Do Podcast Downloads Matter?
Oct 18th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Podcasting StatisticsResearch by Scouta, a company that offers a podcast recommendation application for iTunes, suggests that tracking podcast downloads is far from accurate as a measure of a show’s success.
According to Scouta’s Richard Giles, “Only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are consumed over 50%.”
Scouta’s numbers are based on information collected directly from iTunes. The Scouta Agent checks your iTunes library for downloaded podcasts, and then offer personalized recommendations based on what you listen to and watch.
Giles qualifies his stats as being less than definitive, because of the sample size – 117 people and 4329 podcasts. Nevertheless, they highlight the fact that it’s probably more meaningful to track trends in podcast downloads rather than worrying about absolute numbers. It also points out the need to look for more meaningful success measures than downloads.
We’ve asked Scouta to let us know as they have stats based on a larger sample size.
[…] Scouta – Podcast Recommendations by Anna Farmery Over at Podcasting News they have a research story about a company that I had not heard of before…Scouta. Scouta as described on their website do… * Personalized video and podcast recommendations. * Based on what you watch, listen to, or rate. * Share favorites with friends and groups. * Use our new iTunes Scouta Agent to make it effortless. […]
[…] From Podcasting News; […]