through their content, through their branding, through
38:30
how they're approaching media writ large, but very specifically podcasts.
38:35
And they've got a chief academic officer and a medical officer who was
38:39
part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's gut health initiative.
38:42
So many fitness and health and wellness products.
38:47
It's probably some guy who's got this great idea
38:49
for a new protein bar sitting in his basement.
38:51
He's going to make a ton of money off of gym bros doing it.
38:53
But I think the way that they've approached the science.
38:56
of gut health and really backed it up with some significant bona
39:00
fides in the clinical trials is something that's really interesting.
39:05
They're no stranger to podcasts either because one of their
39:08
investors is actually one of the hosts of the all in podcast.
39:11
So if folks are familiar with the all in podcast, which is on
39:14
business and society and that sort of thing, I think that's
39:17
a really interesting kind of foray for, for that brand too.
39:20
Sounds like an interesting brand and gut health is near and dear to
39:24
my heart for reasons that I don't need to get into on this episode.
39:28
But that's, that's really neat.
39:29
I'll have to, I have not heard, I think I've heard the name.
39:32
I've not dove into them very much, so we'll
39:34
have to check them out and see more about them.
39:35
So that's really neat.
39:36
That's always great to hear what people are
39:37
passionate about in the world of brands.
39:40
Awesome.
39:40
Well, Trent, it has been a pleasure talking to you today.
39:43
Learned a lot.
39:44
And we'd just like to know before we wrap up,
39:46
is there any way people can connect with you?
39:48
I mean, where can they learn more about Podchaser?
39:51
All that good stuff.
39:53
Yeah.
39:53
So I'll point you to two directions.
39:55
One is Podchaser's LinkedIn page.
39:57
So we're publishing all of our data stories there.
40:00
If you crave more of that sort of content, so unique data
40:03
stories and podcast discovery, you can't get anywhere else.
40:05
We also have a newsletter.
40:07
which is called Podchaser Pulse.
40:09
We publish through Beehive, and that's where, one of the places where
40:12
we do some of this long form content, breaking down podcast data.
40:16
Go to LinkedIn, Podchaser, and then the Podchaser Pulse newsletter.
40:21
Righty, well Trent, thank you so much for your time today.
40:24
I really appreciate it.
40:25
Cheers Chris, thanks so much.