541. Why Most Podcasts Don’t Grow: Audience Growth with Rob Walsh

0:05 Marc Ronick: Good morning, Today is Tuesday, june 23 2026 and today podcasting has never been bigger, yet creators still struggle to get discovered, grow an audience, and make money. Rob Walch joins us to discuss what's changed and where indie podcasters should focus next. So, if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, top right-hand side of the screen, and share it however Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, etc. please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now, give us about 30 rolling. Thanks for being here.

0:47 The podcasting morning show is powered by Ironick Media, helping podcasters launch, polish, and grow great shows, and by Content creators accountant helping creators build real business behind their content. Good morning again, podcasting morning show. Thank you so much for being here. And I am so glad to be back in the home studio. It's been three weeks since I've actually been here, sitting at my familiar desk, so it's great to be back.

1:35 I know I was doing shows last different places, Maryland, So, it's great to be here. And let me introduce my co-hosts. Currently here with me, we have Ralph Estep, DR. Fay, and we also have our guest here, Rob Walch. And also, by the way, Dan Schultz has joined us on stage And good morning to Tim, Dave, and Jessica has already joined us here in the audience on Clubhouse, so yeah, we are going to talk with Hall of Famer Rob Walch here in a second, but let's do this formally, properly. Ralph, I'm going to hand the baton to you. Please introduce our guest Ralph Estep Jr.: Well, thank It's my pleasure to do that. Our guest today has been in podcasting almost as long as podcasting has existed.

2:19 Rob Walch started back in 2004 before most people even knew what a podcast was, and he founded a show called Podcast 411 It's one of the very first shows about people actually making podcasts. Rob went on to spend 18 years at Libsyn as VP of Podcaster Relations. He's a member of the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and he co-wrote a book, Tricks of the Podcasting top 10 reference book. Today, he's VP of podcaster relations at Captivate, working alongside Dax USA on the exact questions every creator is wrestling with right now, questions like growth, money, AI, and yes, video. There are many people who can connect where podcasting started to where it's headed. Rob is one of them.

3:02 Rob, thank you so much for joining us. And welcome to the show today. Rob Walch: Thank you very much for having me on. Marc Ronick: Great to have you here, Rob. And let's dig into the first point that Ralph shared. You've been in podcasts in this world longer than almost two longer than I have. I always am proud to say I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I think you've surpassed me. Take us back to 2004 What was your impression of podcasting back then, and what made you jump into it in the first place? Rob Walch: My impression back it reminded me of the BBS era of you know, it was. Marc Ronick: Were you a part of that? And by the way, that's bulletin board system for those.

3:47 Long Island, and I was lucky enough to have a local number to Marc Ronick: I was a CompuServe guy. Rob Walch: Yes, yeah, and we CompuServe passwords. That was what BBSs were good for. So, podcasting to me was very community-oriented in the very early days, because it had to be, because it wasn't where you ask somebody what, like, today you ask people what podcasts they listen to. Back then, you go, have you ever heard of this thing called podcasting? Oh, yeah, and then you had to explain to them how to get this third-party app, iPod or X, and how to use that to subscribe to an RSS feed to transfer to your iPod. That literally was how it worked back in the day. So it was a very different medium.

4:37 it yet, much more niche, much because it had to be. Marc Ronick: Yeah, I remember that well. And it's so cool. I was just talking about bulletin board systems with somebody, because we were long story, but I was just talking about how I've been on the internet longer than most people, right? Because those CompuServes and other platforms, that was the way that we all communicated. I created a fanzine, like a magazine for pod, for not for podcasting. I wish this one was for comic books, and I used to find interviews for that platform, literally comic book authors. I interviewed people like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, so yeah, that was like before podcasting, and a lot of us ended up transitioning there decades later. So that's really cool, Ralph.

5:29 You had a question. Ralph Estep Jr.: Yeah, Rob, you founded Podcast 411 before people even knew what a podcast was. I mean, you had to do a lot of work, I guess. Did it feel like the start of an industry, or did it feel like some strange experiment? Only a small group of people understood Rob Walch: it felt like a well, initially it was a small group of people that only understood it, like only the tech. It was really two groups, I mean, it was two groups of people podcasting back in 2004 techie geeks, which is where I fell in, and musicians, because we were the only ones that had the equipment or the know-how to get it to work, so you had people, you know, like Dave Jackson, who was on the musician side, you had myself that was more on the geeky side, Mer Lafferty on the geeky side, Rob Greenlee on the geeky side, so there was that, was what it was, it was a nice mix of folks, some really strange folks know you had a yeast radio with Madge Weinstein, so those are some real interesting characters in those early days.

6:27 But I started podcast 411 because I wanted to start podcasting in October of 2004 and I looked around, there was not a single tutorial other Engadget that said, "Hey, if you enclosure tag in your RSS feed, and you're good to go. And I'm like, what? What did that just say? And so I engineer, I figured it out, and I said, well, if I, you know, it took me this long to figure it out, I'm going to help people. And I wrote a nice tutorial about how to do all that manually, your feed. And then there's some services started coming along to help podcasters, and then Apple jumped in and put really opened the door. That was really where the first inflection point of podcasting really started.

7:12 Marc Ronick: I have to pause unquote, and I have to point Rob, is that a Blue Yeti? Rob Walch: Oh, this is a Yeti Pro, Marc Ronick: okay? A Yeti Pro, okay? Yeti Rob Walch: Yeti Pro, Marc Ronick: okay? So, not the Blue Yeti specifically, okay? Cool. All right, because I was gonna ask, because a lot of people poo poo the Yeti, and especially the Blue Yeti, and I Rob Walch: don't know how to use it Marc Ronick: exactly. That's what I was just.. you need Rob Walch: a quiet room, that's all. You just need a quiet room with the Yeti, and it's a good mic, and I like the sound of my voice off of it. And on top of that, I work with a lot of people that are starting out, and this is a mic that a lot of people will use starting out, so it gives me a chance to tell them, here's what you need to do, you got to set this little gain here over near the G, don't use this, the Pro, because it switch, depending on how I'm into my Zoom recorder. Sometimes I'm running it to, like, today, USB into my MacBook.

8:07 Marc Ronick: Got it? Okay, cool. So, there you go, people. It's just a matter of knowing how to use some of the equipment before we go and poo poo them. And so, let's get into some other areas here. What's one thing early podcasters understood better than some creators understand today. Rob Walch: I'll go back to the quiet room, because early on I was a lot of musicians, and they everything situated. This is not the most ideal acoustics in this room, but compared to my last studio, but having a nice quiet place is really important. The other thing was community. I think the early podcasters knew that it was really about getting out and finding other podcasters to become friends with, to cross promote with.

8:53 You had to cross promote back then. You had no choice. You had to. A lot of podcasters today will get in and do their initial, they never talk to another podcaster, and I'll ask podcasters, you know, like, who else, what other shows are you talking with, or where you crossborting, like, oh, I don't know anybody else in podcasting, and that I think is really sad, and I think that's probably the biggest change in the podcasting community, is that there's a lot of people, a lot today, that just come in to get an account set up somewhere, Marc Ronick: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, Ralph, go ahead. Ralph Estep Jr.: Yeah, Rob, you were named one of the most influential people in podcasting 2006 Rob, when you look back at the advice people needed then, what's funny to you now, what's outdated, or what's surprisingly still true. Back to that original date, 2006 Rob Walch: I think we mentioned using MySpace, so that would probably be pretty funny. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's for a promotion point of view. I mean, there's some of the services that we talked about have long since died.

9:58 We, I don't think we talked to. Much about Facebook, or even at all, because we were writing that book. We started writing it at the end of 2005 and so, yeah, there's some things in there, just we don't mention you at all in that book, I don't think. So that's definitely changed. So you know, back in the day, back in 2005 podcasting was a mix of audio and video, there was when you looked at the big shows, there was just as many big shows that were videos that were audio. around to that now. Marc Ronick: Yeah, and that's what I'm excited about with this conversation, because you've seen podcasting go from this small experimental thing into a massive media category now. So, let's talk about what's actually changed. Right, a lot of independent podcasters listening right now wonder if they're too late to get into this game now.

10:53 is podcasting harder to break opportunities just different? Rob Walch: Well, to break into it's harder, but you still, there's still not that many people podcasting when you look at the reality. How many active podcasts there are that have released a new episode in the last 90 days? That number really hasn't changed when you throw the AI slop out. That hasn't changed for humans in the last five plus years. It's right around 400,100 50,000 of podcasts have released a new episode in the last 90 days, and that number's been really relatively flat, and that means the number of people pod fading is equal to the number of people so much smaller than the number of bloggers or the number of people that are doing YouTube putting content on an RSS feed, you know, from my definition of a pod, you have an RSS feed and your podcast is an Apple podcast, and it's a human know that last one drove some when I added that to my The other people hate when I say, well, it also has to be an Apple podcast. Why does it have to be an Apple Podcast? I go, because there's 400 plus apps in the world that from Apple's directory. So, if not an Apple Podcast, you're not in about the different apps out there.

12:11 Marc Ronick: I appreciate you Because a lot of people just say, if it's not on Apple, or if it's not a podcast, but I appreciate you putting it in that way, because yeah, if you're not on Apple, then you're probably not getting distributed to all of these different platforms. So, thank you for saying that. Rob Walch: And a lot of times the what's your Apple podcast I want to look at your podcast, and if you don't have an Apple Podcast URL, talk about that, like UK, so you're not really a podcast, or you're just someone who's got a video show on YouTube, or you're just someone that has a webcast or net cast that just basically putting audio up on their website, and they're not really distributing it, they just want you to come to their website, and that's podcasting.

12:54 I think the core part about podcasting was universal distribution everywhere, that was the whole idea of it, was to be out everywhere, and by putting yourself into Apple Podcast, you are putting yourself to most places. You still have to submit to Spotify, and Ghana, Geosav, and a few others, Deezer, There's a small group that you reality is, after you submit to those 10 places, you're everywhere, and one of those 10, other places. In which one is that? Apple. Marc Ronick: Yep. All right. Now I know, DR. You have a question. I'm going to come to you, and I'm going to remind everyone that if you are on stage and want to ask a question, you are more than welcome. And if you are listening live, go ahead and put your question in the chat, or, of course, if you're on Clubhouse, come up on stage and ask it here in person.

13:42 Love to have you there. Here, so with that, DR. What was your question? DR: Okay, so when it comes to podcasting, Rob, you are probably one of the most knowledgeable people on this earth. What is it that has surprised you with all your knowledge about podcasting? What is it in the past 20 years since you've written the book that has really thrown you for a loop? Maybe it's something that you made a prediction about and it didn't come true. Rob Walch: And I think the one some really good podcasts that I to take off, they're going to be list celebrities that just never think overall what surprised me the most about in podcasting is those shows that have connected and the shows that have, I mean, they're in the ones that haven't probably surprised me more than anything else. They're the late Louie Anderson had, I thought he had a great podcast, and it just never took off. And I really loved his show, and there's been others. I don't want to name names, because they're still alive. Well, I'll name another one: Norm McDonald's podcast. I loved Norm's podcast, and Norm McDonald - Norm, it never really hit the numbers I thought it had the potential to be.

14:57 I mean, Norm was was one of the funniest people I. Ever talked with, ever met, and his show was hilarious, and I guess maybe that just might be my personal bias. I liked his sense of humor, but there were just a few others that are still alive and won't really great shows that just don't know what it was. You just never know what it is. And then there's others that I've seen the numbers to, and I go, man, they must be this must be a BS. is doing that well, and I have numbers and go, wow, really is legit, the person really does yeah, Marc Ronick: How do you, when you say you dig into the numbers, how do you do that, public side of things, it's you don't get to see it the way you get to see YouTube's numbers, Rob Walch: Yeah, well, I've had the advantage that I've been working at hosting companies for years, and I've been able to numbers are and really dig, and there's other things you can do when shows you don't have access do, and do some checks, sanity and elsewhere. You can see if a show is quote unquote in the top 10, it's constantly in the top 10 of Apple Podcast category, but never is in the top 200 for an episode in that category, right? You're going, hmm, all right.

16:21 So, there's some people that have drove their numbers up on shows by hiring services out of Malaysia and other places to subscribe. Right, the way Apple does the top 200 show subscribe lists is based on the number of new subscribers in the last 24 average, and then the last week overall, and that's different than how they do the episode, So you can look and see if a constantly, but never shows in You know it doesn't have real numbers would be yes, but then numbers and server logs, and those downloads are coming from.

17:05 Are they coming from the US? Are they all coming? Are they coming from the US? But all the downloads are from Georgia, for some reason. All right, something's not right. And so there's easy ways to tell when numbers are fraudulent or bogus. So, Ralph Estep Jr.: and Rob, that really leads us right into the growth question, you kind of been dancing around that, and a lot of creators aren't just wondering if podcasting still works, they're wondering why their show growing faster. Do you have some ideas of what the folks who are tuned in this morning and saying, "Oh yeah, Rob's a great guy, he's been around forever, he's got to know some hacks for me to be able to see growth. Do you have any of those, Rock? Rob Walch: Okay, so first, there are some things you can do of growing your show, releasing on a consistent basis, right?

17:49 Release on Tuesday morning, Thursday morning, Thursday consistent, so people know when to expect your new content. Everybody has the luxury of can release once every, I don't know, nine months, 12 months, and still get 3 million us folks, we need to release on a consistent basis, and then be consistent in the formatting, you're doing, because people are your show, and then most audience. It is so important to have a call-in number when people have looked at, and Apple looked at this, and I've looked at this, and some others have looked at this. When we looked at shows that launched, and they launched with 10 episodes, five episodes, 321, what was found, what I found was one in three shows that launched with one in those that launched with five, Apple looked at it, they found that was two, it was the ideal number of episodes, and the reason is when you launch with 10, you're giving an expectation to your audience that they're not going to be part of your show, but when you launch with one or two, you're saying right from the beginning, hey, here's my call-in number, email address, send us some, send us some questions, be part of the show, be part of this community, and the shows that can grow a community can grow a show. If you've never, as a podcaster,

19:20 could tell you that right now. Marc Ronick: That's fascinating, interesting. Usually, I recommend three, but that makes a lot of sense now. So, I think I'm going to start pushing two to my clients. So, when a podcaster comes to you, Robin says, "I want to grow. What do you wish that they understood first? Rob Walch: Well, well, yeah. there's no service out there light switch that will turn on mean, legitimately jump up. your downloads will jump up, but when you turn that service off. If it drops, a matter of fact, a lot of the people that are using stats, you'll see all of a sudden every so often you'll have a day or two where the numbers drop to nothing.

20:09 Well, that nothing is your audience, because that service had a problem, an issue, or whatever it was. So it's really easy to tell some of these folks that have these services that are, quote, you Bangladesh, or whatever, Fiverr, especially when you launch a new your email address, and they I can help you grow your show, instant growth, and yada yada people will spend 250 300 500 or story I heard was, I called up this couple, and, sad, and I called up this couple, I said, 'Hey, I'm looking at your numbers, and these aren't legit, and you know, did you hire a marketing service, and you mind me asking how much you paid?

20:56 And he goes, the husband goes, 'Yeah, he goes, you know, I hired a service, and it paid $7,000 and the wife said the one thing husbands never want to hear. So, I says, 'Is service I told you not to use? And I was like, 'Oh, like, can I just exit stage left here? Because you know he's still hearing about that today. Marc Ronick: Oh, I'm sure Rob Walch: in every argument it doesn't matter, she could run the cat over with the car, and he's, she's gonna just turn him, because remember that one, Marc Ronick: that sounds like you might have been through something like that at some I've had that, we Rob Walch: have had that phrase used on me before. Marc Ronick: DR, go ahead.

21:37 DR: So there is SEO, we all have there's SEO for podcasting. Is there indeed a difference, and if there is, can you explain it? And also, when it comes to, like, is there such a thing as keyword stuffing when it comes to the description, the podcast description, or the episode description. I heard that it doesn't exist yet, but you know, wait five minutes, we'll see. answer your question. I used to call it I, though, like iTunes search search optimization. So, you have to understand how out. So, I'm going to talk about Apple and Spotify here, and because those are the two big ones, and and when we talk Apple Podcast, what?

22:27 How search works, it's really simple. What's in the title of your show and the author tag, and then the title of your episode and the author tag of the episode? Those are the only fields that Apple looks at. So it's in the title matters. What's the title of your podcast so important? People get really cute on titles, so if you want to do a podcast about video games, you call it the Cheese Doodle Podcast, because you're playing, video games, that's cute, but it's not what people are searching for. What you want to do when you launch a podcast is you want to think about four or five different words, keywords that you would search for.

23:09 Matter of fact, you should go You should go and search for these words in Apple Podcast, see if there's podcasts on that. But then take those four or five words or terms, and then go into Google Trends and see what people actually are searching for in the world, and then pick your title that way. So, I just launched a podcast earlier this year. It's called Space Business 411 and I wanted to talk about space economy, space business. I was going to call it Space Economy 411 until I went into Google Trends and found out that Space Economy is searched for about 1/10 the amount of times a space business. So, the podcast title became Space Business 411 If two years from now, base economy is 10 times or bigger, five times bigger than Space Business, my That's the other thing I think of their show when it's changed.

24:01 I started out with a show called Today an iPhone, then it became today an iPhone, iPod, an iPod, iPad, and iPod touch, and then it became today an iOS. I just changed and literally bought domains in the middle of an Apple keynote. Well, Apple's Steve Jobs was on stage and saying, and now we're going to call it iOS, and I went, oh, go to hover and bought today an ios.com right, you're in the middle of the keynote, so changing your title, I think, is one thing you can do to help optimize, because there's not much there for a search. So that's the first thing I'd say, is look at the title. Now going to Spotify, Spotify does look at description, what's in description? Absolutely, Apple absolutely does not.

24:43 So if you have some words in your description of your show that can help you in the Spotify search, but I wouldn't keyword stuff it. It doesn't do you any good in Apple, and not sure how much it does for you in Spotify. I just know that on certain buried them in the description, unique phrases they did come up in search results. And then third, YouTube, and two is more of algorithmic based, so you have to get lucky on the algorithm on that side of it. The reason I'm going to say this, the reason I start with Apple and Spotify, and then YouTube last, for most podcasters, forget the top 200 podcasters, right, Joe Rogan's, the old Vons, the Call Her Daddies, for most podcasters, the their audience is Apple number one, Spotify number two, a distant third is YouTube. Most podcasters are lucky to get four to 5% of their audience consumption.

25:35 Not saying that overall podcasting might not get more consumption in YouTube. the top shows out, the top 1% People start, there's actually Apple Podcasts, and then Marc Ronick: Interesting, Yeah, go ahead, Ralph. Ralph Estep Jr.: Rob, do you think the biggest growth problem in podcasting is discovery, content quality, is it positioning? You mentioned consistency, or is it something else? What do you think the biggest growth problem is? Rob Walch: I don't believe problem in podcasting. I believe there's my podcast hasn't been discovered problem, but that's not a discovery problem. I people that listen to podcasts podcasts on their topic. What they're happening is they're not finding your podcast on your topic, and that's when podcasters go, "There's a discoverability problem. No, that's a me problem, that's not a "we" problem. And the "me" problem again comes down to the title's wrong, and they don't have the clear title on their show. And then it comes down to Apple, it's based on the title of your show, what's in the author tag, and then sorted by the total number of subscribers all time, so you have to make sure that people are subscribing podcast now, they're hitting the follow button in Apple Podcast, so you have to make sure your call to action is that so many times people have the wrong call to actions.

27:01 It's like, rate and review my show. It's much better to say, hey, make sure you follow my show. If you followed it, then you can rate and review, but if you haven't followed, don't rate and review. Follow. Marc Ronick: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, the average podcaster fades pretty quickly these days. I've heard things anywhere from eight to like 20 something episodes from your experience working with 1000s of What separates the people who make it past that wall from the ones who quit? Rob Walch: Okay, so when I looked at this, I did find a couple of clusters, and the late Blueberry, and we compared notes, and what we found was there was the group of pod faders that typically pod faded out before episode five, and this group was, wow, this is harder than I thought, this is hard, this, I'm a blogger, and blogging is so much easier, and I gotta do this extra work, and I could do this editing, and I gotta do all this extra stuff, that group, or I can't find any guests.

28:04 I'm having a hard time getting guests on my show. Right, that group early on takes to do a podcast. The next group is around episode 50, and when you looked at the groups around episode 50, it was people that said I'm going to commit to this for a year, and they're doing one episode a week, and they got to that one year mark, and they looked at their numbers, and they weren't happy, and they got out, and a lot of the times people are getting out and looking at their numbers, and they don't understand, they actually are successful. I've had people come to me and say, "Oh, I have 600 800 downloads an episode, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my show, and like one guy, his show was about pneumatic valves. I'm like, what was your expectation for your audience size?

28:49 I'm an engineer, and just reading the description of your podcast is putting me to, but you got 600 people showing up every week to listen to your podcast, so I had to put it to him in this ex, this example. I said, "Do you ever go and talk at a conference? He said, "Yes, like how many people were in the room? He's like, "Maybe about 200. And I go, "Yeah, probably half of them were checking their email. So I go, "You spent how much money at your company to get you to that conference to speak? And I go, "And you have a weekly show that that's six times that probably active audience that you had there, I go, you're successful, you are not unsuccessful. So, getting your expectations right. I think a lot of people pod fade because they just thought, oh, they were going to get millions of downloads.

29:31 Nobody gets millions of downloads. I had a major golf were complaining that they're per episode, and I had explained and they're like, 'What? They're like, 'What do you mean we're in the top 1%? I go, 'Yeah. They're like, 'Well, we have 5 million followers on Facebook. I go, 'Facebook followers do not equal podcast listeners. I go, 'You know, you had one of the Paul brothers. I won't say which one. 60 million, he had six. Million YouTube subscribers and social media followers, and he was right at 3000 downloads an I go, followers in social media do not translate to listeners and podcasts. Or now the new IAB can the new IAB version spec is going to say podcast consumers.

30:19 We've changed it from listeners to podcast consumers. Ralph Estep Jr.: Rob, I wanted you're going, because one of I'm the money guy on the show. One of the things I think a lot of people fade is because of monetization gap, and I think that because they buy into this approach, there's so many of these coach hustlers out there telling people they're going to make a million dollars by podcasting. Where do you think that podcasters get misled in that, and do you think that's as well? Because I hear you saying they're not happy with the downloads, but that's that race to the bottom I talk about all the time of CPM. If you want to make three cents a month, get a big audience, but it's not really where the money is, Rob. Rob Walch: Most people that make make it from promoting a product an expert on some topic. You know, if you're using the podcast, Creator Joe's uses the podcast to promote their product and service. They never take ads on their podcast. Ebay used to have a really great podcast, and it was for interacting with the audience.

31:18 It was never about size audience and people that their webinars, promote their Why did a lot of comedians get into podcasting? They got into it because they were able to get not only download numbers and interact with their audience on a regular basis, but they could then take the stats and say, look to the guy at the Comedy Store in St. Louis, I get 250 downloads from the St. Louis DMA. You should book me. And so you know, people have used the podcast not from the generating revenue from CPMs, but from generating revenue from their own product or service. Now that's not to say there are podcasts that are making, you know, they're making some good money. I mean, obviously you got people like Joe Rogan and others are making huge money and huge bank, and you know, Tim Ferriss and others.

32:09 So there is definitely a place to make money on the CPM side, and there's more opportunities coming up on that. But you have to ask yourself, why are you getting into it? And if you don't have a product or service to market, then you are getting in, and you want to monetize, then you do have to look at what are my options on direct monitor, called direct monetization of your podcast, and that comes down to advertising and premium offerings. So, do you think, speaking of that advertising, do you think that smaller shows are sponsorships, or maybe not If your primary goal is to monetize, you need to look at your format of your show. You need to understand that you have to want to have advertisers.

32:53 There's so many people I've want advertising dollars, but can't - the two kind of go hand in hand. So, I've heard both up there, and if they go to read the ad read, and it's reading it in a mono voice, right? And you can hear the literally hear the paper crinkling as they're reading the ad, and that that's not good for the advertiser. podcaster. So, if you do want to monetize, go in full force. Now, you also need to understand you have to be at a certain level to have host read ads. If you want to go out to some of the bigger agencies, some of them agencies now say 50,000 downloads, and some are 20,000 as minimum per episode. You know, Captivate, we're launching a marketplace that will allow you any podcaster at any size to interact with advertisers and bring in some host trade, and then also have programmatic ads, and that's the other thing. If you do advertising, you have to do both. You have to have both host read and CPM model. DR: Can you break that down a little bit? What is the marketplace that you're talking about? Rob Walch: So, Captivate is launching. We announced this last month that we're launching a marketplace at Captivate, where I allow podcasters to present their podcast out, and then advertisers come in and find their podcast, and by advertisers we mean other, it I think a lot of the people are going to be buying ads, you know, if you want to look at the honestly, the only way I've seen that, really, there's two things I'd say, where if you

34:23 promote your podcast, it's on other podcasts or doing a Box, because those are your promo run on another demos is a great way to get word If you come into this space and you don't know anyone, you haven't started cross promoting, you haven't taught a tribe of other podcasters. So this marketplace will allow some podcasters to be up there and be discovered by other podcasters and advertisers. So that's one thing, and then part of that marketplace will also be programmatic. Ads, so you could turn on, turn on immediately to get start getting advertising for programmatic ads for your show.

35:06 Marc Ronick: Let's talk about know, you with Captivate and Dax conversation around making creators, so for an independent podcaster who's never touched pragmatic advertising before, plain English? Rob Walch: So, programmatic ads are pre-produced ads that you would typically hear on radio, and you are going to accept certain categories or block certain IEB categories, but you're not getting a chance to accept a specific advertiser, so you may say yes to the automotive category, but you don't have an option to say I want Tesla and Rivian, but I don't want any gas cars, right?

35:53 gas, I want Toyota, and I want Rivian. You don't have that option, you, when you pick a category, you're just, you're gonna get the ads, like I had one person that freaked out because they had said yes to the food category and got a McDonald's ad, and I'm like, okay, you said yes to food, the number one advertiser in food in the world is, oh, McDonald's, so shocker that McDonald's ad shut up on your show, so you have to have a little bit more talent, but you know, I was talking with Mike Rowe, and he was kind of, oh, I don't know if I want to have these ads, and I said, well, I watched Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel, and I saw Hyundai commercial, did you endorse that? He's like, no, no, same thing on the podcast, people are going to understand that you're not endorsing it when it's a pre-produced ad, so you, you know, that he was like, "Oh, that clicked in his head, and then he said, "Yeah, okay, So you have to be a little bit there are going to be some ads service that you're not exactly excited with.

36:57 Now you can block categories in Captivate, will allow you to lock down the individual categories, so you can get rid of the gambling and get rid of the lottery, you can get rid of, you know, there are so many weird categories in there. There's been a, there's a, there's a Wiccan category in there. Yes, that's this one's for psychics. You can block the psychics category, so yes, you'll have that option to get down and granular and say no, I don't want psychics or Wiccans on my podcast, or maybe you do, maybe, maybe you want to block all the other religious ones, but leave the Wiccan one, and so you have that option. Marc Ronick: Yeah, Ralph, go ahead, Ralph Estep Jr.: Rob. We're working with independent do-it-yourself podcasters, so valuable. Now, Rob, there's two other topics I want to talk about today, and I'm going to let you pick where we go here, because I know you have feelings couple months ago, when you started the HLS, you and LC did the webinar, and I have to be honest with you, man, I felt like you were dragging a stone uphill with this HLS video.

37:58 Now, maybe that wasn't your intention, but I want to talk about that, and I want to talk about AI. Do you want to talk about HLS video first, or video and podcast? Rob Walch: Absolutely. So, yeah, we'll talk about, and I had, I'd heard from a couple people, like, well, you know, I'm like, it's new-ish on the video side, and what I wanted to tell people was just because Apple now has this new way to have video and podcasting doesn't mean you need to do this. Too many people are like, everybody needs to do video, and I'm like, if you're not comfortable doing video, don't do video. I mean, if you don't feel good about it, it's not your cup of tea. There's no reason to, my, there's still more time in the day to consume audio than any other form of media, and if you are someone that's struggling to get your show out as it is now, and you're almost at the point where you start feeling like it's time to make the donuts, adding video to your workload is not going to be conducive to a long-term relationship with you and your pod, your audience, you are going to pod fade. So my thing was I didn't want to see people jump into audio to video when they're really happy doing audio, and they don't want to do video, but they're jumping in because it's the thing, the next big shiny thing, just like Second Life was, or live streaming audio was way back when, and just stick with what your audience likes.

39:20 I mean, there are certain audiences that just want audio, and they have - they're driving in the car, they're not gonna watch video, and on top of that, Apple supports video for 20 years, and when people had the option to put both audio and video up for a podcast to an RSS feeds into YouTube into Apple Podcasts over the years, 20 to one, the audience chose audio, so it wasn't like Apple's audio audience has been clamoring video when they had the option, they didn't choose it. The reality is YouTube won video, and if you want to put video and do video. Mind put it up and do it, do the HLS, go to Spotify, and have it there, and have it in YouTube, but if you're just an audio person, stick with audio, and that was what I was trying to get. So many people were like, oh, you got to do it, you got to do it, you got to do it, and I've always been one that said, you do what you feel comfortable doing, not because because this guru or that girl thing, they've been saying video years. All right, so now that Apple has HS in there, you don't even know, honestly, if it is the next big thing, because the way Apple does is you get file, you upload a video file, they demux it, they got an audio version, and then the video without the audio, the audio part of it gets automatically downloaded, and then when someone goes in on the iPhone and hits play, it automatically,

40:52 Maybe they don't want the video, right? Let's see, at the end of the day, if the consumers really did choose, were there podcasts that went into video and that audience grew, you know, did this happen? It cause anybody's audiences to grow your audience to shrink, but if you're on the fence, wait, wait, get some data, that's what I was trying to point to. Marc Ronick: Sid, I'm sorry, not that somebody asked, Sid Ralph, you added video recently. You did the Apple video thing soon to ask, but are you far as your numbers go? Ralph Estep Jr.: I am. Yes, and I'm a Captivate customer, Rob, and I was one of the early, you know, believers.

41:34 We still have one show, we can't get it to work with. I've been working with Danny, we've been, we've been beating our heads for about six weeks on this, but yeah, I've seen a little bit of an uptake, actually. Mark, and part of that is because I've been doing video all along and releasing it on YouTube. So, for me, and I've got a team that helps me on the production side, so for me it wasn't any added work, because I was already doing video. Rob, one of the follow-ups I have for that is this whole HLS technology is changing the way things are done as well, and you mentioned that you're one of those tech guys. How do you feel about that? Because this is changing things as well, these APIs going into Sam Sethi, and I had a conversation about this last week on Facebook Messenger. You know, what do you think about that? Because that's part of this that's going on too. Rob Walch: Yes, and then we're also going to make the alternative tag available, so that the video be available there.

42:22 The issue is, you know, Apple chose to go with the API route. I'm not a, I'm an RSS purist, so I would have liked to have just seen it as an alternative tag and gone that way. I think, you know, Sam will A key would have won. Hey, why do we have to have it with an API call? You know, so I would have liked to have seen it that way, because then all the other apps out there could have adopted it and then had that option to pull not the way I mean I understand why Apple's doing it, and you know, again, Apple makes decisions based on what's best for the consumer, not what's best for the podcaster, and they're always going to make their decisions on what's best for the consumer, so they had their reasons, and I understand them, but as on the podcaster side of things, I would prefer to have seen it not be via API. Marc Ronick: I think Sid has a question. Sid, over on Clubhouse, Sid, did you want to ask? Sid Meadows: Yeah, good morning everybody. So I accidentally was watching a show that had video.

43:28 and I tell I looked out on my and listening to it, there was a the audio and the video, and it felt like I, because on YouTube, when you're watching, you feel like you're watching a video that has audio in it, and then I was like, the video is talking to you, right? This to me felt like it was an audio that I was listening to that they just popped up a video, and then they watched another one, and so the first lag was probably three seconds. The second lag time I watched it was about one second. Then I watched the same show the Is this something that's happening within Apple?

44:08 Is it our idea what the cause of But it certainly did not create the best user experience from watching and listening at the same time. Rob Walch: So, from a technical point of view, what's happening is there literally are two demuxing, so basically you have the video file and you demux it, and they have now you have an audio file, so you have a video with no audio, and then you have the audio file, and then the video is supposed to sync to the audio. The audio file is still being downloaded automatically. If you are a consumer of podcasts and have it set up to automatically download, the audio gets automatically downloaded, then when someone hits play, then the video is supposed to sync up, and they're supposed to be in sync.

44:50 But when you have two files and something's supposed to be in sync, doesn't mean 100% will be in sync. I had not heard reports of that, but I am not surprised. Of that, giving that it is two was something with an issue, and would be interested to find out which podcast it was, and take a look at it, but you know Sid Meadows: it was happy to tell you, it was one of your competitors is Buzz Cast, because I'm a Buzz, I'm a Buzz Prom user, so I listened to their podcast, and but it makes sense now, because I still learning about all this, I did not realize that it was two separate files syncing up with each other, where YouTube is just one file that you upload, so it makes sense why it's happening. But I watched one from this week and it did not happen, so the sync obviously has gotten better. Rob Walch: Yeah, and I don't think it's an issue with the hosting platforms, because it's supposed to be where the two files are synced up by with Apple Podcast. So, I think if there's an issue on the sync, I think it would be more of the client playback issue than the posting. So, I don't want to, I don't think Buzzsprout did anything wrong.

45:55 I just think it might have been a glitch in the playback on the client side. Ralph Estep Jr.: Rob, I wanted to ask you a question. Dave Campbell, in our audience, asked. He asked us to ask you about the discrepancy between Apple listen numbers and hosting site analytics. So, are you aware of what he's talking about there, and can you help us out with that? Rob Walch: Well, if you look at the play number in Apple Podcasts, here's what a play is. If you do this, play, pause, play, pause, play, pause, that that fast in any podcast hosting company, that would be zero, because you haven't gotten a minute's worth of content in Apple, that is three Marc Ronick: three seconds, Rob Walch: three plays, Marc Ronick: three, that will show up Rob Walch: as three plays in your stats, in Apple Podcast, in any hosting company, a minute's delivered, so you know anybody filtering for the IEB, it's at been delivered in, filtered over address and user agent combo in any podcast hosting company, even if you did play and you then play, and then pause, and It still be one. The best case, it would be one, right? That would be it.

47:06 But in Apple play, pause, right. So that's the issue with the Apple analytics, are always going to show the play is higher I always tell people, don't look look at Apple stats for trends. Where are people consuming your episodes? I mean, Apple stats, the consumption information, some of the most valuable information podcasters never look at. If you go to Apple Podcasts and you look at where in your episodes you're looking, you should be looking for two things. Where in your episode people are not leaving? I go 15 minutes without leaving.

47:47 There's no drop off in percentage of listeners. What did you say in those 15 minutes that captivated all of your audience? Because whatever it was, you want to capture that lightning in a bottle and repeat. And then where do you see the drop offs? Where are people dropping off? Where is the percentage going from 50% to 40% in two minutes? What happened in that two minutes? What did you talk about that drove 10% or 20% in that case of the listening audience away from your show? Right, what was it that caused that? And, oh, by the way, you're always going to have big drop off in the first few minutes of your podcast, so ultimately when you look at most of these consumption stats, you want to look basically starting about five minutes in to five minutes left and look at that group in there. How much of a drop off do you have from the five minute in If you have an hour long podcast, you know how much that dropping overall overall, because that's your real audience, about five minutes in on the consumption side.

48:44 Ralph Estep Jr.: Rob, I have a you're talking about this AMP, We're talking about these new agreements. Do you think that's something that the industry should embrace, and do you think that's something Apple would embrace, because that would solve that play problem you're talking about. Rob Walch: Okay so AMP is consumption, that was what they were supposed to be talking about. Now they also talked about, well, downloads of, you know, 30 seconds, or their play number of 30 seconds, versus that they should have honestly put it at one minute, just like the IEB. I don't know, understand why in the world they're trying to change that number from a minute 30 seconds. If they're saying, 'Hey, the whole reason we're coming in here is to be more friendly to advertisers, their service, their ideas.

49:28 Hey, we're going to be friendly to advertisers. Well, copy it from a minute to advertisers. That inflates the numbers, so go. They should have gotten to a minute. I think that's a mistake that the amp group made looking at it now, is there a much of a difference between 30 seconds and 60? No, but and some people have looked at that already, and you know James had some numbers on that, but the point is there was a difference, it wasn't big, but there was a difference, and why would you drop it from a minute, which is then the IAB standard all along, now that some people are saying. Hey, what's the video standard, right? YouTube. When we, I was in the IAB committee, and we first started talking, we found out that the video views on YouTube was three seconds.

50:12 So, when we started working on the IAB space way back then, did someone say, 'Hey, yeah, YouTube was using three seconds to count it as a view. Now they're saying, 'Oh, well, now it's 30 seconds. Well, it used to be three, and you know, we went to a minute, we went back and forth on the IP about when we picked that minute number, and there was a lot of debate along a lot of companies versus AMP, which is very small number of companies, and like, so I just think they could have done it a little bit different. I think at the end of the day the IAB is going to hold a lot more weight than AMP. Well, IAB is a big organization, and they need to work with IAB. IAB does not need to work with AMP, that's my opinion.

50:53 Marc Ronick: Thank you, Rob. And by the way, in and around podcasting, that is Rob and LCS podcast, and you can check it out at In and Around several links to connect with Sid, I know you had a question, and then I want to wrap up with a question about AI for Rob. So, go ahead, Sid. Sid Meadows: Yeah, thanks, Marc. quite the opposite of what you So I go into Buzzsprout, and I see that an episode had 100 downloads on Apple, and I go into Apple, and to look at it, and I see that episode only had 60 downloads. I'm just using examples, so my experience is just the opposite.

51:39 plays on Apple than Apple's can you identify what that issue Rob Walch: Well, what? Okay, so I'll break it down to client side and server side. Client side stats are server side stats, that's your hosting company, they're going to tell you if the episode was delivered So download does not mean a play or a consumption, so on your any podcast hosting cup, no idea We just know that this file was delivered to said user, and again, it's based on user agent IP address, at least a minute worth of data content was Apple, on the other hand, client side is going to look at consumption. Someone hitting the play button, being played, they're going to be lower, or you know, they're going to have a lower number over there.

52:35 So it just depends on if your show has all subscribers that just aren't playing the episodes. Now, what's supposed to happen is after five episodes and 15 days, if there's no plays, that it pauses, Apple pauses the downloads. So, overall, over time, it should work out. You have a lot of new subscribers coming in, and they're playing once or twice, and then they're moving on, and you know, I would look at your consumption data, look at how far into your episodes, what percentage of those people that hit play, how many of them are consuming to the 95% mark of your episode, see what that number is, see how much it drops from the five five minutes in versus or 5% in 95% in. Marc Ronick: Okay, thank thanks, question, I want to get your stance on AI in podcasting right now, because I think there are a couple of different camps out there, and I'm curious where Rob Walch: So I put AI into which help podcasters. These are tools that help you get to bed earlier, because they're going to do some things for you, do some cleanup, going to take out the arms to us, Oz. They're going to take out the background noise, they're going to clean up the clipping.

53:55 So that is one of the, you know, one bucket for AI, and I love those tools that in Adobe, a phonic, there's Descript, a bunch of those AI you as a podcaster take your HTC, and clean it, polish it, There's some tools that are publish a new episode, they will feed and pull out everything, to social media for you, and Love that stuff. That is what AI is supposed to be there. It's supposed to be a tool, right?

54:35 people are just using to ground up, right. Completely create the content, create the voice. This is AI slop. This is what I don't consider a podcast. This is stuff that's coming from companies. Some of these companies deliberately are popping out 1000s of shows, new, not to episode. Shows a month, and then you know, 10s of 1000s of it out, hoping that picking into trying to consume the know, something to do with or whatever it is, sometimes that are similar to other shows that are out there, that those to me are the shoplifters of the They are coming in and they are grabbing downloads from and from advertisers that are causing the ROIs to go down because they're not real audiences, and it just, they're making money, but they're hurting every podcaster.

55:39 right? That's the AI slop. And then there's the between, like, is it I or not? Like, someone might get up a script with on their own, but then use script voice to create the podcast. There are some legitimate like sometimes someone loses I've got a podcaster I knew who lost his voice for a week, but he did a daily podcast. He had advertisers, and he said at the beginning, 'Hey, this is AI Brian, and he let people know that he was using AI to generate his voice, and I think if you are using AI tools to generate your voice, you should indicate that good audience will know the AI never pings your emotions exactly right.

56:21 It might get the sound of your voice, but it doesn't get of your being, so to speak, without getting metaphysical. And then, conversely, there are some people that use the AI tools to generate script, and then they just read it. Human read, is that a slop or not? I tell you what, the content is not going to be all that good. You're probably not going to get a good audience, but you use those AI tools again. I go back to that first group. If you're using the AI tools to give you some ideas on what to do for a show, and to do some work, like background work, you're going to interview somebody, it's easier to say to AI, "Hey, pull me up five questions on this person and look at their background, give me some, give me five or 10 questions, ask this person. You know, David Letterman sat there with the blue cards, right?

57:14 Yeah, his staff put the didn't do the research, his So, if you're using AI to create those blue cards for you, you're still the personality that's reading those questions, asking them, and it's not the first question, it's the And the AI ain't going to be follow-up. Exactly, exactly. So, that's where how I split AI. I think it's great for tools to help podcasters. I think it is horrible for the AI slop, where it's 100% generated, and it just, they just burn and churn. Now, there are some places where you could use AI slop that are legitimate, and that's where you're creating a weather podcast for Sydney, Ohio. Really, who's going to create Sydney, Ohio, or Hays, Kansas podcasts.

58:03 So, for that perspective, you may get customized weather podcasts that show up in the morning that you can listen to for your small little niche area. No human would ever take the time to cover that market, so that there's some advantages there, but when it's a quote unquote podcast covering a tech topic or covering a political topic, and it's just all pure AI created flop. Ultimately, it's just hurting the industry in my opinion. Marc Ronick: I agree, Rob. This was exactly the kind of clarity that I think indie podcasters need right now. Things like growth and monetization, AI and video, it can all really feel overwhelming, but the real question is, what actually helps you create a better show?

58:48 What helps you serve your audience and build something sustainable? this today in a little over an So, thank you so much for joining us, for your insights, for your time today. Really appreciate you. Thank you, everyone, for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And we are back tomorrow, seven 8am Eastern Time. We are covering all the news around the world of podcasting, so come join us, hear our thoughts and opinions on some of these stories, and let's talk about them. So, until then. Make it a great day, everybody. Take care.