Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 89. Today's show is brought to you very kindly by our friends over at FreshBooks and MailRoute.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined over on the other side of the globe by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hi Myke, I saw a funny thing that was going around, a meme that was something about people

00:00:29 ◼   ► who believe in the the earth is flat and the the line was something like there

00:00:35 ◼   ► are there are members of the flat earth society all around the globe you're

00:00:40 ◼   ► doing it wrong no no you can't no would it be a cross I guess yeah all across

00:00:46 ◼   ► the flat plain that is the earth riding on the back of a turtle how are you so

00:00:53 ◼   ► you doing well today except for this crazy meme you found it's Monday it's

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's Monday morning, you know, it is a pleasure to spend my Monday morning with you and the

00:01:03 ◼   ► listeners and to get, of course, you're listening whenever, but you're hearing Monday morning

00:01:07 ◼   ► me when you hear Upgrade, usually.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And it's good, like I always say, it's a good start to the week.

00:01:15 ◼   ► I stay up late watching Game of Thrones on Sunday nights, so I gotta, you know, take

00:01:19 ◼   ► and have a little more tea and try to wake up.

00:01:22 ◼   ► But having kids in my house makes it easier to wake up because if I was just like you,

00:01:31 ◼   ► you don't have a lot of people in your house who are on a normal human schedule.

00:01:39 ◼   ► You've got one.

00:01:41 ◼   ► For me, having the kids, my daughter has to be up and moving around before seven o'clock

00:01:47 ◼   ► really and my son not too long after that.

00:01:49 ◼   ► And so I could be one of those people who has a really weird schedule and sleeps until

00:01:55 ◼   ► 11 a.m. and all of that, but I can't because, you know, not only do I have the kids have

00:02:00 ◼   ► to get out fairly early and then Lauren has to get out right about now, but, you know,

00:02:07 ◼   ► also the dog, whenever it's light out, the dog decides now is the time to come and lick

00:02:13 ◼   ► my face and demand that I feed her.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I got a trainer out of that.

00:02:17 ◼   ► But so yeah, so in the end, it's a, you know, I dream of being one of those people who can

00:02:22 ◼   ► wake up at 11 in the morning and get about their business, but I am never going to be

00:02:26 ◼   ► one of those people.

00:02:27 ◼   ► So good morning is what I'm saying.

00:02:30 ◼   ► We have a big show today.

00:02:31 ◼   ► So we had an overwhelming amount of feedback that people wanted to hear more about kind

00:02:37 ◼   ► of the business side of podcasting.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Yeah, how the sausage is made apparently is the thing that we're talking about now.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So we've got a lot of that today.

00:02:44 ◼   ► We have a lot of follow up, but also later in the show,

00:02:47 ◼   ► we're gonna be joined by Mr. Lex Friedman.

00:02:50 ◼   ► You may know Lex, he is the host of many podcasts,

00:02:54 ◼   ► including Turnin' His Car Around, and he's also,

00:02:57 ◼   ► I wouldn't know how to describe him,

00:02:59 ◼   ► we'll get him to describe himself,

00:03:00 ◼   ► but he works for Midroll Media,

00:03:02 ◼   ► working on their advertising.

00:03:04 ◼   ► So Midroll is a huge podcast advertising company

00:03:09 ◼   ► that kind of provides advertising to many, many huge

00:03:13 ◼   ► podcasts including stuff like the Mark Maron show.

00:03:16 ◼   ► So he is really in that world

00:03:19 ◼   ► of leading podcast professionals.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So we wanna get Lex's thoughts and opinions

00:03:24 ◼   ► on this whole data and discussion

00:03:27 ◼   ► that we had from last week.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So that's coming up a little later on in the show.

00:03:30 ◼   ► But first off, I wanna kind of go through some thoughts,

00:03:33 ◼   ► some additional thoughts that I've had

00:03:35 ◼   ► and to kind of clarify some points from last week

00:03:39 ◼   ► based on listener feedback.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So I wanted to kind of go through a few things about data with you, Jason, so we can talk

00:03:46 ◼   ► about that.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So I've got a few questions that we can answer.

00:03:49 ◼   ► So question number one is, "What is the data that we do not want Apple to give to

00:03:55 ◼   ► all podcasters, including us and everybody else?"

00:03:58 ◼   ► And we should say there's no evidence that Apple's going to give this data.

00:04:02 ◼   ► The New York Times story that set this off was sort of about people complaining that

00:04:05 ◼   ► Apple isn't doing enough, making enough of an effort to gather data.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And quite frankly, as the week has gone on and more people are talking about this and

00:04:15 ◼   ► less people are coming forward to say anything, it really does seem to me that a lot of that

00:04:19 ◼   ► article maybe isn't exactly how it seems.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's probably true. And I also, something that tends to happen on the

00:04:28 ◼   ► internet is your arguments get flattened into this, you know, very basic polar opposite

00:04:34 ◼   ► kind of argument. And I think that's one of the reasons we want to follow up a little

00:04:37 ◼   ► bit about here is there's I've seen some people suggest that what we are saying and other

00:04:43 ◼   ► people are saying is that we don't think that there's a place for data in podcasting and

00:04:48 ◼   ► that's not really true. So what's the data from your perspective Myke, what's the data

00:04:53 ◼   ► that you don't want Apple to give?

00:04:56 ◼   ► I really don't want Apple to take Apple IDs, iCloud IDs and use the information that they

00:05:04 ◼   ► know about the people behind those and attach them to the shows that they listen to.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Even in an anonymized way, I think there's very basic information that is fine.

00:05:13 ◼   ► So maybe the stuff that we'd want to give is information about the listening of the

00:05:18 ◼   ► show.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I can see why some people would want to know that and we'll get into that in a minute.

00:05:22 ◼   ► But the actual data about the individuals, I don't think that that data should be given

00:05:27 ◼   ► unless somebody specifically wants to do it, like through surveys or something.

00:05:31 ◼   ► a listener opts in to give that information. They say like, I am female, I am 25 years

00:05:37 ◼   ► old, I earn this amount of money, I live in this part of the world. I don't think Apple

00:05:41 ◼   ► should be providing that information without explicit opt-in from the listener. So really

00:05:46 ◼   ► Apple shouldn't be involved in this at all. There should be, the podcasters themselves

00:05:50 ◼   ► should create surveys as many do if they want to get that information. I don't think that

00:05:53 ◼   ► that stuff should be taken from what would be people's iCloud IDs and given out because

00:05:59 ◼   ► Because also that frankly doesn't feel like something that fits with Apple's core value.

00:06:04 ◼   ► So I don't, and I don't think that, you know, we'll get into this later with Lex I'm sure,

00:06:09 ◼   ► but I personally don't believe that that information is necessary for the type of advertising that

00:06:16 ◼   ► we have been doing for years and has been in the podcast industry for over 10 years

00:06:20 ◼   ► now.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:22 ◼   ► It's the, it's that, uh, user tracking and, uh, the ability to, yeah, I mean, it's essentially,

00:06:27 ◼   ► I think what is suggested in that article is that they want web style tracking where

00:06:33 ◼   ► they can place—and this is where it breaks down from a technological standpoint—is

00:06:37 ◼   ► like, what they want to do is place markers on a file somehow and have it be that this

00:06:44 ◼   ► is where the ad is and please give us information about this and let us have a unique identifier

00:06:50 ◼   ► for these people and send this back to us as we go. And you kind of would need to build

00:06:55 ◼   ► an entire infrastructure around tracking to do that. And that's where it breaks down for

00:06:58 ◼   ► me is I don't think Apple is interested in building an infrastructure around tracking

00:07:03 ◼   ► based on the contents of your MP3 files. Which is not to say that not just Apple, but podcast

00:07:10 ◼   ► app makers in general couldn't generate more data for their podcasters, although there

00:07:19 ◼   ► are still challenges there. Like, if you're Marco Arment, how do you verify that somebody

00:07:24 ◼   ► is the owner of a podcast in order to give them access to their personal data? Because

00:07:31 ◼   ► you're not going to give all data to everyone, are you? That seems a little bit far-fetched.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Apple, because it's got a directory, does have an advantage there that people have signed

00:07:41 ◼   ► up essentially and submitted their podcast, and so it's tied to an Apple ID. But more

00:07:47 ◼   ► broadly, there is data that anybody who makes a podcast app could generate if they wanted

00:07:52 ◼   ► to, and it could be as aggregate or as anonymized as they want it to be. Now, I'm not sure I

00:07:57 ◼   ► want people measuring all of this data either, and I'm not sure how useful it would be, but

00:08:04 ◼   ► there are definitely data that you could get around people listening to shows because the

00:08:09 ◼   ► the... We should mention, ATP talked about this this week in ATP 169, and they recommended

00:08:17 ◼   ► us, so we should probably recommend their conversation about it. They all...

00:08:20 ◼   ► - To close the loop.

00:08:21 ◼   ► - They all snake around together. But Marco talked about this a little bit, and it's the

00:08:26 ◼   ► idea that right now, the way podcasting works, it's an RSS feed. You see the feed gets updated

00:08:31 ◼   ► and says, "There's a new episode. Here's the download link," and your RSS or your podcast

00:08:35 ◼   ► app says "okay" and it goes and it downloads it. And so you get download stats. You get

00:08:42 ◼   ► download stats that are very much like web file stats. You get an IP address and you

00:08:50 ◼   ► know what client it was and some very basic stuff. And that's the end of the conversation.

00:08:54 ◼   ► That's like that's the end of it. And so inside the app you could do something to measure

00:09:01 ◼   ► does that episode ever get played? How many times did that episode actually have somebody

00:09:07 ◼   ► press play and begin the playing of audio? You could also have an abandonment point,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you could measure after, again it gets really complicated and how do you determine this,

00:09:17 ◼   ► but you could say the average person got to this point, or 50% of people reached this point,

00:09:27 ◼   ► or whatever. You could do that. So you could get the idea, which might be useful for podcasters

00:09:31 ◼   ► if you do a three-hour podcast to realize that most people aren't listening past 45

00:09:35 ◼   ► minutes. It would be interesting. That's possible. That would be good for advertisers to know

00:09:40 ◼   ► where to put their ads is when people are listening. And you could go even deeper and

00:09:45 ◼   ► say, do people skip audio in there? And even deeper would be where do they skip audio and

00:09:50 ◼   ► are they skipping ads and all of that? You could go down the rabbit hole there. But every

00:09:54 ◼   ► step you take, every, I guess, rung in the ladder down into the rabbit hole, I don't

00:10:00 ◼   ► know, I've lost the metaphor here, it's more complicated the further you go, and the data's

00:10:04 ◼   ► more complicated. And I can tell you from having a load of web data from my previous

00:10:09 ◼   ► job, doing, you know, looking at all the data for PC World and Mac World and TechHive, that

00:10:15 ◼   ► it's, it's too much data. The data is usually not used particularly well by anybody. So

00:10:22 ◼   ► people talk a lot about collecting data but I'm skeptical about how useful it would be.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So Apple already have some data that they could turn into something without needing

00:10:34 ◼   ► to lock the system down, right? So there are statistics that they are able to gather that

00:10:39 ◼   ► could make things more useful for people if they were to display them in a good way. Like

00:10:44 ◼   ► Apple will know if the episode is downloaded or streamed, right? They know if somebody

00:10:48 ◼   ► subscribes, they have that information, they can get through their apps. They know broad

00:10:53 ◼   ► geographical information, so do Libsyn, the host that we use, they have that so like we

00:10:58 ◼   ► know what state people are listening in and sometimes what city depending on how big the

00:11:04 ◼   ► city is.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Yeah, V Press has that too which I use for some some podcasts as well and and it's the

00:11:09 ◼   ► same you know they're generally using a redirect so when you try to download the episode it

00:11:14 ◼   ► logs that on the server and then sends you to download the episode and it gathers a little

00:11:18 ◼   ► bit of data by measuring that request.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And that broad data is useful.

00:11:23 ◼   ► So the geographical broad data helps me make decisions of advertisers.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So I'm able to say to an advertiser, 60 to 70 percent of our listeners are based in the

00:11:32 ◼   ► United States, which is really useful when we have a product that's U.S. only.

00:11:36 ◼   ► So that's, you know, but I feel like for me, that's as far as it needs to go in most instances.

00:11:41 ◼   ► But you know, many people think differently.

00:11:43 ◼   ► We also can find out through Libsyn which application or device is being used, which

00:11:49 ◼   ► is just, I don't really think that's very useful, that's just an interesting tidbit.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I don't really know if there's much you can do with that.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Apple could also kind of provide information on related shows, so they know what you subscribe

00:12:03 ◼   ► to, right?

00:12:04 ◼   ► And they show like, on the store, people that subscribe to this like this, but they could

00:12:09 ◼   ► maybe generate more graphs for people or maybe charts that kind of show the correlation between

00:12:14 ◼   ► shows?

00:12:15 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, they could. They could.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I don't know what you'd use that for, right? I'm just thinking these are the data points

00:12:21 ◼   ► that they have.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's data around. I think that's one of the things that we mentioned briefly

00:12:26 ◼   ► last week is there's data around. And I'm skeptical enough about the complexity of getting

00:12:35 ◼   ► more data and then the... I'm skeptical of whether that data really would get used in

00:12:40 ◼   ► a good way. And I'm not saying in an evil way, I'm like in an effective way because

00:12:45 ◼   ► it's very hard to parse that data and understand what it all means. And if you've got different

00:12:50 ◼   ► sources, then you can't really compare them. So that's problematic too. Also, there are

00:12:54 ◼   ► other sources of data. We've talked about some of them here. Let's also not forget things

00:12:57 ◼   ► like surveys. And you may think, "Well, surveys aren't data. That's you're asking people to

00:13:02 ◼   ► tell you who they are and all that and those can be skewed. It's true, that said, radio

00:13:06 ◼   ► and television have used surveys to determine the life and death of every TV and radio show

00:13:10 ◼   ► ever since the beginning of those two media because that's how they've had to do it. And

00:13:18 ◼   ► although now there are technological things involving DVRs and things like that that are

00:13:22 ◼   ► part of the mix, for years and years the way the TV industry and the radio industry dealt

00:13:27 ◼   ► with this is they had a panel of viewers or listeners and they would measure them in their

00:13:32 ◼   ► homes or they would have them fill out surveys telling them what they watched and they would

00:13:37 ◼   ► use that to determine ratings. So, Midroll does this, Lexus company, they have a demographic

00:13:43 ◼   ► survey that they use. It's not a listening per episode listenership but it's a demographic

00:13:47 ◼   ► survey. You know, you basically can say what's your age and race and profession and gender

00:13:52 ◼   ► and "Have you ever bought things on a podcast?" and stuff like that. And it's optional, not

00:13:58 ◼   ► everybody has to fill it out, but they've used that to compile demographic data that

00:14:01 ◼   ► lets them sell better to advertisers and lets advertisers target shows. They know if an

00:14:06 ◼   ► advertiser is targeting menswear, they want to advertise on a show that skews male, and

00:14:11 ◼   ► if there's somebody who's advertising a shaving product for women, let's say, that they want

00:14:16 ◼   ► of thing that's going to be female skewed. And that data is there, age and income and

00:14:22 ◼   ► all sorts of data like that. You can collect that now, and although it might not be perfect,

00:14:27 ◼   ► I would argue maybe none of this data is ever going to really be perfect.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Yeah, my feeling about that stuff is the surveys are fine, because it's opt-in, right? This

00:14:36 ◼   ► is just where it just starts to get a bit, "What is your personal tastes?" And I just

00:14:41 ◼   ► don't like the idea of data being taken about our listeners, about them meaning

00:14:47 ◼   ► for it to be or knowing that it is, when for so long it hasn't been. So like if

00:14:51 ◼   ► you're listening in Google, you're listening in Spotify, you're listening in

00:14:54 ◼   ► Stitcher, you're giving that data. These services are created in a way

00:15:01 ◼   ► that they are able to get more from you because they're locked down and that's

00:15:05 ◼   ► the idea right? They don't use the RSS feeds, they have their own stores and

00:15:08 ◼   ► and they're able to learn a little bit more about you.

00:15:11 ◼   ► But you're opting into that, you know,

00:15:13 ◼   ► whether you read the terms of service or not.

00:15:15 ◼   ► But you know, my whole thing is just not liking the idea

00:15:18 ◼   ► of Apple changing it under people's feet.

00:15:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and people don't understand that too.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I actually heard from people,

00:15:23 ◼   ► I heard from somebody yesterday who said,

00:15:25 ◼   ► why aren't there incomparable episodes on Stitcher anymore?

00:15:27 ◼   ► And the answer was,

00:15:28 ◼   ► I never submitted a comparable to Stitcher.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And when somebody complained that there was something wrong

00:15:35 ◼   ► with our feed on Stitcher,

00:15:37 ◼   ► I wrote to Stitcher and said, "Take our feet off," because I can't actually measure listenership

00:15:44 ◼   ► there. I have no access to whatever statistics they do have because I don't have an account

00:15:51 ◼   ► there, and yet somehow my podcast is in their system. So I asked them to take it out, but

00:15:55 ◼   ► that person was like, "Well, what about Stitcher?" And the problem is that you risk being in

00:16:01 ◼   ► a situation where somebody said to me the other day, "I don't want to have an Audible

00:16:06 ◼   ► app for the Audible podcasts and a Howl app for the mid-roll Howl podcasts and an Apple

00:16:13 ◼   ► app for these Apple exclusive podcasts and then a podcast app that gives me the free

00:16:19 ◼   ► standard podcast. I don't want all those things. I want them all in one place. And that's one

00:16:22 ◼   ► of the risks of doing something like this is... And I guess that's what they're saying

00:16:27 ◼   ► in a way that people in the New York Times article is basically, "Please, Apple, find

00:16:34 ◼   ► us, don't make us build our own app and wall this off, just let us monetize this stuff

00:16:38 ◼   ► and charge for it and things like that inside your podcast app. And I just don't think it's

00:16:41 ◼   ► going to happen because that's a whole lot of overhead and it totally changes what podcasts

00:16:45 ◼   ► are to do sort of like paid, gated podcasts in, and even if Apple supports it then, can

00:16:52 ◼   ► Overcast support it? Can Pocketcast support it? I don't know, it's kind of a mess. So,

00:16:58 ◼   ► yeah, it's a mess.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So that's our follow-up for the time being. We'll get back to this conversation a little

00:17:04 ◼   ► bit later on in the show. But you have some exciting podcast-related news over at The

00:17:09 ◼   ► Incomparable this week.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I don't think it's news. It's literally counting. But we've been doing The Incomparable for

00:17:17 ◼   ► essentially 300 weeks, and that means six years almost have passed. And that means that

00:17:23 ◼   ► we did episode 300 over the weekend. So people can check that out if they like. It's kind

00:17:29 ◼   ► of a meta episode. It's sort of really two episodes stuck together. First one, we talk

00:17:34 ◼   ► about sort of how our consumption of media, you know, books and movies and TV shows and

00:17:39 ◼   ► comics and stuff has changed over the last six-ish years since we started podcasting

00:17:43 ◼   ► about it. And then there's a silly segment after that where we do things like draft favorite

00:17:49 ◼   ► episodes and answer listener questions and talk about topics we wish we would have covered

00:17:53 ◼   ► or topics we regret how we covered it or episodes we wish we were on but weren't and

00:17:58 ◼   ► to all of that. So there's a lot of that in there. But I wanted to bring this up because

00:18:07 ◼   ► I think it's interesting, and again, apologies to people who don't really care about anything

00:18:12 ◼   ► but us talking about computers, but I think in terms of making things on the internet,

00:18:18 ◼   ► one of the questions is how do you stop if it's something that is recurring. Anybody

00:18:23 ◼   ► who's had a blog has had to deal with this, right? Which is, once you start a blog, you're

00:18:27 ◼   ► sort of like saying, "I'm going to post on it regularly," and then at some point you're

00:18:30 ◼   ► like, "Oh man, how long am I going to keep posting on this thing? Maybe I should stop."

00:18:35 ◼   ► And I was thinking about that because, you know, I had this idea, it's very clear from

00:18:39 ◼   ► the early, you know, first 20 episodes of The Incomparable that I was not thinking about

00:18:45 ◼   ► the fact that this might go on eternally. And so I made a decision basically like, "Wouldn't

00:18:55 ◼   ► it be fun to try this?" And it has resulted in me hosting and editing the vast majority

00:19:02 ◼   ► of 300 straight weeks of podcasts. And so my question for you as somebody who does this

00:19:08 ◼   ► too, these are serial mediums, they have subscribers, you're sort of supposed to keep feeding them

00:19:14 ◼   ► over time. How does that factor into your decision about wanting to commit to start

00:19:22 ◼   ► something? Does that hang over your head? And how do you factor in, because you've

00:19:27 ◼   ► done this a few times now, how do you factor in when to move on and when to say, "Okay,

00:19:31 ◼   ► I know that I said I would do this for a while, but a while is over now and I'm going to

00:19:35 ◼   ► go do something else."

00:19:36 ◼   ► It's such an airy-fairy answer, but for me, like, it's just about feeling. Like,

00:19:42 ◼   ► so I, you know, I always start a show and it's like, well, the show has begun, right?

00:19:46 ◼   ► There is, with some exceptions, no end in sight, like, we're just going to start this

00:19:50 ◼   ► and off we go. By the way, the Ring post, the wrestling show on the incomparable, still

00:19:55 ◼   ► in production, I'm still working on it, I'm sorry for everyone that's waiting, I promise

00:19:59 ◼   ► it's gonna be good but, TL;DR starting something before San Francisco WWDC was a crazy idea.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Still working on it, I'll have more soon. My feeling on this stuff is I wait until the

00:20:13 ◼   ► show just doesn't feel exciting for me anymore and when I'm at that point where I'm not interested

00:20:19 ◼   ► in it is probably the time for me to move on from it.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Because if I'm not interested in it,

00:20:25 ◼   ► then how can I expect everybody else to be interested in it?

00:20:28 ◼   ► It kind of feels unfair.

00:20:29 ◼   ► If I'm not excited and putting my all in,

00:20:32 ◼   ► then I'm not really doing the right thing

00:20:34 ◼   ► by the people that are committing their time to listen.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I feel like it's kind of unfair to them.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So when it gets to that point,

00:20:39 ◼   ► I do, and I've always done one of two things.

00:20:41 ◼   ► I either end the show or reboot the show.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And I've done those things in various different ways

00:20:48 ◼   ► over the six years that I've done this stuff.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And that's what keeps things going for me.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I don't have anything that has reached the heights of 300.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Do you know what?

00:20:55 ◼   ► I probably never will.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Maybe except the pen addict.

00:20:58 ◼   ► I think that might get there, right?

00:21:00 ◼   ► Just because there's no reason that that show would end

00:21:02 ◼   ► and we're over 200 now.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:21:06 ◼   ► - Because it's the only thing that stuck around,

00:21:07 ◼   ► but for whatever reason,

00:21:08 ◼   ► it's the only thing that stuck around.

00:21:09 ◼   ► - Across three networks.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - It has remained intact.

00:21:13 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Maybe it's just because me and Brad

00:21:17 ◼   ► just have this fun show where we talk about the thing that we love every week and the

00:21:21 ◼   ► thing just keeps on moving.

00:21:22 ◼   ► It sounds familiar, right? I mean, The Incomparable is a similar story and one of the reasons

00:21:27 ◼   ► that I think, I think you're right, it's about feeling and I would say it's almost

00:21:31 ◼   ► like about feel, like this feels like it's probably a good idea to do it and I don't

00:21:36 ◼   ► know where it's going to go but let's try it, let's do it. And with The Incomparable,

00:21:40 ◼   ► the premise is so flexible and some would argue completely unfocused. It's about anything

00:21:44 ◼   ► that it's not about pens, right? It's about, you know, it's not a show about a TV show

00:21:50 ◼   ► or all TV shows. It's about TV and books and movies and comics and whatever, right? And

00:21:57 ◼   ► that is unfocused. It leads to people saying, you know, I've got to skip episodes, which

00:22:01 ◼   ► somehow is, it's fine. People are like, "Oh, I don't know about this podcast. I'm not interested

00:22:07 ◼   ► in everything in every episode." And what I always say about the incomparable is, "That's

00:22:10 ◼   ► The only person who's interested in everything in every episode is me. You can pick and choose,

00:22:14 ◼   ► it's fine. But what that's given me as the person who makes it happen every week

00:22:21 ◼   ► is, it's been flexible enough to sort of handle what I'm interested in. And that

00:22:27 ◼   ► if my, I didn't think of it at the time in these terms, but looking back 300 weeks,

00:22:34 ◼   ► I would say is, I think it would have been a grind if all I could talk about on that

00:22:42 ◼   ► podcast was one topic. Like, I mean, even like books, right? I think it would have gotten

00:22:48 ◼   ► to be a grind, or movies or whatever. Like, and I would have been looking at comics and

00:22:55 ◼   ► TV shows and whatever else, the ones that were not part of it, and being kind of like

00:23:01 ◼   ► wishing that I could talk about them. So in some ways, the reason that it's lasted and

00:23:06 ◼   ► that it hasn't become a grind for me where I feel like I need to end it is because if

00:23:12 ◼   ► I'm not interested in that topic, I just talk about a different topic. And I'm allowed

00:23:16 ◼   ► to sort of like follow my interests and follow the interests of the panel, and that's been

00:23:21 ◼   ► helpful. So it's, you know, and that's built right into it, which is also why it's not,

00:23:26 ◼   ► I think as popular as it probably could be if it was super focused on something, but

00:23:32 ◼   ► I'm okay with that because I don't think it would have lasted if it had been super focused

00:23:37 ◼   ► on anything.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And with the podcast network thing now we've got some stuff that's more super focused.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I can do that Sunday night podcast about Game of Thrones for 10 weeks and then stop for

00:23:47 ◼   ► a year and then go back to it.

00:23:49 ◼   ► But for the main show, I think it's that.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It's just the way it's built in.

00:23:54 ◼   ► eclectic enough to keep me interested after this time. I should also say I'm very bad

00:23:59 ◼   ► at quitting things. I'm a—I'm a—I am. I'm really bad at it. I mean, we've talked

00:24:03 ◼   ► about my job, right, and how I had that job for essentially like 17 years and even the

00:24:08 ◼   ► last two years when it was terrible and I should have quit and it was obvious I should

00:24:11 ◼   ► have quit, I didn't quit. But it's true. I am a person who sticks with things, which

00:24:16 ◼   ► I think is an admirable trait in a lot of ways, but I am always questioning myself about

00:24:23 ◼   ► am I sticking with this because I want to do it, or am I sticking with it because I'm

00:24:26 ◼   ► too stubborn to say that it's over?" And like the blog that we did in the 90s TV, the

00:24:34 ◼   ► zine I did, the fiction magazine that I did on the internet, Intertext is the same way,

00:24:38 ◼   ► where Intertext especially, where like it was obvious for like about three years that

00:24:41 ◼   ► I could manage maybe one issue a year, and it took that long for me to be like, "I

00:24:48 ◼   ► need to stop, right? I can stop this. All I have to do is say it's over, but sometimes

00:24:55 ◼   ► it's hard to say that. So, you know, that's an issue here too, but I'd like to think that

00:25:01 ◼   ► I've learned and gotten better at it. But yeah, anyway.

00:25:05 ◼   ► But anyway, congratulations to you and all of your fellow panelists for hitting 300 episodes

00:25:11 ◼   ► of The Incomparable. Thanks. It's a big number. We should also

00:25:15 ◼   ► mentioned the Mac power users hit it a little while ago and I was very

00:25:17 ◼   ► impressed by that because I told David Sparks when I was talking to him that

00:25:22 ◼   ► like I know how many episodes that is that's a lot that's you know and on one

00:25:26 ◼   ► level all you have to do is just keep putting them out like I said 300 weeks

00:25:30 ◼   ► pass and there you are but it's a different thing to to I mean to do it

00:25:37 ◼   ► that long is it's it's kind of special and and I appreciate it when I see it

00:25:43 ◼   ► And Penavic at over 200. It's amazing.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Yeah, MPU's up to 321 now.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I know. Well, they do those bonus episodes. We used to be ahead of them, and now we're

00:25:52 ◼   ► not.

00:25:53 ◼   ► That's the way they do it. Penavic's moving to daily, just so we can take you down.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Oh good. That'll get your numbers way up.

00:26:00 ◼   ► We're coming for you.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:03 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks are a company on a mission to help

00:26:09 ◼   ► small business owners like me and hopefully like you save time and avoid the stress that

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00:26:19 ◼   ► day right? I have lots of people that I work with, I have lots of projects that I need

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00:28:16 ◼   ► So we had a bit of follow up regarding cellular connectivity in watches from our friend, Anze

00:28:22 ◼   ► - Tomić, yes.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - Anche is a fantastic podcaster from Slovenia.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - He has been--

00:28:29 ◼   ► - He'll be so happy that we pronounced his name

00:28:30 ◼   ► and set his country right.

00:28:32 ◼   ► - I know, well, we try, you know, what can we say?

00:28:34 ◼   ► - And we met him in person, so that's nice, he's very tall.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, he came to the upgrade meetup, was it last year?

00:28:40 ◼   ► - Yes, it was.

00:28:42 ◼   ► - There you go, so last year, and Anche,

00:28:44 ◼   ► he tries out lots of products,

00:28:46 ◼   ► like he does lots of product reviews and stuff.

00:28:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:28:49 ◼   ► - For his shows.

00:28:50 ◼   ► - They bring him cell phones in a paper bag.

00:28:52 ◼   ► he reviews them tips them out of the bag yeah it's going um and one of the things that he has been

00:28:56 ◼   ► reviewing recently is the LG watch urbane second edition and this has a nano sim slot in the watch

00:29:04 ◼   ► it has a speaker and a microphone so you can talk into it like on phone calls and this something

00:29:09 ◼   ► is quite cool that and she said that the antenna for the for the like all the calls and stuff are

00:29:14 ◼   ► in the watch band but this makes the watch band non-removable which is sad for you yeah which is

00:29:19 ◼   ► is very sad for everybody. And he says that it's kind of ridiculous to use for phone calls,

00:29:25 ◼   ► right, to talk into the watch, but it does work. Like the speaker isn't that loud, it

00:29:29 ◼   ► gets a bit crackly, and I like that his overall kind of feeling is the "watch as a phone"

00:29:35 ◼   ► concept technically works, right, like you can do it, somebody is doing it, it is working,

00:29:41 ◼   ► but it's not really that cool.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Yeah, he says it's cool like, it's cool in Knight Rider or something like that. Kit,

00:29:47 ◼   ► and get me, right? But not in, that's an old TV show, but not in real life. So it's, yeah,

00:29:53 ◼   ► this is why I was saying last week that I feel like, we got some good feedback about

00:29:58 ◼   ► this. I actually, I think I was fortunate to have that experience of having the second

00:30:03 ◼   ► gen Kindle with a cell stuff built into it because a lot of people were saying, oh, I

00:30:09 ◼   ► hadn't even thought of something like that because, you know, it's sort of not something

00:30:13 ◼   ► you think about unless you've actually had a device that did this, this sort of like

00:30:16 ◼   ► it's paid by the vendor, it's very tightly metered,

00:30:21 ◼   ► like how does Amazon get away with it?

00:30:22 ◼   ► They control the software that's on it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► So even if you had something like that,

00:30:25 ◼   ► this included with the device on slow speed networks,

00:30:30 ◼   ► you never really even see that it's there.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And since Apple in this case would control the software,

00:30:38 ◼   ► you wouldn't really need to worry about data usage.

00:30:40 ◼   ► The data usage would be pretty limited

00:30:42 ◼   ► because Apple would limit it because it's paying for it,

00:30:44 ◼   ► or it's got some sort of agreement with a cellular provider to limit how it's used so

00:30:49 ◼   ► it doesn't destroy that network. And the more I think about it, I mean, this is why I think

00:30:55 ◼   ► this is the right direction for something like Apple Watch because it gives it conductivity

00:30:59 ◼   ► without it becoming your phone. Like, and I think like having it only have access to

00:31:04 ◼   ► data is a part of that too that, you know, you can talk on your Apple Watch now, but

00:31:10 ◼   ► but it's using your phone. Now if they can do it so that even if you're nowhere near

00:31:14 ◼   ► your phone, phone calls also ring your watch and you can pick up your phone, you know,

00:31:21 ◼   ► a cell phone call to your cell phone on your watch, that's good, but I don't want another

00:31:24 ◼   ► phone number for my watch. But that may be doable. It may be similar to the stuff they

00:31:31 ◼   ► do in your house with sharing your phone calls and texts and things across devices. It, you

00:31:39 ◼   ► know, if they're maybe if they're on the same carrier probably not if they're not.

00:31:43 ◼   ► But anyway I think it's an interesting idea and I'm I would rather do that than have it

00:31:48 ◼   ► be something where I have to pay $10 a month to add my watch to my AT&T plan.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Yeah I'm not keen on the idea of these two things being separate like it's you know as

00:31:58 ◼   ► we spoke about last week the idea of it being able to work independently but to understand

00:32:04 ◼   ► that it is tied to the phone. That's the key here really.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I want to just cover a little piece of news because I really am very interested in what

00:32:14 ◼   ► you think about this. Out of the blue last week, there's news that came that Apple has

00:32:19 ◼   ► invested $1 billion in a Chinese ride sharing service, like a big Uber competitor in China,

00:32:26 ◼   ► called Didi Chuxing.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Tim Cook gave a bunch of comments to writers.

00:32:33 ◼   ► He's saying that they've invested a billion dollars

00:32:35 ◼   ► in this company because it will better help them

00:32:37 ◼   ► understand the Chinese market.

00:32:39 ◼   ► And they said that this deal reflects our excitement

00:32:43 ◼   ► about their growing business, Didi Chuxing,

00:32:45 ◼   ► and also our continued confidence in the long term

00:32:48 ◼   ► in China's economy.

00:32:49 ◼   ► This is as much about sending signals

00:32:52 ◼   ► about their seriousness in that country

00:32:54 ◼   ► it is about helping Didi build a ride sharing platform," he said. And then Tim, he tweeted

00:33:01 ◼   ► a picture of him in Beijing hailing one of the Didi taxis. What's going on? What is this?

00:33:11 ◼   ► I don't know, other than I could say it suggests something about Apple's commitment to China,

00:33:18 ◼   ► not just to the world, but to China

00:33:22 ◼   ► and to the Chinese government.

00:33:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like this is more of a way for them to,

00:33:28 ◼   ► they're not necessarily,

00:33:29 ◼   ► a lot of people are speculating that,

00:33:31 ◼   ► oh, this is them trying to understand cars.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I think it's just they found a company

00:33:36 ◼   ► that was doing pretty well that they could invest in

00:33:39 ◼   ► so it looks good in Chinese business.

00:33:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it could be.

00:33:44 ◼   ► Ben Thompson from Stratechery wrote a piece today,

00:33:47 ◼   ► I think it's a subscriber piece that I liked.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And I liked it for his forthrightness

00:33:53 ◼   ► about the fact that he says,

00:33:54 ◼   ► "With China, nobody really knows."

00:33:56 ◼   ► Because unless you're on the inside,

00:33:59 ◼   ► nobody really understands why the Chinese government

00:34:01 ◼   ► does what it does, and it does what it wants.

00:34:04 ◼   ► So even though Ben is, I would say,

00:34:07 ◼   ► from perspective of like people who write about Apple

00:34:10 ◼   ► and other technology companies, fairly knowledgeable,

00:34:14 ◼   ► even just because he is in Taiwan, that he understands things about Asia and about China

00:34:20 ◼   ► that the rest of us don't. But he said, "Look, I have no idea either because unless you're

00:34:25 ◼   ► inside the Chinese government, you really don't know what's going on here." It seems

00:34:29 ◼   ► to be Apple sending a signal to China about its commitment and being a good citizen and

00:34:34 ◼   ► being a part of the Chinese economy. Does it mean something about Apple's position on

00:34:39 ◼   ► ride-sharing, specifically, does it mean something about Apple's position on building cars? You

00:34:46 ◼   ► know, I'd say maybe, but the overriding thing I would say is that this seems like it's about

00:34:51 ◼   ► China. It's about, you know, Tim Cook famously has said that he thinks China will ultimately

00:34:56 ◼   ► be Apple's biggest market. It's already the second biggest market, the greater China segment,

00:35:01 ◼   ► and I think that's only gonna, you know, that's gonna continue to grow. Apple wants it to

00:35:06 ◼   ► Apple sees China as a market of huge potential and it's hard for Western companies in China

00:35:10 ◼   ► sometimes and the Chinese government makes it hard because they want to, they have their

00:35:17 ◼   ► own interests at heart. They have China's interests and the people in the Chinese government's

00:35:21 ◼   ► interests at heart. And there's some suspicion, I think, a lot of times of companies from

00:35:26 ◼   ► the West doing, you know, making their investments in China and I think Apple has played that

00:35:34 ◼   ► game pretty well of showing their commitment to China. Apple's business model works fairly

00:35:38 ◼   ► well in China. And so that, I don't know, that's my gut feeling is that this is about

00:35:44 ◼   ► Apple putting down more roots in China and showing to the Chinese government that it

00:35:50 ◼   ► is absolutely serious in this. Now whether this is something that was like Apple's idea

00:35:55 ◼   ► or was D.G. Chuxing's idea or whether it was the Chinese government's idea to push Apple

00:36:03 ◼   ► into this investment, who knows? Who knows? I feel like this is the equivalent of nuclear

00:36:09 ◼   ► arms talks. This is high level stuff, but I do feel like that's some of what's going

00:36:16 ◼   ► on here.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Because whatever Apple is doing in the automotive industry, they're not looking at creating

00:36:21 ◼   ► an Uber competitor. I just don't think that's what they're doing. So I don't think this

00:36:26 ◼   ► is it. And also knowing Apple's previous trajectory in investments, they wouldn't invest in a

00:36:32 ◼   ► a company like this if they were planning their own service. They would either buy it

00:36:36 ◼   ► or leave it alone. Right?

00:36:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:39 ◼   ► This is just a fascinating out of kind of character story.

00:36:44 ◼   ► They may not be allowed to buy it anyway, right? It's a Chinese company. So this may

00:36:48 ◼   ► be the, you know, you want to be in this market but we're not going to let you buy our company.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Well, but they could buy Lyft or Uber, right, probably, if they really wanted to do that.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true. I suppose. I don't know. Yuck.

00:37:02 ◼   ► This is one of those things that is, and this keeps happening, right?

00:37:06 ◼   ► Because it's a different company under Tim, because it's his company, not Steve's company.

00:37:10 ◼   ► So over the last couple of years, I feel like we've all been saying constantly how different

00:37:15 ◼   ► it is, this is new Apple.

00:37:17 ◼   ► And this is the number one of those things.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But they've never really done anything like this before.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Making a big public investment in a company that is kind of completely unrelated to what

00:37:27 ◼   ► they do in another country and you know making a big song and dance about it

00:37:32 ◼   ► like they usually keep these things pretty quiet. Is that unrelated though? I

00:37:36 ◼   ► mean these are all app based. It's tangentially related. Sure. Like Apple

00:37:41 ◼   ► make computers and software and this is... Unless we know that they've got you know

00:37:46 ◼   ► a car initiative going too that makes it a little less tangential but yeah. But

00:37:51 ◼   ► it's you know it's just a very it's just very peculiar it's just very peculiar. I

00:37:55 ◼   ► I don't disagree. It is a strange thing.

00:37:59 ◼   ► But exciting at the same time because it's weird. Right? Like for me and you, this sort

00:38:05 ◼   ► of stuff is super exciting because this is new. We're getting to talk about and consider

00:38:11 ◼   ► things that we've never considered before when looking at Apple. Like, why are Apple

00:38:15 ◼   ► investing a billion dollars of their money into a Chinese ride hailing service that we've

00:38:20 ◼   ► never heard of before? I don't know. Let's think about that. And that's what I find to

00:38:24 ◼   ► be really interesting, right? Who knows what they're doing here. And I'm interested to

00:38:30 ◼   ► see where it goes. It feels like a lot of this, like the timing, you know, is really

00:38:34 ◼   ► kind of related to the earnings calls and stuff like that, right? Like, how are you

00:38:38 ◼   ► going to grow your business? We're now going to invest in upcoming companies. Okay, great.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Here's the stock price increase, you know?

00:38:44 ◼   ► I don't know. I guess we'll see. Should we move on to our exciting next segment?

00:38:50 ◼   ► We should indeed.

00:38:51 ◼   ► All right, well, before we do that, let me tell you about one of our sponsors.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Our good friends at MailRoute are helping you listen to this episode by helping us bring

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00:41:22 ◼   ► Hey, mailbagging. Mailbagging! I keep saying it. You didn't give me the chance. I was so

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00:41:39 ◼   ► Everything you'd want from the people handling your mail. Thanks Mail Route.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Thank you Mail Route. So now we are very lucky to be graced by the EVP of Sales

00:41:48 ◼   ► and Development at Midroll Media and all-around podcasting nice guy Mr. Lex

00:41:51 ◼   ► Freeman. Hi Lex. Hi how are you? Good thank you so much for joining us today. We

00:41:56 ◼   ► have to realize from our listeners that they are very interested in hearing more

00:42:01 ◼   ► about what happens in podcasting and one of the things that Jason suggested last

00:42:06 ◼   ► week is why don't we talk to you about the things that we find interesting and/or concerning and you

00:42:13 ◼   ► could tell us why it's all okay right that's kind of the thinking here i'm okay with it i will say

00:42:19 ◼   ► you know i i listened to your episode uh from last week and i listened to atp's episode from

00:42:23 ◼   ► last week we were talking about it and there's parts of it that were in total agreement on and

00:42:27 ◼   ► parts of it there were less agreement on i feel like it's important that i disclose all my biases

00:42:33 ◼   ► obviously I work for a podcasting company. I sell some of Jason's shows. I have sold

00:42:40 ◼   ► some of your shows and some of Marco's one show, ATP at least, in the past. But I just

00:42:47 ◼   ► want to make sure that I disclaim all of those things so that all biases are revealed.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Yes, I used to be your boss. You have a podcast, although it's dormant right now that's at

00:42:56 ◼   ► the incomparable. There are lots of connections here. That's fine.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Which is why you're the perfect person.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Yeah, you're one of us and you're one of them.

00:43:04 ◼   ► You are also somebody who understands what we do, which is ever so slightly different

00:43:11 ◼   ► I think from some of the larger shows and the way that we're approaching.

00:43:14 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of questions and points that I would like to discuss with you, Mr.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Friedman.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Go for it.

00:43:22 ◼   ► I think fundamentally, one of the things that we're talking about is all the stuff that

00:43:26 ◼   ► was in that article but just in general what data do you feel from the

00:43:31 ◼   ► conversations that you've had that advertisers would like from podcasters

00:43:37 ◼   ► that they don't currently have? What are the things that you hear about the most

00:43:41 ◼   ► that companies that are willing to advertise want but can't get? So the thing

00:43:45 ◼   ► that we hear from the bigger advertisers who either are in the space or are

00:43:50 ◼   ► saying I can only get into the space when the things that they're asking for

00:43:53 ◼   ► the most are they want to know how many people have actually heard the ad right

00:43:57 ◼   ► they're looking at us as digital and so they're saying hey when we buy what we

00:44:01 ◼   ► consider digital ads on YouTube we know who clicked the five-second skip button

00:44:07 ◼   ► who watched the whole video who fast-forwarded as soon as they could or

00:44:10 ◼   ► who saw the entire ad we want to know that for podcasts now what I tell them

00:44:16 ◼   ► is I don't have that number my guess is I'll never have that number the if we

00:44:20 ◼   ► were ever gonna really have any version of the number would have to come from

00:44:23 ◼   ► Apple and they're never going to give it to us.

00:44:26 ◼   ► But the thing that I tell everybody, and I genuinely mean it is, if we had that number,

00:44:31 ◼   ► it wouldn't change the price, right?

00:44:33 ◼   ► It would change what the metric is that we're using against our CPM.

00:44:36 ◼   ► So we'd say, okay, let's say that 40% of the people who listen to a podcast listen to the

00:44:41 ◼   ► ads.

00:44:42 ◼   ► I hope it's a lot more than that.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Let's say it's 40%.

00:44:44 ◼   ► I wouldn't suddenly charge only 40% of what we're charging today.

00:44:46 ◼   ► It would just say, okay, the number that we're using as our multiplier is now this actual

00:44:49 ◼   ► listens number, so it's still the same price.

00:44:52 ◼   ► The market has proven that the pricing is fair on these things.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And it's really, they're just, you know, I used to and still do deal with all the direct

00:45:00 ◼   ► response advertisers that you guys were talking about last week.

00:45:02 ◼   ► You know, everybody with their offer codes up to and including mail route.

00:45:07 ◼   ► They can track every single thing that's happening.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But I would say that mid-roll's business over the past three years has evolved from 90%

00:45:15 ◼   ► direct response to about half.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And so we're doing campaigns with Wendy's and Dunkin Donuts and Allstate.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Where's my Dunkin Donuts ad on the incomparable, Lex?

00:45:27 ◼   ► So far they're only buying Bill Simmons.

00:45:30 ◼   ► But the brands that we've landed are Head & Shoulders.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Head & Shoulders did a campaign and they didn't spend...

00:45:40 ◼   ► I think you guys even made references, maybe Marco and company did, to the fact that big

00:45:44 ◼   ► brands coming in aren't necessarily going to spend bajillions of dollars, right?

00:45:47 ◼   ► They're going to test it out just like everybody else.

00:45:49 ◼   ► But the folks who are coming in are cautious because we don't have more measurement.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And then the folks who are on the fence keep telling us, "Well, I need to know exactly

00:45:57 ◼   ► how many people heard the ad," which you guys made the point last week.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Well, do you know how many people saw your ad on the billboard or in the magazine or

00:46:04 ◼   ► on television or on the radio?

00:46:05 ◼   ► The answer is, of course, no.

00:46:07 ◼   ► But they believe all the numbers they get for those things, right?

00:46:09 ◼   ► They believe that Nielsen numbers are accurate.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Would it be safe to say, given my background and seeing print salespeople as well as digital

00:46:17 ◼   ► salespeople, would it be right to say that there's really a disconnect where people who

00:46:21 ◼   ► are used to buying digital, like you said, they expect web metrics for everything. And

00:46:26 ◼   ► even if podcasting is more like radio, except with better stats, because we do have some

00:46:32 ◼   ► statistics, that's not what they're used to. They're used to having rafts of data to use

00:46:38 ◼   ► to make their buying decisions.

00:46:40 ◼   ► - That's fairly accurate.

00:46:41 ◼   ► And you know, when we talk to ad agencies,

00:46:43 ◼   ► you know, like the giant ad agencies

00:46:45 ◼   ► in Madison Avenue and whatnot,

00:46:48 ◼   ► sometimes it's their digital team

00:46:49 ◼   ► and sometimes it's the radio team.

00:46:51 ◼   ► We're too expensive for the radio team, right?

00:46:53 ◼   ► The prices that radio gets typically are very, very low

00:46:56 ◼   ► and they're typically selling spot.

00:46:57 ◼   ► If you're doing, meaning like a prerecorded 30

00:46:59 ◼   ► or 60 second spot that they play on the radio.

00:47:02 ◼   ► If you're doing host reads,

00:47:04 ◼   ► like most of us are doing in podcasting,

00:47:06 ◼   ► that's typically local talk radio

00:47:08 ◼   ► who was selling host-read style spots.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And so when it's the radio buyers talking to us

00:47:14 ◼   ► and we're like, no, we don't have day parts.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Like they want to know what hour

00:47:17 ◼   ► is the ad going to run all the hours?

00:47:20 ◼   ► The ad will always be running.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - It's five years from now the ad will run, yeah.

00:47:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's most of the buying,

00:47:26 ◼   ► I would say probably of the agency buying

00:47:28 ◼   ► greater than 95% is coming from digital buyers

00:47:30 ◼   ► who like you said, they're accustomed

00:47:31 ◼   ► to digital style numbers

00:47:33 ◼   ► and that's what they want from us.

00:47:35 ◼   ► - Right, so couldn't it be argued then

00:47:37 ◼   ► that rather than trying to fight to get the data

00:47:41 ◼   ► and trying to educate companies like Apple

00:47:43 ◼   ► as to why they should provide the data,

00:47:45 ◼   ► that maybe the effort should be focused

00:47:47 ◼   ► on the advertising agencies about the way

00:47:50 ◼   ► that podcasting works, about the benefits of the medium,

00:47:53 ◼   ► and why it should be thought of more like radio

00:47:55 ◼   ► but in the digital space.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I guess it feels like there's a disconnect

00:47:58 ◼   ► that because it's on the internet,

00:48:01 ◼   ► it should be like web ads.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - It could be argued.

00:48:05 ◼   ► And I don't disagree with that mentality,

00:48:07 ◼   ► but I have to think carefully because of my job

00:48:12 ◼   ► and not wanting to offend people who buy ads from me.

00:48:15 ◼   ► The reality here is this, right?

00:48:17 ◼   ► Agency ad buyers are just like you and me, right?

00:48:21 ◼   ► They wanna be able to do the best work they can,

00:48:23 ◼   ► ideally with the path to least resistance.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And so they're accustomed to buying

00:48:29 ◼   ► what they know how to buy.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Right.

00:48:31 ◼   ► - And the number one way we get agencies buying

00:48:34 ◼   ► the number of Dunkin Donuts of course comes through an ad agency they don't do themselves

00:48:37 ◼   ► but the only reason Dunkin Donuts bought was because somebody at Dunkin Donuts told the agency

00:48:42 ◼   ► oh my god Bill Simmons has a podcast he talks about Dunkin all the time buy ads on it and that then

00:48:46 ◼   ► gave them the push to do it without that happening without the brand having a podcast advocate saying

00:48:51 ◼   ► I want to buy ads on that show yep they wouldn't have come and that very frequently is the way that

00:48:55 ◼   ► I sell ads for Relay right like we will either have somebody contact us who works in that company

00:49:02 ◼   ► to say that they want it to happen or I speak to somebody who asks the question

00:49:06 ◼   ► inside of a marketing team and someone puts their hand up and be like I love

00:49:09 ◼   ► those shows. Right and so I think yes we can keep

00:49:14 ◼   ► working to try to convince advertisers this is what we have.

00:49:17 ◼   ► I'll tell you what some of the problems are and I think

00:49:21 ◼   ► that you guys fairly but still did this I think you maybe

00:49:26 ◼   ► mischaracterized the meeting or why people went to the Times last week

00:49:30 ◼   ► because I was not at the Apple meeting, I can say that.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Whether mid-roll was or wasn't, I couldn't say,

00:49:37 ◼   ► because I'm sure that Apple would have anybody

00:49:38 ◼   ► who attended sign an NDA.

00:49:40 ◼   ► That's just my guess, knowing how Apple works.

00:49:42 ◼   ► - The article did say that.

00:49:43 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And so, my guess is, people simply,

00:49:47 ◼   ► people at the time said, "Hey, what were you doing

00:49:51 ◼   ► "at Cupertino?"

00:49:53 ◼   ► Person from various local podcasting companies who I like,

00:49:56 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Oh, well, I can't really tell you,

00:49:57 ◼   ► "but I'll tell you off the record kind of thing."

00:49:59 ◼   ► don't think that people want specifically to complain,

00:50:01 ◼   ► is my gut.

00:50:02 ◼   ► But here's what we have today.

00:50:06 ◼   ► There are competitors in this space,

00:50:07 ◼   ► companies selling podcast ads,

00:50:08 ◼   ► who claim to have the numbers that advertisers want.

00:50:11 ◼   ► We get asked, I swear to you, every single day,

00:50:15 ◼   ► I have 10 salespeople now,

00:50:16 ◼   ► every day at least one of them gets asked,

00:50:17 ◼   ► can we use a tracking pixel?

00:50:19 ◼   ► And we say, no.

00:50:21 ◼   ► And then they say, but competitor X,

00:50:23 ◼   ► and I'll tell you after we are done recording

00:50:25 ◼   ► who the competitor is,

00:50:26 ◼   ► but they say competitor X says they can do that.

00:50:29 ◼   ► And no, they cannot.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Like, you guys know how MP3 players work,

00:50:33 ◼   ► how audio files work, you cannot embed a pixel in there

00:50:37 ◼   ► that somebody will load at the time the ad shows up,

00:50:39 ◼   ► unless it's in some custom app,

00:50:41 ◼   ► which is where none of the listening happens, right?

00:50:43 ◼   ► Still, 60 to 70% of the listening is happening

00:50:45 ◼   ► in iTunes or podcasts.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And there's no mechanism by which you can report back,

00:50:49 ◼   ► but they're being told that there is.

00:50:51 ◼   ► So I think people in part went to Apple

00:50:53 ◼   ► because they wanted to say,

00:50:54 ◼   ► "Guys, liars are saying that this is how they can stop."

00:50:59 ◼   ► And if you can give us some kind of reality to attach you so last week you guys were saying

00:51:04 ◼   ► Because Apple doesn't stream the files. They can't do this

00:51:06 ◼   ► My understanding from anonymous sources is they absolutely could do this like they already can report to you on who's streaming versus downloading

00:51:13 ◼   ► I think a large percentage of people are streaming in podcasts and in iTunes without even knowing it, right?

00:51:17 ◼   ► They just hit the play button. So it starts streaming right and Apple knows even though they're just kind of passing through the file

00:51:22 ◼   ► They know how far you've gotten I have seen a report from Apple on completion rates. They don't actually make it available

00:51:28 ◼   ► I don't see one every week. I saw one one time that was anonymized and wasn't about any shows

00:51:32 ◼   ► I deal with but they could do it

00:51:33 ◼   ► They own they own the app if you've got the player app you can get the you can get the stats

00:51:37 ◼   ► That's that's absolutely true. If you it's it's stats from your your player

00:51:41 ◼   ► I want to go back to something you said though because I thought having worked as you as you did we you know when you would

00:51:46 ◼   ► Visit our office in San Francisco having worked with digital salespeople

00:51:48 ◼   ► You know, it's a tough job and they are being how do you measure? How do you measure the effectiveness of a salesperson?

00:51:57 ◼   ► Who's selling digital and one of the things is is they've got to have good relationship with clients because they got to make the sales

00:52:03 ◼   ► How does the client measure effectiveness with a branding campaign on digital and it's hard right because like you said there's a leap of faith

00:52:10 ◼   ► With numbers from radio or TV or something like that

00:52:13 ◼   ► And so I understand the impetus here from the salesperson and from the person at the agency

00:52:19 ◼   ► Which is like, you know, how do I get I'm so I'm an agency ad buyer and unless Duncan is telling me

00:52:24 ◼   ► I want Bill Simmons

00:52:25 ◼   ► I need to justify where I'm putting money, and if I have no numbers that will convince

00:52:32 ◼   ► my boss that this is a good buy, why would I do that? Why would I go down that route?

00:52:37 ◼   ► And so you end up, even if we all feel like, "Oh no, actually, this is a really good

00:52:41 ◼   ► medium and you should do it," I can see just from a personal scale of the people in

00:52:46 ◼   ► the chain, the person who has to sell the ad, the person who has to buy the ad, that

00:52:51 ◼   ► it would be difficult because they need to show proof. And more and more, the only medium

00:52:56 ◼   ► that has proof proof that everybody's used to is the web. And so they start to say things

00:53:01 ◼   ► like, "Can you give me pixel data?" even though that does not exist.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And so what we've started doing is, when it's a big brand, like if it is a Dunkin' Donuts

00:53:11 ◼   ► or a Wendy's or that kind of company, we'll try to do a recall study for them. And surveys

00:53:19 ◼   ► Advertises are what they are, right?

00:53:20 ◼   ► But it's the only thing we can do.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And so when brands are advertising on television, in theory they're going to say, "Hey, let's

00:53:24 ◼   ► do some kind of brand lift study.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Let's do some kind of surveying, some kind of sampling to say, 'What ads were in that

00:53:30 ◼   ► TV show?

00:53:31 ◼   ► Can you remember without us helping you at all?

00:53:33 ◼   ► Can you tell us unaided, they call it?

00:53:35 ◼   ► Can you recall who the advertisers were in that episode?'"

00:53:37 ◼   ► And then once they say it, they're like, "Okay, yeah, you saw an ad for X car company.

00:53:41 ◼   ► What car was it?

00:53:42 ◼   ► What did they say about the car?

00:53:43 ◼   ► What were the features?"

00:53:44 ◼   ► So we've been basically doing that on some podcasts that have brand advertisers.

00:53:47 ◼   ► in the post roll at the end of the show,

00:53:49 ◼   ► they'll say, "Hey, listeners, if you have two minutes,

00:53:50 ◼   ► "go fill out this survey."

00:53:51 ◼   ► Now, it's a very, it's some kind of survey bias, right?

00:53:55 ◼   ► Because it's only people who've listened

00:53:57 ◼   ► to the end of the show.

00:53:57 ◼   ► It's people who like the show so much

00:53:59 ◼   ► that they're willing to go fill out a survey

00:54:00 ◼   ► that has no reward for them of any kind.

00:54:02 ◼   ► They don't know why they're filling out the survey

00:54:04 ◼   ► or what it is, 'cause we don't tell them,

00:54:05 ◼   ► "Hey, we wanna ask you about the ads you just heard,"

00:54:06 ◼   ► 'cause that would already skew your results even further.

00:54:09 ◼   ► So people go in and they tell us,

00:54:10 ◼   ► but what's amazing is, exactly as you'd expect,

00:54:13 ◼   ► the numbers are really good.

00:54:14 ◼   ► People listen to the ads.

00:54:15 ◼   ► It's not like radio and television where they ignore it,

00:54:17 ◼   ► or magazines or the web.

00:54:19 ◼   ► They actually pay attention to the ad.

00:54:20 ◼   ► So they can tell us, oh yeah, I heard the ad.

00:54:23 ◼   ► I can remember who the advertisers are.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And more than half the audience says,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I'm more likely to eat at that restaurant

00:54:29 ◼   ► or shop at that store now that I've heard that ad.

00:54:32 ◼   ► So we can get the right data,

00:54:34 ◼   ► but now everybody wants a recall study,

00:54:37 ◼   ► and there is a finite amount of listener patience

00:54:39 ◼   ► to keep hearing recall studies

00:54:40 ◼   ► and keep following up on doing them.

00:54:42 ◼   ► But that's the only, if it's not a direct response campaign

00:54:45 ◼   ► where you can track coupon codes or vanity URLs,

00:54:48 ◼   ► that's all you can really do is try to do some brand lift.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I will tell you, there was one restaurant chain that said,

00:54:55 ◼   ► all we're really looking for is, and I'm quoting here,

00:54:57 ◼   ► all we're really looking for is asses and seats

00:54:59 ◼   ► at the restaurant.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And I said, well, how will you tell

00:55:02 ◼   ► if the podcast helped that?

00:55:03 ◼   ► And they're like, they said a line that I've heard

00:55:04 ◼   ► from numerous advertisers, which is,

00:55:07 ◼   ► they think that overall 50% of all their brand advertising

00:55:10 ◼   ► is effective and they just don't know which 50% it is.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So as long as the numbers are trending

00:55:13 ◼   ► in the right direction,

00:55:14 ◼   ► they keep doing everything that they're doing.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - I used to work at a very large company, a global company,

00:55:19 ◼   ► and I worked in the marketing teams

00:55:20 ◼   ► and I used to sit in meetings

00:55:21 ◼   ► where the digital advertising people would sit

00:55:25 ◼   ► and they were basically of that idea too.

00:55:29 ◼   ► This seems to be like a prevailing thing.

00:55:31 ◼   ► It's just like, we know we're putting all this money in

00:55:34 ◼   ► and we know something's happening.

00:55:36 ◼   ► We have no idea what is causing it, but we know it's good.

00:55:39 ◼   ► it was it was a very interesting thing to see and it's because that sort of

00:55:46 ◼   ► brand advertising exists in another medium is why I think that it you know

00:55:51 ◼   ► it can and does exist in podcasting but then when you start putting the data in

00:55:56 ◼   ► it I think it fundamentally changes what the advertising is because if you're

00:56:00 ◼   ► again you know whenever we've gone over this but if you're looking at this is

00:56:04 ◼   ► more like radio, but you have to pay digital. I know it gets tricky, but it's asking for

00:56:11 ◼   ► data to exist that doesn't exist, right? And then how do you, I don't know how you start

00:56:16 ◼   ► to combat against that. Like companies just have to go along with it, right?

00:56:21 ◼   ► It doesn't, it also, the web, I feel like it has skewed this because with the web, direct

00:56:25 ◼   ► response is so powerful. Everybody wants to measure, I mean, that was my experience of

00:56:29 ◼   ► IDG. It's like everybody wants to sell direct response. Everybody wants things, click-throughs,

00:56:33 ◼   ► click-throughs, what are the click-throughs? And that misses the most, I would say, powerful

00:56:40 ◼   ► and lucrative portion of advertising, which is brand advertising. And for people who don't

00:56:45 ◼   ► know about this, it's the difference between an ad that makes you feel good about a company

00:56:49 ◼   ► and its services or products, and an ad that wants you to call a phone number or go to

00:56:54 ◼   ► a website right now. And on the web, a click-through is like you're picking up the phone and dialing

00:57:00 ◼   ► to buy that vegetable slicer. It's direct response. They can measure that click. And

00:57:07 ◼   ► the problem is branding advertising doesn't really work like that. An old boss of mine

00:57:14 ◼   ► used to say, "You have to be considered to be bought." Your brand's legitimacy is a part

00:57:19 ◼   ► of this, the importance of you getting business. And all those Squarespace ads, I think Squarespace

00:57:25 ◼   ► Although they have some direct response, Squarespace's campaign on like every podcast was a branding

00:57:31 ◼   ► campaign because what they want is if somebody thinks I want to set up a website, that Squarespace

00:57:36 ◼   ► is the first thing that comes to mind. And I think it's been very effective at that.

00:57:40 ◼   ► But like Coke, Coke doesn't want you to click on a box in order to get a Coke in your house.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Right? Coke wants you to think, "Oh yeah, Coke, I like Coke. I should buy Coke the next

00:57:50 ◼   ► time I go to the store or the next time I need soda, I should get a Coke."

00:57:54 ◼   ► Or Vizio is the example I give.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Vizio did a lot of advertising because they wanted to be seen as a television brand and

00:58:01 ◼   ► not the cheap TV that is at Costco.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And the benefit there was not direct response.

00:58:07 ◼   ► It was the brand got better.

00:58:09 ◼   ► But you get branding without clicking on things and without direct response, so it's very

00:58:12 ◼   ► hard to measure it and you don't know if it's working or not.

00:58:15 ◼   ► I think that's all exactly right.

00:58:17 ◼   ► I don't disagree with any of it.

00:58:19 ◼   ► And the one thing that you mentioned last week, Jason, on this show was ideally there'd

00:58:25 ◼   ► be some way to sample it, right?

00:58:26 ◼   ► Because advertisers are asking for data that they don't have from anything else except

00:58:30 ◼   ► the web.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And we even know that the data they have from the web is bogus, right?

00:58:32 ◼   ► Just because the impression was served doesn't mean anybody saw it.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Could have been an ad blocker, could have been off the page, whatever.

00:58:37 ◼   ► A lot of people have the ads turned off, a lot of things messing with it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► But if there was some way to give them sampled data the way they have for television and

00:58:46 ◼   ► radio, I think advertisers would accept it in a heartbeat.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But the problem is, to get sample data, you need Apple and Google and Overcast.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Every app with an endpoint there has to participate.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Let's say that Marco came to me and said, years ago when he first launched it, I asked

00:59:02 ◼   ► and he passed.

00:59:03 ◼   ► He said, "No way."

00:59:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:05 ◼   ► If Marco said, "Hey, Lex, pay me this fee and you can have access to my listener behavior

00:59:09 ◼   ► data."

00:59:10 ◼   ► It's not useful, right?

00:59:11 ◼   ► Because I think, Myke, you said last week that 60% or something of your listeners come

00:59:15 ◼   ► from Overcast, which is obviously atypical for the industry overall.

00:59:22 ◼   ► If I were only sampling Overcast, which is, I don't know, I don't have any percentage

00:59:25 ◼   ► in front of me, but it's a single digit percentage of say WTF with Marc Maron.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It's a very different audience potentially from people who are listening to it on SoundCloud

00:59:33 ◼   ► or in Howl, like whatever it is.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So getting data from any one app is not useful.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It has to be true sample data across everything to be at all relevant.

00:59:43 ◼   ► You mentioned it as a good idea, which it is.

00:59:45 ◼   ► I don't think it's possible to get.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you would have to get it from a survey.

00:59:49 ◼   ► I mean, you'd essentially have to build a Nielsen survey style thing of podcast listeners.

00:59:54 ◼   ► You'd have to recruit a panel on, I guess, websites and maybe by putting advertising

00:59:59 ◼   ► and podcasts saying, would you like to join our panel?

01:00:01 ◼   ► And you'd, I mean, it would be a huge effort to try and create something that you would

01:00:05 ◼   ► have to feel at least somewhat confident is a statistically significant percentage.

01:00:11 ◼   ► How does it work on radio?

01:00:12 ◼   ► I mean, I did it once where they sent me a booklet

01:00:14 ◼   ► in the mail.

01:00:15 ◼   ► - So today on radio, they give you a thing

01:00:17 ◼   ► that's always listening to what you're listening to.

01:00:20 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, and it's like Shazam, Access.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I think they do that for some TV ratings now too.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - They do that for some TV ratings too.

01:00:26 ◼   ► TV, I mean, basically what podcasters,

01:00:29 ◼   ► what podcast companies are saying to Apple is,

01:00:31 ◼   ► be like TiVo, give us the DVR data that you have,

01:00:33 ◼   ► tell us what people are watching and listening,

01:00:35 ◼   ► tell us how far they get.

01:00:36 ◼   ► 'Cause TiVo is able to make that data available,

01:00:37 ◼   ► and does, they do it all anonymized,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and as a soul-sucking advertising salesperson,

01:00:42 ◼   ► That's the data I want.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Like I would love to have anonymized bulk data

01:00:44 ◼   ► of who got where.

01:00:46 ◼   ► But with radio, it's like listening over your shoulder.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Hey, did you hear that ad?

01:00:51 ◼   ► Are you hearing that ad?

01:00:52 ◼   ► And they know, because when you're in the car, right?

01:00:54 ◼   ► If you aren't listening to a podcast for some sick reason

01:00:56 ◼   ► and an ad comes on the radio,

01:00:58 ◼   ► most people who are driving jab at the preset buttons,

01:01:00 ◼   ► they go to the next station.

01:01:01 ◼   ► So they have these little listening devices

01:01:03 ◼   ► so they can know which ads did you hear.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And then, you know, the radio companies

01:01:07 ◼   ► add some giant number to it and say,

01:01:08 ◼   ► okay, that's the number of people we have

01:01:10 ◼   ► listening to our station when the ads are on.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And it's all bogus, but it's bogus that's accepted by advertising buyers.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:15 ◼   ► All right.

01:01:16 ◼   ► So I have a feeling about this and this is kind of, I guess it's kind of selfish,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but I'm just thinking about my own business here.

01:01:21 ◼   ► So like you mentioned a moment ago, Lex, about the fact that we skew so much on

01:01:25 ◼   ► our shows towards third parties and all of this discussion is around what Apple

01:01:29 ◼   ► can do, what Apple can do, because in more mainstream shows, Apple is the 60, 70%,

01:01:34 ◼   ► where for us, we have third parties in that.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Even incomparable.

01:01:38 ◼   ► It's like 60 or 70% Apple, right?

01:01:40 ◼   ► because again, it touches more on mainstream topics.

01:01:43 ◼   ► So making these kinds of changes,

01:01:45 ◼   ► asking a company like Apple to provide this data,

01:01:48 ◼   ► is this not a scenario where the needs of the many

01:01:53 ◼   ► could affect the needs of the few, right?

01:01:55 ◼   ► So it's gonna make massive changes potentially

01:01:57 ◼   ► to the business where I,

01:01:59 ◼   ► and many other niche kind of podcasters

01:02:02 ◼   ► can't give that data, and then that then affects

01:02:06 ◼   ► the way that we can do business, right?

01:02:08 ◼   ► - I think it's a reasonable concern.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I think it's partially a marketplace concern,

01:02:12 ◼   ► if you know what I mean.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Like it's the same way that if,

01:02:16 ◼   ► that when there were 100 blogs using AdSense,

01:02:19 ◼   ► they could make more money than when there's a billion blogs

01:02:22 ◼   ► using AdSense, 'cause there's just,

01:02:23 ◼   ► there's less of that to go around.

01:02:25 ◼   ► I don't think though that it,

01:02:27 ◼   ► I don't think it negatively impacts your business

01:02:29 ◼   ► in a measurable way, is my guess.

01:02:31 ◼   ► Because if it means that more advertisers

01:02:32 ◼   ► can trust podcasting, and they can get in and say,

01:02:35 ◼   ► "Oh, okay."

01:02:36 ◼   ► So if they're saying that Marc Maron gets,

01:02:38 ◼   ► I'm making these numbers up, 650,000 downloads,

01:02:40 ◼   ► and 580,000 people get all the way to the end of each episode on average,

01:02:44 ◼   ► now I know people is in a podcast.

01:02:45 ◼   ► So I think to me, and I am trying very hard to be as unbiased here as I can,

01:02:49 ◼   ► although I can't escape what I am and what I do,

01:02:52 ◼   ► I think it probably ends up lifting all boats.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Because today, I wish I had more tech shows, right?

01:02:57 ◼   ► I wish I still sold all the relay shows,

01:02:58 ◼   ► because the niche, the audience there is so strong,

01:03:02 ◼   ► and so, and Sir Cuse was talking about this on ATP,

01:03:04 ◼   ► like the audience is so pre-identified as these are, you know,

01:03:08 ◼   ► tech-centric people with affluent incomes

01:03:12 ◼   ► and eagerness to spend on well-recommended products

01:03:15 ◼   ► that make sense for them.

01:03:16 ◼   ► They do really well, right?

01:03:18 ◼   ► It's a relatively easy sell, all things considered.

01:03:21 ◼   ► So I would be surprised if, let's say that,

01:03:24 ◼   ► because the WTF size shows of the world

01:03:26 ◼   ► had more listener behavior data,

01:03:28 ◼   ► that advertisers said, "Well, I'm never gonna buy

01:03:31 ◼   ► "from ATP or from upgrade again,"

01:03:33 ◼   ► because they still, once they've proven to themselves

01:03:36 ◼   ► that the industry works, I feel like when they want

01:03:39 ◼   ► to reach the tech audience, they're gonna know to come here.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And I'll add this, if you listen today

01:03:45 ◼   ► to a show like The Talk Show or ATP,

01:03:49 ◼   ► you hear on those two shows in particular,

01:03:53 ◼   ► shows that I really love and like shows that I have sold

01:03:55 ◼   ► in the past, you hear today the same six to 10 advertisers

01:04:00 ◼   ► most of the time, I would say 90% of the spots

01:04:02 ◼   ► are maybe six to eight advertisers across those shows.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And that, to everyone's point, that's a really good sign.

01:04:09 ◼   ► That means the show really works for advertisers.

01:04:11 ◼   ► If you hear different advertisers,

01:04:12 ◼   ► every episode of the show,

01:04:13 ◼   ► is a show that doesn't work that well for advertisers

01:04:14 ◼   ► 'cause they don't renew.

01:04:16 ◼   ► So the fact that they have the same advertisers

01:04:17 ◼   ► again and again is very reassuring for them.

01:04:20 ◼   ► But when I look at it, it's like grrr,

01:04:23 ◼   ► because I'm seeing all these brands who wanna get in

01:04:25 ◼   ► who are coming to me and saying,

01:04:26 ◼   ► "Hey, do you have any giant tech shows?"

01:04:27 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, not anymore."

01:04:29 ◼   ► But the advertisers are there, right?

01:04:31 ◼   ► Maybe neither Marco nor John would wanna run ads

01:04:34 ◼   ► for the Aaron Sorkin Steve Jobs movie.

01:04:36 ◼   ► But we ran a big campaign for the Steve Jobs movie, right?

01:04:39 ◼   ► And I literally just had somebody come to me last week

01:04:41 ◼   ► about a new book about Steve Jobs that's coming out

01:04:44 ◼   ► and wanted to know, and I'm like,

01:04:44 ◼   ► "Well, I can put you on these shows,

01:04:46 ◼   ► "but if you want these other ones,

01:04:47 ◼   ► "here are the people to contact."

01:04:48 ◼   ► But I think that they're probably,

01:04:51 ◼   ► all those shows are doing very well,

01:04:52 ◼   ► which I don't think is telling tales at its turn,

01:04:55 ◼   ► but they're doing very well financially, I mean.

01:04:57 ◼   ► I think they're probably even leaving money

01:04:59 ◼   ► on the table though,

01:05:00 ◼   ► because they're so direct response focused,

01:05:02 ◼   ► because there are brand advertisers

01:05:03 ◼   ► who want that audience so badly,

01:05:05 ◼   ► and the same way that people would pay a premium

01:05:06 ◼   ► to be on, to have their ads run on the West Wing,

01:05:09 ◼   ► speaking of Aaron's work,

01:05:10 ◼   ► and even though its audience was smaller than friends,

01:05:13 ◼   ► it was a different kind of listener,

01:05:14 ◼   ► or a different kind of watcher in that case,

01:05:16 ◼   ► and I think that's the same situation

01:05:17 ◼   ► that ATP and the talk show have,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and because they can't give the brands

01:05:22 ◼   ► what they want necessarily,

01:05:23 ◼   ► the brands aren't coming to them.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - But it's also-- - The brands.

01:05:27 ◼   ► - The brands.

01:05:29 ◼   ► - Brands, Marco will love this part.

01:05:30 ◼   ► - The thing is though, like,

01:05:32 ◼   ► I keep going back to it, then when we can't hand over that data, like so someone says

01:05:36 ◼   ► to us like, oh, there this big brand advertiser comes, this movie comes and they're like,

01:05:41 ◼   ► okay, and we've advertised here and there. And we want that data, we want those listener

01:05:45 ◼   ► number data from you. And we say, well, we can't give it to you. Doesn't that then affect

01:05:49 ◼   ► it though, because we don't have the information that they know has told them that it works

01:05:54 ◼   ► in other places. And if NFA podcasts, which doesn't use one of the big platforms as its

01:05:59 ◼   ► primary way of distribution cannot give that data to a new advertiser.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Does that not put them on a bad foot with them?

01:06:07 ◼   ► I still don't think so.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Because I think that if they're able to prove to themselves that in general people listen

01:06:14 ◼   ► to podcasts pretty far through.

01:06:16 ◼   ► And if they're able to prove to themselves that yes, this medium is going to work because

01:06:19 ◼   ► they can get over whatever hurdles they have today, then you're able to tell them, "Look,

01:06:25 ◼   ► more than half of our audience is so opted into this medium that they went and got a

01:06:28 ◼   ► different app like they took it a step further because they they felt you know

01:06:31 ◼   ► we're a pro level listener we need more access and we need better features and

01:06:35 ◼   ► be able to get through more shows and subscribe in more ways like I I think

01:06:40 ◼   ► that you know if you got first of all if you got to the point it was an overcast

01:06:43 ◼   ► specifically and suddenly companies like yours were hurting I know the guy who

01:06:47 ◼   ► makes overcast you could maybe convince him to change his mind a little bit on

01:06:51 ◼   ► how he approaches it but I doubt it you'll still have 10 to 20 percent of

01:06:55 ◼   ► of your audience at least using iTunes, right?

01:06:57 ◼   ► Or using Apple.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And you'll be able to have a sample just from that.

01:07:01 ◼   ► You can tell them, look, you've seen that the medium works

01:07:03 ◼   ► from these other things, from these other shows,

01:07:05 ◼   ► and a portion of our audience that's doing this

01:07:07 ◼   ► has these great or even better numbers, let's say,

01:07:09 ◼   ► comparable numbers, and we assume that the overcast piece

01:07:14 ◼   ► is even more engaged based on the fact that they've opted

01:07:16 ◼   ► into using a different app and have gone out of their way

01:07:18 ◼   ► to make it easier for them to listen to the show.

01:07:20 ◼   ► - We also, we are very focused on niche advertising, right?

01:07:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - And I agree that there are quite a lot of advertisers

01:07:28 ◼   ► that they frequently sponsor all these shows.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And one of our big goals here is to bring new people in.

01:07:35 ◼   ► And we have a couple of companies that we've brought on now

01:07:37 ◼   ► which are different.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Also have lots of buy, right?

01:07:41 ◼   ► They're buying lots of shows over many weeks

01:07:43 ◼   ► and I think our listeners are starting to hear those.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So we are focused on trying to broaden that net,

01:07:48 ◼   ► but it's still within our niche.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And one of the things that I think about

01:07:51 ◼   ► is the reason that our CPMs,

01:07:53 ◼   ► which is the cost per thousand listeners are so high

01:07:57 ◼   ► is because the advertisers and the content

01:08:00 ◼   ► and the listeners match up so nicely.

01:08:02 ◼   ► If the net, if overall everyone starts to go broader, right?

01:08:07 ◼   ► So we're all going broader with bigger brand campaigns,

01:08:10 ◼   ► wouldn't that drive the CPMs down

01:08:12 ◼   ► because the fit is not so tight?

01:08:15 ◼   ► - It's an interesting question.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Not so far in practice, I don't think it's impossible.

01:08:19 ◼   ► You know, the broader an audience,

01:08:22 ◼   ► the less valuable it is to an advertiser.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I think that's true.

01:08:25 ◼   ► But if the brand specifically wants to reach

01:08:28 ◼   ► that kind of audience, then it's very valuable to it.

01:08:30 ◼   ► It's like real estate and everything else.

01:08:32 ◼   ► It's worth what people pay for it.

01:08:33 ◼   ► And Dunkin' Donuts, in its case,

01:08:36 ◼   ► didn't even care so much who Bill Simmons' audience was.

01:08:38 ◼   ► I mean, they did, but they were more interested

01:08:39 ◼   ► in the fact that Bill Simmons grew up with Dunkin' Donuts.

01:08:42 ◼   ► He's a sportscaster, he grew up in Boston,

01:08:44 ◼   ► where Dunkin' Donuts is, and he talked about it organically

01:08:47 ◼   ► in his columns that he wrote all the time,

01:08:49 ◼   ► so they said, "We want him to talk about us for pay."

01:08:51 ◼   ► And his very first ad was like four minutes long

01:08:54 ◼   ► talking about his childhood where every day

01:08:56 ◼   ► he would take his allowance money

01:08:58 ◼   ► and go to Dunkin Donuts after school.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But so, I think that advertisers are gonna say,

01:09:05 ◼   ► look, we're trying to reach,

01:09:06 ◼   ► like honestly, podcasts are helping them reach people

01:09:08 ◼   ► they can't reach anywhere else, right?

01:09:10 ◼   ► Men 18 to 30 something aren't watching TV

01:09:15 ◼   ► nearly as much as they used to.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And if they are, they're watching stuff that's streaming,

01:09:17 ◼   ► doesn't have ads.

01:09:19 ◼   ► but they're listening to podcasts in big numbers.

01:09:22 ◼   ► The kind of, the people who listen to your shows, right?

01:09:26 ◼   ► This well-educated, high-earning listener,

01:09:29 ◼   ► tech-centric listener, is again, not watching television.

01:09:32 ◼   ► They're listening to podcasts.

01:09:33 ◼   ► This is the place to go to reach them.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And advertisers definitely want to reach,

01:09:37 ◼   ► that's why CBS might have the top-rated shows,

01:09:40 ◼   ► but maybe doesn't get as much ad dollars,

01:09:42 ◼   ► because they don't have the top-rated shows

01:09:43 ◼   ► amongst 18 to 34-year-olds,

01:09:44 ◼   ► the people who spend all the money.

01:09:46 ◼   ► I used to be an 18 to 34-year-old, those were the days.

01:09:48 ◼   ► And, but so it's like, overall my gut is that if,

01:09:53 ◼   ► to be honest, it's mostly an intellectual discussion

01:09:58 ◼   ► because well, except for my part,

01:09:59 ◼   ► because I don't think Apple will ever do it.

01:10:01 ◼   ► But if Apple were to say,

01:10:02 ◼   ► "Hey, we're gonna provide some anonymized data."

01:10:04 ◼   ► Even if it wasn't show specific,

01:10:05 ◼   ► but just industry specific saying,

01:10:06 ◼   ► "This is the percentage of people who listen

01:10:08 ◼   ► in these categories of shows all the way through

01:10:09 ◼   ► or whatever."

01:10:10 ◼   ► If we had, I don't think they'll ever provide that data.

01:10:14 ◼   ► But.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - So what are you gonna do then, right?

01:10:16 ◼   ► Because I mean, this whole conversation is focused around how good this data would be

01:10:20 ◼   ► and how much it's going to help the industry.

01:10:23 ◼   ► But I think we're all in agreement here that pigs will fly, I think, before you get any

01:10:27 ◼   ► of this.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So what happens?

01:10:30 ◼   ► So one of the points that ATP was making was, what you should really be focused on, advertising

01:10:36 ◼   ► industry and podcasting industry in general, is how do we get more listeners?

01:10:39 ◼   ► How do we get more people into the space?

01:10:42 ◼   ► For me, it's a chicken and egg problem, right?

01:10:44 ◼   ► Howard Stern renewed his I'm not saying Howard Stern's an ideal podcaster

01:10:47 ◼   ► But if you take if we take as truth that he is hugely popular and that Sirius XM is built on Howard Stern

01:10:54 ◼   ► He's too big for podcasting

01:10:57 ◼   ► No podcasting company can give him the money that he wants because the advertising dollars aren't there yet

01:11:01 ◼   ► Now Wall Street Journal ran an article a couple months ago saying that the entire advertising industry for podcasting was 35 million

01:11:07 ◼   ► Which is like laughably wrong

01:11:09 ◼   ► So there's there's real money in podcasting

01:11:14 ◼   ► But there's not Howard Stern money podcasting

01:11:16 ◼   ► So part of the reason that people like me are so eager or wish that Apple would

01:11:20 ◼   ► Succumb and give us more data so that we could woo these advertisers because those advertisers have the bigger budgets right like even

01:11:26 ◼   ► Unlocking the fortune 100 of podcast advertisers of which we've cracked here at mid-roll. I don't know 10

01:11:32 ◼   ► There's a lot of incremental money into the space because it's not like it's gonna stop working for the Casper's and

01:11:38 ◼   ► Square spaces and mail routes of the world. It's gonna keep working for them, too

01:11:42 ◼   ► So my feeling is the more people we can the more money that the industry can make

01:11:47 ◼   ► The more big talent will come in there the more big talent that's there the more listeners will get because today

01:11:53 ◼   ► I don't think there's a vast untapped market of tech podcast listeners who aren't yet listening to tech podcasts

01:12:00 ◼   ► I think for the comedy space that ear wolf sits in which is part of my day job

01:12:04 ◼   ► I think we've hit you know

01:12:06 ◼   ► 90% of the people who want to hear that kind of content are listening to it right now

01:12:11 ◼   ► Then there's a big untapped market of all kinds of other people who don't know what podcasts are don't know how it works for

01:12:16 ◼   ► For them podcast app iTunes and overcast are all too difficult right now

01:12:21 ◼   ► Figuring out how to connect their phone in the car is too hard all those pieces getting like if my car could download the episodes for

01:12:27 ◼   ► Me automatically and be synced with whatever app I'm using so that I could just get in the car and push the podcast button and start

01:12:32 ◼   ► Listening to the latest episode of upgrade that's that's where the industry has to go

01:12:36 ◼   ► But to make all those things happen to make it get that mainstream

01:12:39 ◼   ► It's gonna have to be all the things happening once bigger talent coming into the space

01:12:43 ◼   ► So that you can get bigger shows and making it all easier so that more and more people are getting in there as listeners

01:12:48 ◼   ► So what are we gonna do? We're gonna keep doing we do it, right?

01:12:50 ◼   ► We're gonna keep having these same conversations advertisers explaining why they can't have the data that they want

01:12:54 ◼   ► And trying to reassure them that doesn't matter

01:12:57 ◼   ► And we're gonna miss out on some advertisers. There's gonna be some folks who we I

01:13:02 ◼   ► Have a trip to Detroit next Monday a week from today

01:13:06 ◼   ► To talk to the kinds of companies kind of companies there you can you can guess what kind of companies

01:13:10 ◼   ► Some of them have tried podcast some of them are looking to do bigger and better things

01:13:15 ◼   ► But it's an open question as to whether all of them

01:13:18 ◼   ► Well, I used to think I used to tell everybody you look if we get one movie studio advertising as movies of us all the

01:13:23 ◼   ► movie studios

01:13:24 ◼   ► well

01:13:24 ◼   ► it actually did happen with TV stations right a lot of TV networks do tune in with us where they're saying hey tune into this

01:13:29 ◼   ► Show at this time and I'll tell you just as a quick aside

01:13:33 ◼   ► sometimes they'll say, "Hey, we only want the ads to run up until the time the show premieres. After

01:13:37 ◼   ► that, can we pull the ads out?" It's like, no, we're not going to do that. You are very old school

01:13:41 ◼   ► and you're thinking you are a crazy, but that's what we're dealing with. I was going to ask you

01:13:44 ◼   ► about that. Does that hurt podcasting, the fact that you cannot guarantee a listen and that the

01:13:48 ◼   ► ads, the ads are kind of baked in and then stay forever? Oh, hell yeah. That's why some people in

01:13:54 ◼   ► the industry are moving to inserted ads, right? Even if it's effectively a host-read spot, they're

01:13:58 ◼   ► trying to pre-record the spots and inject them at the time of download so that you might hear the

01:14:03 ◼   ► the host reading an ad for you know Squarespace this week but if you listen

01:14:07 ◼   ► next week you'll hear an ad for a TV show that comes out that week. Yeah that's

01:14:11 ◼   ► one thing I noticed I downloaded cereal recently the first season and the MailChimp

01:14:16 ◼   ► ads were gone. Yeah and that's very common, it's gonna get increasingly common.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Everything that just about everything we sell today is still baked in right the

01:14:23 ◼   ► ads are there and until and unless we strip them out by hand which just

01:14:27 ◼   ► doesn't happen but the industry in some places is really trying to move to

01:14:32 ◼   ► inserted spots like that where it's inserted on demand as you download it because they

01:14:36 ◼   ► know your geo when you're downloading it and they know the date when you're downloading

01:14:39 ◼   ► it.

01:14:40 ◼   ► The risk to me is if you go down that route, it gets really easy to say, "You know what?

01:14:46 ◼   ► We could take a prerecorded Geico ad for a $3 or $4 CPM and just put that in if we didn't

01:14:53 ◼   ► sell the spot."

01:14:55 ◼   ► That's when podcasts really start sounding like radio and it's when listeners really

01:14:58 ◼   ► get alienated.

01:14:59 ◼   ► ads are so cheap because they don't work that well.

01:15:00 ◼   ► It's not the host reading it and listeners start tuning it out.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And it's like, think of how good you are at ignoring every commercial around you.

01:15:07 ◼   ► As soon as it's a prerecorded spot, doesn't do anything other

01:15:09 ◼   ► than take you out of the podcast.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Uh, so I've been holding that off as far as I can.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with you.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I, I I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of having my, you know, host

01:15:19 ◼   ► red spots, uh, dynamically inserted.

01:15:21 ◼   ► We, we actually hear a lot from people in Europe about how so many of the ads on

01:15:26 ◼   ► the relay shows are obviously, and most podcasts, right, are, they're often very US-centric.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And the reason is exactly this, which is everything's just baked in right now. This is, I mean, it

01:15:37 ◼   ► is very primitive in that way. And yes, if CBS wants to have that ad for CSI Cyber stop

01:15:43 ◼   ► running because they canceled it, you can't. You just, you can't right now.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Do, I have one follow-up before we wrap this up, which was standardized data. Like one

01:15:55 ◼   ► of the things that I know that your podcasters that you were selling for have to do, because

01:15:59 ◼   ► I'm one of them, is supply you with data. And the challenge is that the data right now

01:16:03 ◼   ► is not just limited to downloads, let's say, and streams, but it's also not standardized.

01:16:09 ◼   ► And I know that NPR had a white paper about this a while ago, this idea of trying to create

01:16:15 ◼   ► some standards, because right now a number, and I can say this from personal experience,

01:16:20 ◼   ► a number on SoundCloud and Libsyn and Feedpress, it's not the same number. Like the numbers,

01:16:29 ◼   ► and it's hard to tell what the real number is, but they're not measuring the same thing

01:16:33 ◼   ► so far as we can tell. And so therefore, even when you say this is a show with this many

01:16:38 ◼   ► downloads, what downloads means is unclear.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a problem. And there are the same companies that claim they can put in pixels

01:16:48 ◼   ► will say, "Hey, this show's doing one and a half million downloads an episode where

01:16:51 ◼   ► it doesn't rank in the iTunes top 500."

01:16:53 ◼   ► Because they're saying, "If we tweet it and Twitter uses the SoundCloud embedded player,

01:16:59 ◼   ► then every one of this person's followers counts as a potential listen, so we're going

01:17:02 ◼   ► to count those as listens."

01:17:03 ◼   ► That's literally the math they've been using.

01:17:06 ◼   ► We've seen shows move from Libsyn to SoundCloud and have their numbers go up.

01:17:09 ◼   ► We've seen shows move from SoundCloud to Libsyn and have their numbers go up.

01:17:11 ◼   ► We've seen them both go down when they make those switches too.

01:17:13 ◼   ► It's a problem.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Everybody's trying to use some amalgamated algorithm, which is also the name of my cover

01:17:20 ◼   ► band that looks at bandwidth usage by file and session length if you're streaming it

01:17:28 ◼   ► on the site and other variables to try to come up with what the right download number

01:17:31 ◼   ► is.

01:17:32 ◼   ► But it's impossible to really measure peer downloads.

01:17:35 ◼   ► We get a surprising amount of shows who come to us and tell us, "Hey, we do 200,000 downloads

01:17:39 ◼   ► an episode," when they're measuring it just by server stats, not really since their server

01:17:43 ◼   ► is chunking the file and they're getting a quarter or a fifth of what they think they're

01:17:46 ◼   ► getting.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And so we get to be the bearers of delightfully bad news for disappointed podcasters around

01:17:51 ◼   ► the world.

01:17:52 ◼   ► But it's a problem.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I like SoundCloud's numbers and I like Libsyn's numbers because I appreciate what they're

01:17:58 ◼   ► trying to do and how they're trying to do it.

01:18:00 ◼   ► And I think it's more exact than anybody can get on radio or TV, even though it's still

01:18:04 ◼   ► clearly vague and inexact overall.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I actually had one more thing before we go, which is Lex did leave that tantalizing point

01:18:11 ◼   ► out there that there were things that we said that he disagreed with last week.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Have we failed to cover some of those now?

01:18:19 ◼   ► Because this would be a good time for you to say, what else did we, do you think that

01:18:22 ◼   ► we got wrong?

01:18:23 ◼   ► I only have one minute, but we covered the one which I think that you can use, that Apple

01:18:28 ◼   ► could give us access to listener data even without serving the files.

01:18:32 ◼   ► The only other thing is, and this is, I know this is way more than a one minute conversation,

01:18:36 ◼   ► But you guys on both shows, this one and ATP, you guys talked about how we don't want this

01:18:42 ◼   ► to become like the web or like YouTube because those things are ruined.

01:18:45 ◼   ► At the same time, I spend a lot of time every day on the web and on YouTube and I understand

01:18:49 ◼   ► what we're saying when we say that the web is ruined or the YouTube is ruined, but it

01:18:52 ◼   ► also still gives me a lot of joy, a lot of information and a lot of entertainment.

01:18:57 ◼   ► So I recognize and I like you don't love advertisers trying to follow me around every website I

01:19:02 ◼   ► visit and everything like that.

01:19:03 ◼   ► But the fact that YouTube advertisers can get some kind of aggregated data about how

01:19:07 ◼   ► many people pressed the skip button versus how many people didn't, doesn't bother me

01:19:10 ◼   ► that much.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It certainly doesn't negatively impact my overall YouTube experience.

01:19:12 ◼   ► So I just wanted to put that out there that I know it's easy for us to say that YouTube

01:19:17 ◼   ► and the web are ruined, but I still love both YouTube and the web.

01:19:20 ◼   ► So I, there's-

01:19:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but loving them for the content is very different to, like when we say ruined, it's

01:19:25 ◼   ► like the advertising business in those is significantly worse.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Like YouTube CPMs are horrific.

01:19:34 ◼   ► That I get.

01:19:35 ◼   ► The only other piece I'll put out there is, we didn't talk about the idea of advertisers,

01:19:40 ◼   ► I'm sorry, of podcast companies selling episodes on iTunes and how like, do you really want

01:19:45 ◼   ► to cut, like that's not something that I'm personally advocating for.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I'm not super interested in it.

01:19:49 ◼   ► By the same token, advertisers who are trying to find ways to make more money for podcasts

01:19:54 ◼   ► so that the, like, we have to, we want these advertisers,

01:19:58 ◼   ► we want podcast creators to find a way

01:20:01 ◼   ► to make it profitable, right?

01:20:03 ◼   ► We can't say just, you know, just make great stuff

01:20:05 ◼   ► and you'll make money is the same thing.

01:20:07 ◼   ► Like we can't, we shouldn't yell,

01:20:08 ◼   ► I'm gonna get a point eventually, I promise.

01:20:10 ◼   ► We can't yell at developers who are putting out free apps

01:20:13 ◼   ► or 99 cent apps and saying,

01:20:14 ◼   ► you're not building a sustainable business.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Think about how to really make this big.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And, you know, think that they're thinking about it wrong,

01:20:20 ◼   ► but then turn to podcasters and say,

01:20:21 ◼   ► guys, you're trying to think about ways

01:20:23 ◼   ► monetize this better, just make great content.

01:20:26 ◼   ► It's the same.

01:20:26 ◼   ► It's really the same opposite sides of the argument being made in two different

01:20:29 ◼   ► ways.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Cause I think that it's right and important for podcasts companies to figure out, Hey,

01:20:33 ◼   ► what can we do to make these podcasts and make more money?

01:20:35 ◼   ► Cause what I love about I'm going way over time, I'm going to get missing my next

01:20:38 ◼   ► call and you wouldn't believe who it's with.

01:20:39 ◼   ► But if the, if, if what I love about this job is the podcasters can make the shows

01:20:47 ◼   ► cause they're getting paid, right?

01:20:48 ◼   ► Otherwise they couldn't make this art.

01:20:49 ◼   ► The listeners can hear the show only because the podcasts are getting paid.

01:20:51 ◼   ► Like most hosts wouldn't be able to keep doing the show if they weren't making

01:20:54 ◼   ► money from it.

01:20:54 ◼   ► So the listener gets to buy in and then the advertiser typically sees good results.

01:20:58 ◼   ► So it's truly in that sense, a win-win-win right?

01:21:00 ◼   ► The show exists because they're advertisers and the advertisers are happy because

01:21:04 ◼   ► they can advertise on that show.

01:21:05 ◼   ► So when we see the podcasters are trying to figure out what can we do to make more

01:21:08 ◼   ► money, it's the same thing that developers are trying to do, right?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Let me make this a subscription thing, even though that's not what people are

01:21:13 ◼   ► interested in necessarily.

01:21:14 ◼   ► They're like trying those pieces because they're trying to figure out a way to

01:21:17 ◼   ► make it a sustainable business.

01:21:18 ◼   ► We're going to do this forever.

01:21:20 ◼   ► but this fundamentally ties into the misunderstanding

01:21:22 ◼   ► or the difference in opinion between me and you

01:21:24 ◼   ► is I agree with everything you just said,

01:21:25 ◼   ► so I say leave it alone.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Lex, thank you so much for joining us.

01:21:30 ◼   ► It has been an absolute pleasure to have you.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Where can people find you and the work that you do?

01:21:36 ◼   ► - The easiest place to find me is just go on Twitter

01:21:37 ◼   ► and look for Lex Fry,

01:21:38 ◼   ► and then you'll find everything from there

01:21:39 ◼   ► 'cause I'm all over the place,

01:21:40 ◼   ► but this has been a delight.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Thank you so much for having me on.

01:21:42 ◼   ► - Thanks, Lex.

01:21:43 ◼   ► - Lex, it's always a pleasure.

01:21:44 ◼   ► You go and take that next call.

01:21:46 ◼   ► - Bye-bye.

01:21:47 ◼   ► - Say hi to the president for me.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I don't feel like we've got anywhere Jason I could do that for another hour so I'm sure

01:21:53 ◼   ► we'll continue to have this discussion. I again hope that everybody who said they liked

01:21:59 ◼   ► this discussion last week enjoyed it this week as well. We have come to the end of our

01:22:04 ◼   ► time for this episode if you'd like to find some links for today head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/89

01:22:11 ◼   ► as always you can find Jason's lovely work over at sixcolors.com the incomparable.com

01:22:15 ◼   ► and he is on Twitter @JSNEL, J S N E double L.

01:22:18 ◼   ► I host many shows, the lovely Real AFM.

01:22:21 ◼   ► I also sell the ads at Real AFM.

01:22:23 ◼   ► You can find me on Twitter, I am @imike, I M Y K E.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Thanks again to our lovely sponsors

01:22:30 ◼   ► who we hold so dear, Mail Route and Freshbooks.

01:22:33 ◼   ► And thank you as always for listening.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And I look forward to receiving your feedback

01:22:38 ◼   ► for this week's episode.

01:22:39 ◼   ► As always, the best way is via Twitter.

01:22:42 ◼   ► You can use the hashtag #askupgrade

01:22:43 ◼   ► Or you can just tweet to me or Jason and we will find it. Thanks so much for listening

01:22:47 ◼   ► We'll be back next time until then say goodbye. Mr. Snow. Bye everybody

01:22:51 ◼   ► [MUSIC]