Australian Podcast Ranker to report on audience reach and downloads

The Australian Podcast Ranker will include listener and download figures by podcast title for the first time when the August report is released next week, the commissioner of the ranker, Commercial Radio Australia, announced today.

“This enhancement of the ranker will provide the market with greater insights on podcast consumption to assist with advertiser investment decisions and help accelerate commercialisation of the rapidly growing podcast market,” CRA chief executive officer Joan Warner said.

“This new level of transparency will provide consistent and universal audience and frequency metrics for podcasting and will boost advertiser confidence in investing in this channel,” Ms Warner said.

“Starting this month, the Australian Podcast Ranker will rank podcasts by audience reach rather than number of downloads. In addition, download figures by title will also be made public for the first time. Agencies will now have information on the reach and frequency of each podcast to assist with planning and buying decisions and podcast creators will have more tools to assist in monetisation of their content.”

The August Australian Podcast Ranker, to be released on September 14, will feature the new format in reporting on the top 100 most popular podcasts in Australia ranked by listeners.

The All-Australian Top 100 and the Top 10 Publisher lists (based on participating publishers) will also be ranked in order of monthly listener numbers.

John Lynch, Omnicon Media Group’s Head of Out of Home and Audio partnerships and a member of the CRA Podcast Committee, said: “The updated podcast ranker allows agencies and clients to make more informed decisions around investment into podcasting. We welcome the changes and believe that it can only help to instill greater confidence in this growing area to the benefit of the industry.”

News Corp Australia general manager commercial networks and a member of the Podcast Committee, Ainslee O’Brien, said: “News Corp has been a supporter of the Australian Podcast Ranker since its inception. It is the only third-party verified source of podcast consumption in Australia and this next step will allow buyers and sellers to use the same language and provide the richer data clients are looking for.”

The results of the Australian Podcast Ranker are verified and reported by Triton Digital and participation is open to all Australian and international podcast publishers.

The definitions of listeners and downloads are defined in accordance with the globally accepted IAB Tech Lab Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines.

A listener is defined as a single user who downloads content for immediate or delayed consumption and can be represented by a combination of IP address and user agent, which is data contained in the server logs which identifies the app, player and device used to listen to a podcast.

A download is defined as a unique file request that was downloaded. At least one minute of playable content must be downloaded to be counted.

Participating publishers in the ranker currently include ARN/iHeartMedia, Audioboom, Babyology, Equity Mates Media, Kinderling Kids Radio, News Corp Australia, Nine, NOVA Entertainment, Podshape, Schwartz Media, Southern Cross Austereo, Sports Entertainment Network, Stitcher Media, TOFOP Productions, Wavelength Creative and West Australian Newspapers.

Podcasting has enjoyed significant growth over the past year. The Infinite Dial Australia research released in April showed 26% of the population are weekly podcast listeners, a 53% increase over 2020.

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