Melissa Kiesche, Edison Research

How does the Edison Podcast Metrics ranker work? Hear exclusive data from the new UK list

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm Melissa Kishi and I'm a Senior Vice President at Edison Research. And I do a lot of things

(00:06):
at Edison, but the thing that is most relevant to what we're talking about today is that
I lead the Edison Podcast Metrics subscription product, both in the US and now in the UK.
Yes, and the UK numbers came out over the weekend. What are you measuring in Edison
Podcast Metrics UK and how do you compile that list?
Sure. So what we are ultimately measuring is in order to do our rankers is the weekly

(00:31):
reach among weekly podcast listeners. So each quarter we are in the field every single day.
We're interviewing at least 2000 weekly podcast listeners each quarter. So that means about
20 or 30 listeners are participating in the study each day.
And in the study itself, the main question that we're asking people is to list all of

(00:54):
the podcasts that they've listened to in the past week. And it's an open ended question.
There's no insane drop down menu that would be very cumbersome and certainly probably
very biased if we had some sort of a drop down menu. And the question itself, it's
actually a multi step question, because we really want to make sure that people are considering
all of the places that they're doing their listening. We don't want them to just consider

(01:16):
what they might have on their phone. We want them to consider apps, websites, social media,
YouTube, all of the possibilities for where they might be consuming podcasts.
So it's not it's not just asking them what podcast you remember listening to last week.
It's a bit more focused.
It's a bit more focused. And we know that there you know, there are still going to be

(01:37):
some recency things here, the things that people listen to or enjoy the most they may
think of first. But they're given these instructions on how to actually access the listening histories
in all of the places that they do do their listening, so that that reporting is really
comprehensive and that and they're considering sources that they may only access occasionally.

(01:58):
So that helps it to be pretty comprehensive and all inclusive.
So why do you do it that way and not just talking to companies like Triton talking to
companies and getting their log files and all that kind of stuff? Why why do it as a
survey?
Well, we wanted comprehensiveness. We wanted this to be all inclusive. We didn't want any
service or show or anything to be left out. As you know, Triton and Podtrack, the way

(02:22):
they do their download listing or their download tracking is based on downloads and it's an
opt in process. So only those companies that are interested in kind of paying to play are
going to be listed in those rankers. So we wanted the ability to put everybody on the
same playing field and be able to rank all shows and then eventually all networks in

(02:44):
the same space.
So you put together the list and the top 25. Was there anything that surprised you about
the shows that were in there?
You know, I would say after four years of putting out the US ranker, I think I was just
most pleasantly surprised to see so much UK grown content. You know, I think there was

(03:06):
this, unfortunately, this American-ness in me that assumed that there would be a lot
more on the top 25 that would have been coming out of the US. And of course, you see Joe
Rogan at the top. There's a handful of other US shows, The Daily, stuff you should know,
Impulsive. But really everything else is just like a testament to how unique British culture

(03:27):
is. And then I think ultimately how it's going to impact the industry as a whole. I really
hope that the ranker encourages people outside the UK to actually check out some of these
titles and maybe we'll start to see some of these titles up on our list as well in the
US.
I was curious as to whether or not you saw any differences between the types of shows

(03:48):
that are in the top 25 in the US versus the types of shows that are in the UK.
Absolutely. So Miranda points this out to some extent, but the UK top 25, it's just
a wider range of subjects than we see in the US. Even with like a standalone series format,
True Crime is way more prevalent in the US charts. In fact, I don't think there are

(04:10):
any True Crime shows in the top 25 in the UK. And in the United States, six of the top
25 actually fall into that category. So you have Crime Junkie, Dateline NBC, Morbid,
Serial, My Favorite Murder, Mr. Bollin. Those are all True Crime shows that make our top
25. And I know that there are certainly a push to bring some of these shows to a wider

(04:34):
audience, to a more global audience. So perhaps that will change as we track things over the
next couple of quarters. But for now, the UK is much less into True Crime than we are
here in the US.
Hooray. I think that's a good thing. Being a Brit, even though I don't always live in

(04:54):
the UK, well, I don't live in the UK. But I think the other thing that occurred to me
when I was looking down the list is that there's an awful lot more specialism, I think, in
the UK list. There are shows about personal finance, there are shows about science, there
are, you know, it's a much more, I think the US top 25, there's an awful lot of entertainment

(05:20):
in there, I think.
Entertainment and just general, a lot of kind of interview over that each show itself is
quite different. It's not, like you said, not as focused as you might see. So yeah,
and certainly, I mean, we, we are starting to see some nostalgia type of podcasts on
the US list, you look at something like Office Ladies, you know, that kind of rewatch style

(05:44):
podcast is starting to appear a lot on our lists. So yeah.
So you're not just putting this together for fun, this chart for fun, although it is
great fun reading it. I guess it's part of the Edison podcast metrics product that you
make available in the US. Are you making that available in the UK as well?
Yes, absolutely. So I think that, you know, putting putting this in the Observer this weekend,

(06:09):
it was our first chance in the UK, we didn't do this in the US to really put it in the
mainstream media and make podcasting more water cooler, you know, something that quarterly
people would actually talk about what's in the top 25. We haven't really done that in
the United States. The focus has really been for our clients, for our subscribers. So yes,
we will continue to have kind of this mainstream push out of the top 25. But then our subscribers,

(06:35):
it's available now. So in addition to being able to look at the podcast ranker, or network
rankers, subscribers have access to a lot of data in general on weekly podcast listeners.
So data like what?
Yeah. So the main question, obviously, is what they listened to in the past week. But
we also ask a ton of demographic questions. We ask about their usage of media and technology,

(07:00):
their podcast listening habits, what type of content they consume, and a bunch of sales
targeting questions like, are you going to purchase a car in the next 12 months? So that
allows shows that have a large enough sample to have really access to a full show profile.
So they can look at their show all their listeners and be able to look at the results of all
of those questions, really extensive demographic information. You know, in the United States,

(07:26):
subscribers are using this data. They're tracking podcast listening quarter over quarter. It's
a report card that they're sharing with internal stakeholders. How is podcasting doing? How
are we doing? How are our competitors doing? And then on top of that, subscribers, they
have the ability to ask custom questions each quarter, which is really fun to see what they

(07:48):
come up with to ask. I mean, we've certainly seen people ask about their specific shows
or platforms, they might say test the film familiarity or the likability of new or current
talent. But you know, here in the UK, we have 2000 weekly podcast listeners to talk to every
quarter and subscribers can really ask them anything that they want. So seeing all different

(08:10):
utilizations of that.
Yeah, that's really interesting. So what kind of what kind of customers do you have? The
Edison podcast metrics product?
So we have a lot of publisher size clients. When we first launched this in 2019, that
was really the push was to provide our publishers to provide producers with information about
the state of weekly podcast listeners, but then also what their listeners look like and

(08:33):
what their competitors look competitors, listeners looked like. But then maybe we're coming up
on a year, we started having conversations about the benefit of using this information
in a sales sense. So our publishers were using this information to help sell their shows.
But now we're seeing it being used on the agency side. So back in January, I think I

(08:55):
think you covered this in pod news, we signed an exclusive partnership with Nielsen to actually
sell this to agencies. So this is starting to be in quite a few agencies hands. They're
using the rankers to really be able to look at what are the top shows among different
demographics. We also have in the US and eventually in the UK and efficiency ranker, which allows

(09:17):
you to determine your target and find the shows that are most like the target that you're
looking to seek. So if I'm trying to find a show with lots of women that have children,
I can set that target and then it will tell me the shows that have the greatest makeup
of women with children if I'm looking to sell diapers or, you know, some other sort

(09:38):
of baby product. So yeah,
yeah. And I guess that's another one of the big differences between the UK model and the
US model in that the UK at least, you know, part of the podcasts that are in those top
25, the BBC don't have any advertising on them in the UK. And so I guess, you know,
it's a different conversation there where they will probably be interested in learning

(10:01):
a little bit more about the types of people who they're reaching.
Yes, absolutely. And that is the case for all publishers that are here. Some people
in the United States are really using it just to understand how is the awareness of their
network changing over time? You know, how are they doing with different demographics
with different subgroups? If they're really, if they've decided that they really want to

(10:22):
push shows that are meeting a certain demographic, are these new shows actually getting them
there? Is it changing the demographics of their network as they've added shows or, you
know, brought in acquisitions and things like that? So yeah, that's that's definitely been
a way that people have used this.
Yeah, really interesting. More details on that at edisonresearch.com. We've seen the

(10:43):
top 25. I'm just sort of wondering whether is there anything else that this study has
unveiled about podcasts listening in the UK that you might be able to tell us?
Absolutely. So I'll give you I'll give you a couple of little things, James. So one of
the questions that we ask is what is the service that people use most often to listen to podcasts?

(11:04):
And it's probably not a surprise that Spotify comes in at number one in the US and both
the UK. So 33% of people in the UK say that they're using Spotify the most often to listen
to podcasts. That's followed by YouTube at 19%. And then BBC sounds at 15%. So BBC sounds

(11:26):
coming in at number three there. Obviously, we don't have BBC sounds on our chart. And
then Apple coming in fourth, third on the US chart and fourth on the UK chart here.
Apple 13% saying that they use that the most often. Then I will also give you we were looking
at the top shows among women. So the top five shows among women change a little bit from

(11:53):
the top in general. So Rogan totally drops even outside of the top 15. Wow, really? Yeah.
So that means that his number one position in the UK, it's almost entirely motivated
by male listening. Whereas in the United States, Rogan is still number two among women. So
that was pretty shocking for us to see that to see it to drop all the way down. But the

(12:16):
top five among women, Diary of a CEO, Shagged, Married, Annoyed, Off Menu with Ed Gamble
and James Acaster, which are the three that are on the main list. But what hops up among
women in the fourth and fifth place is newlyweds formerly called nearly weds. And then number
five is happy place. So certainly more female geared content in the fourth and fifth place

(12:40):
there. That's really interesting, really interesting. And how fascinating that Rogan completely
drops out of that out of that list. That's fascinating stuff. Excellent. It's always
nice to have an exclusive. So that's a great thing. When do we get the next round of data
and will you be releasing things like, you know, the publisher charts as well at some

(13:01):
at some point? So we just finished feeling or actually, I guess we have a few more days
in the field for quarter three. It takes us about a month to process the data. While we
are able to code a lot of the open ended question algorithmically, there is still a ton, especially
since it's new in the UK that we do need to do by hand. So we need to kind of go through
and determine if a show is is correctly listed and that if it is properly attributed to the

(13:28):
producer and then the publisher, the network. So we will probably release the next one.
I would say early November is is the goal to put that out. And we will definitely continue
with the top 25 shows. We will probably add network at that point. At minimum, we will
see top genres, which will be interesting to see to how that tracks against the UK if

(13:50):
we see true crime kind of falling down based on what we see in the ranker itself. Yeah,
yeah. Really, really fascinating. Well, Melissa, thank you so much for your time. And, you
know, as a Brit, it is wonderful after so many failed attempts to get a proper ranker
for podcasting. It's really nice to actually see one. So thank you for that. And yeah,

(14:16):
and I'm looking forward to seeing how the figures change. Awesome. I appreciate it,
James. We'll talk soon.