Shortcuts, shenanigans, and real audience growth
Last week, Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman reported on MowPod, and how they’ve been selling Apple Podcasts followers to publishers for $5 apiece.
I’ve been aware of these MowPod follower campaigns for a while. So have many of my industry peers. To be clear: I’ve never bought a MowPod followers campaign. But I know people who have. And I’ve seen the results.
These follower campaigns do what they promise. They deliver a large number of new Apple Podcasts followers in a short period of time.
Despite the fact that they “work,” I’ve never recommended this type of service to Bumper’s clients. Why? Because I never truly understood exactly how they work behind the scenes.
And as the old podcast saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true… it’s probably a mobile gaming scheme to juke the stats.” From Ashley’s story in Bloomberg:
Behind the scenes, what’s actually happening is some of these followers are being incentivized to tap and follow a podcast through ads placed in mobile video games. […] The ads instruct gamers to complete an action— specifically, to follow a show on Apple Podcasts — in order to earn tokens, or in-game currency.
Ugh.
Hushed hallway conversations
Ashley published her story while many in the podcast industry (including myself) attended the Podcast Movement Evolutions conference in Los Angeles. Consequently, I was part of several hallway conversations about what she’d found.
People talked about how “it’s not just MowPod doing this.” Indeed, there are others.
Some pointed out how “this kind of thing isn’t unique to podcasting.” I agree.
Another take: “Some people just need to hit their targets.” Very true.
I also heard, “This is capitalism at work.” OK.
I also believe that, for our own sake, the podcast industry needs to spend more time more on real, sustainable audience growth, and less time on shortcuts. And when I say “shortcuts,” I’m not just talking about MowPod follower campaigns.
Juked stats are insidious
This isn’t new. For as long as there’s been a podcast “industry,” people have used all sorts of shenanigans to juke their stats and create the impression they’re reaching more people than they really are.
We’ve seen straight-up chart manipulation, and boosting downloads with auto-loading web players, and employing mobile games to inflate numbers. Even the ad industry association tasked with defining basic podcast measurement guidelines uses misleading language to suggest that many more people listen than really do.
Here’s the insidious part:
When podcasters use shortcuts to inflate their stats, it sets unrealistic expectations. Those unrealistic expectations become the new baseline. So, many podcasters keep using the shortcuts, re-upping again and again, because there’s never a convenient time to turn them off.
But of course, maintaining the baseline is never enough. We’ve got to grow, right? So targets and expectations increase. More shortcuts ratchet things up. It’s a vicious cycle, full of perverse incentives.
Remember The Wire?
Juked stats undermine solid fundamentals
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about all of this is that podcasting has such strong bones. Year after year, survey after survey, we learn that podcast audiences are growing. From The Infinite Dial 2024:
47% of the U.S. 12+ population has listened to a podcast in the last month, up 12% year over year; 34% of the U.S. 12+ population has listened to a podcast in the last week, up 10% year over year. Despite changes in how downloads are being delivered and counted, listening levels are up markedly.
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube all report on verified podcast consumption and playback. Here at Bumper, we see daily, weekly, and monthly verified listeners increase over time. We see Listen Time and Watch Time grow.
Real people spend real time with podcasts, and we can prove it.
For podcast businesses with real audiences and strong fundamentals, juking the stats is like shooting yourself in the foot. An ad-supported show that can command high CPMs dilutes its value to sponsors by juking the stats, depressing conversion rates by inflating the denominator. A show with an inflated sense of audience size does itself no favours when it comes to additional revenue sources like live touring, merchandise, or paid subscriptions.
Either podcasting truly is a uniquely powerful and valuable medium based on earning the time and attention of real people. Or it’s a bunch of paid downloads that nobody listens to, driven by “followers” who tapped a button in exchange for in-game currency.
Long-term, I don’t think we get to have it both ways.
Traffic vs. audience
There’s this distinction I’m obsessed with: traffic vs. audience. I first heard it expressed on an episode of Decoder with Nilay Patel:
My friend Casey Newton is fond of saying that anybody can get traffic, and it is impossible to build an audience. That’s the thing, right?
This distinction between traffic and audience matters. A lot.
Traffic is easy. There are so many traffic sources. Traffic comes from search, and social, and email, and billboards, and word-of-mouth, and dozens of other places. Traffic can be earned, or bought, or stolen. You can trick people and algorithms into sending you traffic. Traffic means getting people to your front door.
But traffic isn’t audience.
Audience means people who stick around. People who meaningfully engage. In podcasting, audience means people who actually watch and listen. Truly loyal audiences come back again and again, episode after episode, season after season.
You can buy traffic. You can’t buy audience.
If you generate a bunch of downloads by targeting display ads to lookalike audiences based on a sucker list of people who’ll click on nearly anything… that’s traffic. I wouldn’t consider it high-quality traffic, but hey, you do you.
If you get people to tap a follow button in exchange for gems or free lives in a mobile game… that’s traffic. Again, fine by me, especially if you love low-quality traffic.
But if you take those traffic numbers and misrepresent them as audience numbers to an advertiser, or a potential investor, or someone’s boss who doesn’t know better… that’s where the cycle of unrealistic expectations starts.
What should change?
If the status quo continues – and believe me, there are strong incentives to preserve the status quo – we’re going to keep hearing slightly different versions of Ashley’s story, again and again. But if we want things to change:
Listening platforms should be vigilant about detecting and disincentivizing shenanigans. Many of these patterns are detectable.
Industry groups like the IAB should stop using language that allows unscrupulous actors to mislead people by passing traffic numbers off as audience numbers. Words matter, and downloaders aren’t listeners.
Podcasters should be proud of (and sell against) what fundamentally works in podcasting: real audiences spending real time with real shows. It’s OK to be 5’11’'. If you keep telling people you’re 13 feet tall, somebody will eventually point at your platform shoes and stilts.
Building a podcast audience – a real audience made up of real people – is hard work. It takes patience and perseverance. There are no shortcuts, but done well, the results can be hugely valuable. And worth it.