Audible to Measure Podcast Listenership
Audible has introduced an analysis tool which will measure how many times a podcast has been downloaded, whether it was listened to and for how long. The company will charge three cents per download for basic service. Also offered, for five cents per download, are tools to disallow a podcast from being emailed to others, presumably to make sure every listen is counted from the source. For half a cent per download, the service will insert relevant ads in the podcast. Measurement will occur when the MP3 player is synced with podcast software.
Comments
This service seems strange to me.
-measure how many times a podcast has been downloaded :: this can be done with any web analytics tool
-whether it was listened to and for how long :: how are they going to do this? if someone takes an mp3 and puts it on their iPod there is no way to track usage
-tools to disallow a podcast from being emailed to others :: c'mon. this is a joke right?
Who listens to podcasts anyway? audio is dead.
Audible files have a fairly sophisticated DRM layer on them that is able to track whether or not a file has been played, and bookmark the spot where you leave off. The same DRM prevents it from being played on an unauthorized player.
However, their $0.05 per download charge is excessive, to say the least. A podcast like The Dawn & Drew Show, for example, has about 100,000 downloads per show, and they do 5 shows a week. In order to offset the tracking costs from Audible, they'd have to sell ads totalling $5,000 per show, $25,000 per week. Who's going to pay that much for an untested medium? A $50 CPM? Get it down to a $5 CPM, and we'll have something to talk about.