Agencies agree to only buy on “engaged views”

• At the Sounds Profitable Business Summit last week, ADOPTER Media, Right Side Up and Oxford Road announced that they will only use YouTube’s Engaged Views to count YouTube impressions for buying advertising. You can watch the announcement here. YMH Studios have also made a similar statement. Oxford Road’s Dan Granger said that the industry should “get a little fed up” and make our voices heard.

  • YouTube suddenly changed the definition of a public “play” in August - with just five business days notice - to one that doubles its numbers; the “engaged views” figure is almost the older definition - worked out using an opaque, proprietary algorithm that YouTube declines to clarify.

• The IAB has a different definition for video plays - “50% of the pixels on for two seconds” - and, last week, appeared to reject a new framework for measurement of video/audio podcasts. Matt Shapo, Senior Director of the Measurement Center at IAB, and Jason Adamski, Director of Audio at IAB, were interviewed by PodBiz in a new episode just made available, with Adamski admitting that the industry is fragmented.

  • In the PodBiz podcast interview, Adamski is asked for the difference between a download and a play. He suggests that “a download is the bitrate of everything that has been downloaded onto the device, and a play is actually when… I don’t know if we have a standard definition of a play, I mean it is when we have views, and…” before being cut off by Shapo. In fact, the guidelines define a valid download as the transferral of at least 60 seconds of content to a device: bitrate isn’t relevant. And, there is no definition of a play in the Podcast Measurement Guidelines at all.

  • Podcast Movement ended on Friday, after our issue was published for the day. A quieter day at Terminal 5, with some great talks: we understand all talks from Podcast Movement will be available on YouTube a little later today. Next year, Podcast Week will be held Sep 13-17.

• Exclusive: today, the chart-topping podcast Criminal announces a thirteen-city tour of the US, with a brand new show from creator Phoebe Judge. Tickets are available today for Criminal Plus members, and for everyone on Sep 24.

• RedCircle released an integration with YouTube. RedCircle can handle both uploaded videos, or auto-generate videos from audio-only episodes, and allows you to publish everywhere with just one click.

• Did you enter the 2024-2025 Third Coast Competition? There were 462 entries: but no winners, yet. The organisation went volunteer-only in Nov 2025, but the competition entries have now been judged, and the team announced that the Awards Show will be presented on Oct 15 at Resonate in Richmond VA, USA.

• Mediastream has lost its IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines compliance. It was last certified in June 2024, and was removed from the list of companies on Thursday. The company, based in Chile, still claims it’s compliant on its website, which also promotes that it can get your show listed in Google Podcasts.

• After winning an Edinburgh TV Award, podcast producer Persephonica has announced another video podcast: “Can You Beat Wayne Rooney” will start “from Autumn” on all podcast platforms, YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

• A year after WTF with Marc Maron closed, he’s “doing the camera talking thing, folks” on YouTube.

• Further reading: People writing about Podcast Week NYC include: John Wordock (“tightly-scheduled and fast-moving”); Oxford Road’s Conor Doyle, who saw some growth numbers from the Apple Podcast app (oh yes?); beehiiv’s Ainsley Rossitto (“this industry really does rock”); Jeshia Sutherland (“gave me even more clarity about where I’m taking The Warrior’s Haven next”); Izabela Russell (“I couldn’t find a single session on how a show actually sounds”).

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Repodify lets you “make a podcast out of podcasts” - select the episodes you love, and put them together in your own custom podcast feed. The tool is free, and you can even record or upload your own audio interstitials. It’s produced in Scottsdale AZ in the US.
• Dear Riverside: please don’t position a Shure MV7+ like this. It’ll sound not very good. (Or, as a LinkedIn commenter says “these ads make my brain itchy”). Other than that, loving your work.
• Parasocial calls itself “the best free podcast player for iOS and Mac” - with curation tools to help share your favourite shows with other people. You’ll find it linked from our podcast pages.
• For better measurement, give podcast apps a cut of the revenue - this idea was very interesting for a number of attendees at Podcast Movement and the Podcast Week. What’s the next step?

  People News

• Todd Tuchek has joined Acast as a Senior Creator Manager. He joins from Apple Podcasts and UEG.
• Matty Staudt has started a new position as Managing Director at Chyrp.ai. “Buy 60-second creator reads in upcoming YouTube videos.”

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

• Thinking about rebranding your podcast? Jason Cercone writes about how to do it, based on his own experience.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Historical Blindness is a podcast about history’s myths, mysteries, and misconceptions. By examining cases of outrageous hoaxes, pernicious conspiracy theory, mass delusion, baffling mysteries and unreliable historiography, host Nathaniel Lloyd searches for insights into modern religious belief and political culture.

Wickedly Smart Women marked its seventh anniversary last week - after nearly 400 episodes and listeners in more than 160 countries. A new focus this year is to ask: what comes after corporate?

Someone at BBC Studios has been paying attention to Asia, where horror podcasts are the top genre. The Haunted Library is brand new and always on, and contains classic horror stories. We gather Good Tape did the artwork. It’s very nice artwork.

The Media Integrity Project, an independent, volunteer-run initiative focused on journalism accountability, launched Humanity in Journalism, a podcast examining the people and decisions behind the news. The show is built on a premise its founder argues is largely missing from public media conversation: readers are asked to evaluate journalism constantly, but are almost never shown how it is made.

From BBC Eye and the BBC World Service, the global investigative podcast World of Secrets launches a new five-part podcast today, focusing on allegations of sexual abuse in an Indonesian boarding school. BBC reporters went undercover to investigate, and discovered significant allegations against a teacher trying to evade justice.

If last week was Podcast Week NYC, this week is Climate Week NYC. Accordingly, The Climate Denier’s Playbook returns for a new season, and there’s a live performance tonight in NYC as well. One of the claims investigated in this season: “golf is draining the water out of Lake Powell”. Is it?

CONNESSIONI Quando le parole uniscono turns ten years old later this year. The Italian-language show from Puglia has had over 300 guests. A new season starts today: the conversations explore the experiences and ideas behind voices from literature, science, music and entertainment.