Episode Transcript
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0:00
- Strapping, we're gonna talk podcasting.
0:09
You're gonna break it down. - Everything
0:24
- Gonna - Story - Sharing
0:34
- Expertise, each episode a adventure.
0:42
- So turn out - The volume and let's get started.
1:31
- Here we are on the new media show, <laugh>,
1:37
uh, Rob, uh, what do you think of that?
1:41
- That's awesome. <laugh>. Definitely a, a more UpToDate kind of, uh,
1:46
music track for us, that's for sure. It, - It's a little bit long <laugh>,
1:52
and I guess I didn't check to see how long it was,
1:55
but would you believe that's AI generated?
1:59
- Oh, these days, nothing surprises me on that front,
2:02
so it's great though, - At suno.ai.
2:06
<laugh> - Suno, huh?
2:11
- S nno.ai. Yeah. That's - Interesting. Yeah,
2:14
- It is interesting. So, anyway, I don't know why it was repeated.
2:18
It was only supposed to be 30 seconds, but it was going on while, while,
2:22
- So what's the, what's, what's the copyright situation on that stuff?
2:26
Do you, do you have any idea, - Um, what's happening here?
2:32
Did we lose the stream? No. Lemme check mine.
2:39
Let me double check. Make sure we're still online. Yeah, we're still online. I, I, I think I, I did
2:45
- A, okay, I see it in mine. So, - Are we on Rumble?
2:49
Maybe that's what happened. I don't know. We didn't
2:53
- <laugh> it didn't, uh, didn't connect on Rumble.
2:56
- Uh, you know, I was, be honest with you,
2:58
I was like running, we, we were five minutes
3:02
before the show started. Lucky I had the studio already turned on <laugh>.
3:08
And, um, I had recorded something earlier
3:12
because we were in the middle of launching our AI system today.
3:15
And I, that launch went at two.
3:18
And then I'm just trying to, you know,
3:20
do the orchestra thing here. And I looked up at the clock and it was two 50, like 2 53.
3:25
Yeah. And, and, and I was like, a big F word come out
3:28
of my mouth. So we're getting - All the balls in the air, right? Yeah.
3:31
- We're, we're lucky. We are, uh, even on,
3:35
and it says YouTube is not receiving enough video
3:39
to maintain a smooth stream. Okay. Is it still complaining?
3:45
I don't know why it would, that would be the issue.
3:48
I'm looking here anyway. Um, I may, yeah,
3:52
- I'm seeing it too. It says, it says a a YouTube is not receiving enough video
3:57
to maintain a smooth - String.
3:59
Yeah. I don't know why. Because, yeah, I think I know why,
4:04
but, uh, it, it's, it's my mess up.
4:08
So anyway, it, it is, it is what it is.
4:10
We're gonna have to live with it. 'cause I was pushing too many buttons.
4:16
Um, no. So, um, yeah. All right.
4:20
So anyway, that's, my team was in the middle of launching the AI stuff.
4:23
So been a busy, busy week. Of course, Monday was a big day.
4:30
- Yeah. So let's talk about your, your video
4:33
to audio podcast product that you, uh, that you announced.
4:37
It's kind of, kind of cool. It'd be good to kind of give a little demo of that, uh,
4:42
of which I saw a, a video, uh, online that you,
4:46
that was linked to in pod news. I saw. So Yeah, there's
4:50
- Really no, no demo.
4:52
It's just basically you
4:54
- Screenshot or a screen share. - Yeah. You just, you know, you, you link,
4:58
let's see if I can get, find one, find a a show here,
5:02
because, uh,
5:05
you caught me all on it, unready. But basically all it does is you link,
5:10
okay, I, I've got one here. Hang on here, let me go find it.
5:13
Which show do I want to do? Okay.
5:16
- Or just pull, pull up that, that screen on your page or
5:20
- Something. Yeah. I'm making sure that I've got the right one here.
5:22
So, uh, nope, it's not
5:25
that show. I gotta get the other one here. - Yeah, I know that, uh, we've been talking about for,
5:30
for months now, the need for
5:34
the video creators over on YouTube Yeah.
5:37
And other platforms to be able to have a, you know,
5:40
an audio podcast version of their, of their YouTube show.
5:43
And it looks like Todd, your team has done a
5:47
automation process that can grab a, a
5:51
- Playlist. Yeah. So off - Of YouTube, - Essentially all, all the podcasts are,
5:55
they can either originate on our vid to pod
5:58
or if they're an existing podcaster. It's real simple. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
6:01
And when, when they're in our dashboard,
6:04
there's a place over here where we have, uh, show settings.
6:08
- Yeah. - So this basically is a place
6:10
where they normally set if they want a page blueberry
6:12
or if they want a free blueberry free WordPress site,
6:15
or if they have their own website. And if they own a website,
6:19
they can link it up and all that stuff. But down here we have a new feature.
6:22
It says, uh, vid to pod.
6:25
And all that really is, is, is we, we make it so
6:29
that you enter your at sign.
6:33
In my case, it's at Geek News. - Mm-Hmm. - <affirmative>. We pull up the,
6:39
in the onboarding process, we pull up the channel, then,
6:44
um, we show the playlist, our playlist,
6:48
and you have to select the right playlist. You confirm, um, that and certify,
6:55
and this is through the terms of service as well. There's a terms of service screen, actual terms
6:59
of service screen you have to do before you get to this screen.
7:02
Um, and then you decide you wanna use your own channel art,
7:07
or you wanna use, or you use your own cover art.
7:10
Do you wanna use your channel art from YouTube? Do you want all videos or you want
7:14
videos from a certain date? And once that is set, and once a podcaster agrees to that,
7:20
and again, the terms of service and why we have to have a separate terms
7:24
of service is pretty obvious. Number one. Uh, giving us permission
7:31
to pull their content, some other licensing stuff,
7:34
making sure they know number two, that if they have music in their video podcasts, that
7:40
the music licenses will not transfer.
7:43
And that they should not be using this service
7:45
because, um, they'll be liable.
7:48
Because if they've used YouTube music
7:51
as a copyright in their content, uh,
7:54
that copyright does not cover in an audio podcast,
7:58
they're, they're not clear. So we make them understand
8:02
that any music in your podcast has to be licensed.
8:06
It has to have the appropriate license for podcasting,
8:09
- Probably externally from, from right.
8:12
From YouTube that has the license to be able
8:14
to be on YouTube as well as, as a, as a
8:16
- Podcast. But if you, if you're using YouTube music Mm-Hmm.
8:20
<affirmative>, um, that is not licensed for podcasts,
8:22
that you, you can't bring that across and you're not eligible, uh, for, for this service.
8:29
And then once that's done, every 15 minutes, we go out
8:33
and well, what we do is we migrate you first,
8:37
and then when the episodes are, and what we do is we pull the media over
8:45
and what then shows up in the system
8:50
are new episodes. And we pull in the title, the description, the chapter file.
8:57
And, uh, we auto publish the media.
9:00
So anytime you publish a new mm-Hmm.
9:03
<affirmative> episode to a, to a playlist over on YouTube,
9:07
the playlist you've designated, uh, within 15 minutes,
9:10
we'll pick that up, pull it in, convert it,
9:14
and, um, auto publish.
9:17
You don't have to do nothing, set it and forget it.
9:20
Um, so they can still make additional episodes.
9:24
They can still participate in anything podcasting.
9:27
They can still set everything up just like a podcast.
9:30
Uh, but the main process here is we've just completely
9:33
automated so they don't have to do anything.
9:37
- And so I have a couple of questions. Is there a way that, let's say a YouTube creator can just go
9:42
to blueberry.com or whatever and,
9:45
and say, I I want to create a podcast,
9:47
and all they do is enter their, their, um,
9:52
their address to YouTube. Yeah.
9:55
- That's what happens during the onboarding be - Or something like that.
9:57
Yeah. That's what, and it will take you through the process. - Yeah. But they have to come to us via the vid to pod page.
10:04
The special link will set a, a cer a set of flag.
10:07
If they come to us just as from our hosting account,
10:11
they'll have the opportunity to do the vid
10:13
to pod option after onboarding.
10:16
It's not part of the normal process, but we can,
10:20
but it basically, we want them to start the process on our bid to pod page.
10:24
- Yeah. 'cause you might capture a lot of YouTubers
10:28
that are saying, well, you know, I'll just, this is easy to do. Yeah. I'll just,
10:31
- Yeah. We already have, - Go over here and I'll put in my,
10:34
my Path to my YouTube account. Yeah. And then I can select what channel I want to have.
10:38
We go into a podcast feed and it's, we we're pretty much done. We,
10:41
- We reached out to folks that already had podcasts.
10:45
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, on real podcasts, A AKA.
10:51
And, um, all of them that we reached out to have migrated
10:55
to us, or they originated with us,
10:58
and they changed the process so that they do not know,
11:01
do they do not do any additional work now
11:05
that they've migrated, they're over,
11:07
they just set it, forget it. So now they're saving 15 to 20 minutes.
11:11
They don't have to come in and create a post. Everything is done automatically. It
11:16
- Just transfers all that data outta YouTube. Yep. And just uses it Right in the RSS feed. Yeah. Okay.
11:21
- And, uh, yeah. That's awesome. And we convert it to high quality audio.
11:25
Um, again, what's
11:29
- The default kind of playback bit rate? Is it
11:32
- We're doing 128 k? I'd, I'd have to look if it was mine or stereo, but, okay.
11:38
- Um, yeah. - But I think
11:40
- Most of the stuff on YouTube, I think is in stereo, I believe.
11:43
- But so, and again, it's, yeah.
11:46
It's one of those things where the,
11:50
we just made this so that it would be simple.
11:53
Yeah. Um, - So is there any kind of, uh, authentication
11:57
of ownership of the - YouTube account?
11:59
You have to, you have to certify that it's your account. - Okay. - Um, we're, we get a daily running report
12:04
of who's added content that we're reviewing.
12:08
Um, so, you know, you basically have to certify,
12:12
and plus you have to have a credit card on file. You have to pay for this. This is, there's no free,
12:16
you know, there's basically, uh, um, what we've seen
12:20
and what we saw on other platforms is people on Reddit
12:24
and other folks have made all kinds of hacks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they're putting, uh,
12:31
YouTuber's content into apps, um,
12:35
that are not even podcast apps. Um, yeah. And the YouTuber's getting no credit for it.
12:42
So way we set this up too, is that, you know, if a,
12:46
if a YouTuber's monetized and they're worried about losing monetization, you know,
12:53
they can turn on monetization programmatic here.
12:56
And again, it's, it's an audience way.
12:58
We feel this, this is a growth opportunity people are gonna
13:00
watch, continue to watch. And then those, is
13:04
- There any, any potential way that, let's say
13:08
some Joe Below podcaster types in
13:13
Joe Rogan's account and is able to create a podcast?
13:17
- If they do? Uh, it'll be caught really quick on our site,
13:20
because again, oh, it would, we're we're reviewing every day. Good.
13:23
- Good. - You know, and if we, and, and if we run into any type of issue,
13:26
then we'll go to authentication. But we just wanted to lower the onboarding process.
13:33
Um, you know, it's not something that's it.
13:37
It's, so again, they gotta, they're gonna have to pay to do that.
13:40
And not saying that that's, - Well, it might be worth it.
13:43
- Right. Well, not saying that. That's right. Um, but, you know, we're not,
13:48
we're gonna make sure associated accounts
13:51
are associated accounts. - I would say that's probably the biggest risk there is
13:57
people getting in and trying to hijack content.
13:59
- Yeah. But the question really then is for what, uh,
14:03
a few hours, you know? Yeah. I
14:05
- Mean, if, if there's processes that can catch it, I think that's terrific.
14:09
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had the same problem back when I was
14:11
working at Spreaker, um, where people were
14:14
cloning feeds in the platform,
14:16
and that caused all sorts of problems. - Yeah. We've seen very, very little of that.
14:20
Anytime you have to put a credit card on, and I got your credit,
14:23
- It does cut - Down on that. I got your credit card information, you know, your name,
14:27
your zip code, your billing information. - Yeah. Yeah. That's a different,
14:31
that's a different level, right. - Of - Yeah. Of engagement.
14:35
And if, I think we're mainly this kind
14:38
of stuff happened is on free, free platforms. Yeah.
14:40
- Right. Yeah. And there's a couple out there that doing this now for free
14:45
that I'm surprised that, you know. Yeah.
14:49
- Oh, oh, they are. Okay. - Well, there, you know, there's, there's a, yeah.
14:52
Not doing this now that creating an RSS feed. Oh.
14:56
But someone that's basically creating audio.
14:59
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like a website that you enter
15:02
- Your Oh, it's, it's an app, your - YouTube account. Yeah. Right.
15:04
- Yeah. - And it, it exports all the audio
15:07
or all the video out - There.
15:09
Yeah. So yeah, I've - Seen those.
15:12
Yeah. Awesome. Is there any other details like this?
15:16
It sounds like, I mean, does it work outside
15:19
of the WordPress plugin and inside the WordPress plugin?
15:22
- No. It only works on the blueberry dashboard. - Just on the dashboard. It doesn't yet work in the
15:27
- No, - The plugin. Yeah. No, - No.
15:30
And we probably won't be put it
15:32
in the plugin, I don't think. Because again, so you have, if you have your own website,
15:37
uh, already, you can link that in the system.
15:41
So there is a way, um, if you, if you, again,
15:45
so far we haven't run into anybody that, um,
15:50
has been publishing via Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> their own website. And then you do, then,
15:54
we'll, we'll talk to 'em, figure out how we're gonna work it
15:56
with them with turn off auto publishing or something.
15:59
'cause then they would still have to manually publish on their own website.
16:04
- Yeah. 'cause that's what I'm doing doing with, um,
16:06
with your platform right now is I publish directly
16:09
to my WordPress instance that then goes into your Yeah.
16:12
Your system through, through the plugin.
16:14
- So I don't have a solution for you on WordPress now.
16:16
So again, it's, and we figured the majority of these folks
16:19
that were gonna coming over, you know, those
16:21
that are have a process are. But again, I've moved some people already off other web off
16:26
by their podcast hosting platforms to just want the ease.
16:31
And the only had over there was a landing page. Anyway. So
16:34
- Yeah. I think it's those that are, are creating videos that are,
16:39
you know, serialized o over there that have been put into a podcast playlist.
16:44
So th this is any of the playlists, not, not just the ones
16:47
that are designated podcast playlists. - Oh, it's anybody, yeah. Any playlist.
16:51
Tom says, there's so many reaction videos to license music,
16:55
and it seems impossible to police disclaimer or not.
16:58
Yeah. It's gonna be impossible to, it's on them, you know,
17:02
we've warned them, uh, right. You know, and
17:06
- Spotify's gonna catch it and take it - Back - And
17:09
- Yep. Right. We've warned them, you know, and basically, it, it's very, very clear that,
17:14
you know this, you better have a life if you've got some
17:18
music in your content. Matter of fact, you know, you have to click
17:21
and say that, you know, basically. And if they didn't read the paragraph, I can't help that.
17:26
But, uh, I'm sure some somebody's gonna,
17:30
and we'll get a take down on a Yep. - Well, it'll - Happen on a piece of content. I'm sure.
17:33
I'm sure it'll happen. - Yeah. And it also creates,
17:36
creates an interesting loop too, if you think about it.
17:39
Um, where you could, um, have a playlist video
17:42
that you import in your system, create a podcast feed,
17:45
and then that podcast feed could be submitted to YouTube Music <laugh>.
17:49
Right. - Rob? - What?
17:53
- We're trying to get 'em to come this way. - I know, but it could go both ways. That's what I'm saying.
17:58
- Right. Well, and they should already have that designated
18:00
as a podcast playlist anyway. Not set the Rss s feed.
18:04
- Yeah. Buting, that would just an audio only version.
18:06
Right? Yeah. So you'd have the video and the audio version.
18:09
- Guess that's, I guess that's true. - Yeah. - You know, so, and,
18:15
and really what it, what what this stemmed from
18:18
as I came back, you know, podcast we had, as you know,
18:21
I was talking to this gal, she says, I'm doing a YouTube channel Right.
18:25
Just quite adamant with me - Is - I don't have time,
18:28
I don't have time to do a podcast. - Yeah. It's a hill to climb to.
18:32
- And, and, and it was, you know, and she was pretty, and I'm like, okay, okay. No.
18:38
- Right. And it's automated once you get it set up. Right.
18:40
Right. So each time you uploads to, to YouTube,
18:42
it automatically generates it. And - Post, I emailed her yesterday
18:46
'cause I had her in our contact list. I said, Hey. And she goes, oh, that's cool.
18:53
And, you know, so you don't have to do any work.
18:57
- Right? Yeah. Yeah.
19:01
- So we will see how this works out.
19:05
I'm not saying that there is a, you know, there's,
19:08
there's lots of things. There's, you know, the interesting
19:13
product <laugh> - It is.
19:17
It is. And it, it, it changes the conversation
19:20
around working with, um, coming outta YouTube
19:23
and getting involved in podcasting, which I think is,
19:26
- And, and again, making that easier. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I,
19:31
we really tried to emphasize on the product page
19:36
is, is, is the benefit, the bonus podcast centric opportunities?
19:42
Number one, they can get a free WordPress site with us if they want.
19:45
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they get an audio player, they can share pre, they can create premium content.
19:50
They can go into Apple Podcasts that can go into their own blueberry premiums.
19:55
So if they wanna do premium audio, they can Mm-Hmm.
19:58
<affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they can, if they decide they want to, they can add another show
20:02
and create a true video podcast. So we feel, feel these are all marketing, messaging,
20:09
training opportunities. They can do V four V, um,
20:16
they can do, um, promotions
20:21
for stuff that's gonna happen on their channel.
20:24
They can do pre-rolls into the audio content, say, Hey,
20:27
by the way, we're gonna have a, you know, we're having a live YouTube event in, uh, a week.
20:31
We want you to be there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they could pre-roll this
20:34
into all their audio content. - Yeah. - And the best part is they never have
20:38
to worry about a platform taking down their content. So, you know, that's some of the bonus stuff, you know, um,
20:48
you know, monetizing immediately, distribution, analytics.
20:52
So, you know, the goal here is to, you know,
20:56
that's gonna be part of our messaging, is to educate,
21:00
you know, there's a whole nother world over here.
21:03
You got this great world you're participating in right
21:05
now, you're Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And again, this is really designed
21:08
for video first folks. So your video first, then we'll go from there.
21:15
- Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think there's, there's definitely a need for that.
21:20
So I think this is a terrific solution.
21:23
It'd be interesting if we were able to do more of these kind
21:25
of integrations, right. That can help content creators share content.
21:31
- Well, we're, we're not done, you know, with this,
21:33
we're gonna add some more. - I don't think you're ever done, Todd.
21:36
- Well, we're gonna add some more platforms to Vid Pod.
21:41
- Oh - Yeah. Why not? - Hmm. That has some interesting things to think about.
21:49
Sure. Hmm. Yep.
21:55
So you also, you also announced some AI tools, right?
21:58
- Well, it's, it's been, it's been released.
22:00
So I think the announcement is going out this afternoon.
22:03
So, um, but blueberry customers now have accessibility to
22:07
what we're calling Blueberry Pie.
22:09
PI, our Blueberry podcast, AI
22:15
nickname Blueberry Pie. And that's, that's, that's the name of the, you know,
22:19
a little, a little cheeky there. Um, so,
22:23
- So does Pie, is Pie an acronym or is it just,
22:26
- Hey, come on, Rob. Blueberry Pie. You know, it's just
22:30
- Fun. I know, I know, I know. - Well, yeah, so it's, it, it's PAI, so podcast ai. Yeah.
22:35
- Yeah. Yeah. - So - P Okay. PAI.
22:38
- Yeah. Okay. Yeah. PAI is how we're spelling not PIE,
22:41
- <laugh> <laugh>. - So yeah, the blog and the product page
22:46
and all that's probably coming to life as we're talking here.
22:49
But I saw the menu item in the dashboard, so anybody
22:52
that's in the dashboard can get to it now. - Okay. - And we, given all
22:57
of our customers five free trials of each product,
23:01
and, uh, the media clip creator is, uh, heavy in work,
23:06
I expect that and probably a month. So,
23:10
- So let's, let's play it off scenario. So you have a, a podcaster on your platform Yep.
23:15
That's doing audio now. Yep.
23:19
But yet maybe they have a YouTube channel
23:22
that has different content on it. Yep. How are you bundling that, um, to extend that,
23:29
to maybe that account having two podcasts?
23:33
- Oh, they could podcasts, they could add another. And again, we, this is just getting started here on that.
23:39
- Yeah. - So, okay. - Yeah. Because I'm sure there's examples of that
23:44
where people, people create an audio podcast,
23:46
but they create a different kind
23:48
of content flow for YouTube.
23:51
They might be able to convert that to an audio podcast as
23:54
- Well. And here's the thing. It's everything that a
23:59
normal podcaster does. Mm-Hmm.
24:01
- <affirmative> - Can do, they can do
24:05
creating new episodes, creating premium within that same channel.
24:09
- Right? - They're not limited to what we pull in.
24:12
They can produce premium, they can do whatever they want.
24:15
They can go to Apple Podcasts, apple Premium.
24:19
They can, so they can do everything.
24:21
They, and if they wanna create a new show, you have have the ability to create a new show.
24:25
They wanna become a video podcaster, they can become a video podcaster.
24:30
Hmm. So really, the sky's the limit.
24:32
The only thing that we're doing is auto publishing their,
24:38
- You might wanna think about doing a deal with, uh, X maybe
24:41
Todd, you know, I had to mention that. Well,
24:49
- Again, we're not done with Vid Pod. - Right? No, I'm sure
24:53
- That you're not done. So, you know, and you know, it is what it is.
24:57
Um, yeah.
24:59
So those of you that are on our platform, our episode plan, I won't go into everything.
25:04
There's gonna be videos out about this episode
25:07
planning. Mm-Hmm. - <affirmative>, - We've got the episode production tools,
25:12
and I'm just showing you the top, top of the menu system.
25:15
Let me show you an output. - So what's the scope of the AI capability?
25:20
What's the, well, the top level, let's, let's,
25:22
- Uh, here's, here's the one I did for Gee Central.
25:26
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I got, uh, transcript.
25:30
- Okay. - Title. I chose my own title.
25:33
I didn't like the titles. It came up to with on this one.
25:35
But we suggest 10 titles. I get a show summary, I get bullet points
25:42
of the content that's been covered. Uh, I didn't do episode Generation on that one.
25:47
Let me back up. Let me find one. I've got episode generation
25:54
episode art. - Okay. - And episode chapters.
25:59
So this is a full chapter list of every, you know,
26:03
the 30 plus topics I talked about in Ke Central.
26:05
It automatically mark the chapters, put the time hacks in.
26:09
I can upload images, do links. But here's the, so
26:13
- That goes into the, the player too, I would imagine.
26:18
- Yeah. All, all this transfers right into, if I come back
26:21
to Geekness Central and look at the last episode,
26:25
you can see the chapter markers on the player
26:29
that were, and also - Goes into the RSS feed too. Yeah.
26:32
- Yeah. Okay. And then basically, so it's also there too.
26:37
So we brought it into the Player, and it's also in the SS feed.
26:40
But if I go back and go to the top of the food chain here,
26:43
and I go over to the social promotion and the production, we've got the ability to do clips.
26:51
These are clips for Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Facebook.
26:56
And I've got the ability to do an email promo as well.
27:00
We added a little feature the last minute.
27:03
Um, 'cause what this does, it starts off with a, uh,
27:07
with episode planning, and there's a show profile.
27:11
So my name, first name, last name, email, bio,
27:16
podcast goal, podcast description, website, social media,
27:20
links, destinations. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then Desired audience.
27:25
So this is the folks you hope listen to your podcasting.
27:27
You actually set up a profile, and that goes into the episode planning section.
27:32
But in the end, when we get all done,
27:35
and we've done, we're doing a clip highlights, uh,
27:40
I don't think it'll show up on this one because we just added
27:43
- It. So that, that email capability there
27:45
that you're generating there, is that, um, moving towards maybe kind of a newsletter type of
27:50
- Capability? Well, this, this is designed, you cut and paste this
27:52
and put this right into your email software to
27:55
- Okay. Whatever email. Yeah, - Yeah.
27:57
Platform. Well, and you can edit it, of course. But it's, it does a great job.
28:01
And we just, I mean, literally in the last half hour,
28:04
we added, and I haven't created a new email, but we now embed within the actual email,
28:09
your social platforms, your email, your subscribe links
28:13
to the various, so we basically have that embedded in the AI
28:17
melds that in. So I don't wanna get too deep into this.
28:20
You guys can, those of you that are not blueberry customers, come on over.
28:24
We'll migrate you today. And here's the beauty.
28:27
Here's the beauty. It's just 10 bucks a month with it's part
28:31
of our Thrive Plan. So we've got
28:35
- 10, 10 bucks a month in addition to the hosting plan, or
28:38
- Yeah. But it includes, but it's part of our Thrive Bundle.
28:40
A Thrive Bundle's already got like six
28:42
or seven additional tools. So we've added a whole bunch of value
28:46
to our, to our Thrive Bundle. So yeah, 10 boxes. The is the cost per month.
28:54
So that's cheaper than anybody's AI out there
28:57
that's doing any AI stuff. And again, it's part of a bundle.
29:01
You, you get, uh, you know, you get just a whole bunch of additional features.
29:05
You get additional statistics stuff. It's, you know, and we're gonna Mm-Hmm.
29:08
<affirmative> the clip creation, um, you're able
29:12
to generate 16 episode images a month.
29:14
So we did set a limit on that. That's the most expensive part of the whole thing. Mm-Hmm.
29:19
<affirmative>, um, clip creation is, uh,
29:21
gonna take some overhead, but, so not trying to be a headliner,
29:26
but I'm gonna, with the clip creator, we're gonna provide everything that basically Headliner does
29:31
to a certain extent, except we're
29:33
not gonna publish to YouTube. - Right. So is there any
29:41
of these features that are getting bundled in
29:44
with your basic plans? - With the, so, no. So you have to have the Add-on.
29:51
You have to have the Thrive add-on Okay.
29:53
To, to get the, to get the assistant.
29:56
Um, but again, I, it's a, it's a hell of a value.
30:00
- That's what I was gonna say. I mean, it's that, I mean,
30:02
if you were to get the same capabilities, you'd probably have to have multiple
30:06
subscriptions with different - Platforms.
30:08
Oh. With a lot of different platforms. Yeah. So, well, you one, you could, you know, you could pick,
30:14
you know, and we went around and looked at all the pricing and, um, I,
30:21
I, I, I think we've, we've done great value on this to see if I can,
30:26
- Uh, - Let's see. Is that the page? No, it's not.
30:30
I don't want that. Where did I go? - Can you share what the AI platform
30:35
that you're using is here? Nope. To, - Nope. Nope.
30:38
- Okay. - We're not sharing, but I can switch.
30:43
So whatever I'm on currently, I can switch.
30:47
We've designed it. I could, if I'm on Claude,
30:49
I can go to OpenAI. If I'm on OpenAI, I can go to Llama.
30:53
If I'm on Llama, I can go back to OpenAI.
30:56
So we made the, you know, and basically choose the, the language model.
31:02
Okay. And somebody all of a sudden next week comes out
31:04
with something that's five times better.
31:07
We will test in a test environment
31:10
and then click the switch.
31:14
- Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, - I'm not,
31:17
I'm not locked into any model. So
31:21
- This has pre-written prompts behind them,
31:25
right? Is that how it works? Yeah. - Yeah. The beauty above says
31:28
- There's probably open, open areas in the prompt to fill
31:31
with information from each content.
31:34
- She says the beauty aboves, Todd, I notice images per chapter.
31:37
Does it mean you'll be able to produce an MP four?
31:39
No, we're not talking about, uh, doing that for YouTube yet.
31:44
Um, the, the,
31:52
the chapters are purely a podcasting 2.0 feature
31:55
that's supported in podcasting 2.0 apps.
31:59
And, um, - Hmm.
32:04
I can see where this might go in the future. Todd, it's interesting to think about the cross pollinations
32:09
that could happen between audio and video here.
32:12
Hmm. So when you
32:17
start thinking about the growing capability of, um,
32:20
AI video, where's that gonna take us?
32:33
- It'd be fun. - Yeah. - There's lots, lots of options here.
32:37
- Yeah. I was impressed by some of the AI video
32:41
that I've been seeing online lately. So, - Interesting.
32:45
Or not. But, you know, again, I'm not doing, uh, it's very, very expensive.
32:52
If you, okay, so let's say I have 30 chapters
32:57
to do 30 images. If I was gonna do 30 AI images to add to a chapter file
33:07
that's, uh, that's, that's not gonna be bundled into a $10 a month plan on top
33:13
of hosting, that'll, that happens. Now, is - There a lot of value in that anyway?
33:15
- Well, no. No. If someone wants to have three minutes
33:19
of this image, five minutes of that image, eight minutes
33:22
of another image, if you wanna switch the image every
33:27
that, I'm not gonna do video. That's crazy. I'm not doing a full motion video
33:32
off an audio podcast. That's, you know, at this time.
33:35
It's, it crazy how much that would cost. That would be crazy. Well,
33:41
- You know, it's coming though. - Well, you know, but it's, it's coming.
33:43
It's, but it's expensive. It's really, really expensive.
33:46
The, when you get into gen generating images
33:50
- Yeah. - It's just like that little audio clip I just paid.
33:54
You know, those are done on credits. Right.
33:57
So, you know, you're not getting that, that, that is,
34:00
that is, that is heavy lift. You know, you think about stressing you,
34:05
you get something like that. It's, it's not inexpensive.
34:11
- But Todd, I can totally see it happen. Oh yeah. So let's say you do an audio podcast and you just use the
34:16
- AI to create a, a 90 minute video of this show,
34:19
- Show of the same content. Right. And then just have a
34:22
- Avatar well have, just have, yeah. Okay. Well, I knock
34:27
and anybody can do that for under, like,
34:30
at this time, right? Under a hundred. Oh,
34:32
- It's still early. Yeah's still - Early. It's still early. But, you know,
34:36
do I wanna watch some swirling
34:39
bs on a YouTube channel? I don't know.
34:42
- Well, if you think about the, the potential production capability that could Right.
34:47
Be wrapped around that, um, it could be pretty impressive.
34:51
- So Dave, Dave Jones says, bid to pot is a beautiful product.
34:54
Massive kudos. The whole team. Are there any feeds in the wild yet? Uh, a couple. Yeah.
35:00
I think there is. Dave. You'll have to watch Podcast Index <laugh>,
35:02
because we're pinging when we make the make the Show.
35:06
So they would come from us. So 51 50.
35:11
I got a email from Darren or a, a, a Boost,
35:15
but said, we are live and lit. I guess, I guess the Bat Single did go out. 2222.
35:19
SATs from Darren Schwartz. Our church uses Rumbles a YouTube livestream backup when
35:23
YouTube sends us a strike received one already,
35:26
and have a, had a few older episodes
35:28
banned because of Covid. What's interesting is that is more
35:31
and more information comes out there, Mr. Shared in our America's Now Proven true.
35:35
There may come a day when we're having your own RSS feed
35:39
will be the only way to get your message out.
35:42
As of now, we publish YouTube Rumble and our own RSS feed.
35:45
Great. Episode 5 81. - Yeah. 'cause you might be able to do the same thing, Todd
35:50
with Rumble too. So - Another 2,222 sets.
35:55
Not answering your question, Rob <laugh> <laugh>, uh, this was from,
36:00
- Well, it's also, you know, what's interesting is that, um,
36:03
currently right now I have an account at at Rumble,
36:06
and then I have a YouTube account and I can synchronize those together.
36:09
Yeah, right. So they'll transfer videos out
36:11
of YouTube into Rumble, uh,
36:14
- That account. No, they won't do it that way no more. They quit.
36:18
I'm pretty They did? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's only Rumble to YouTube now.
36:23
- Oh, so YouTube cut - It off? I think so.
36:27
- Okay. I kind of did wonder why it didn't look like my Rumble account was full
36:32
of my YouTube stuff yet.
36:35
- So 2022 stats from, uh, Darren Schwartz says,
36:38
sorry Rob, I'm with Todd on this one. If you dropped another show's episode in your feed,
36:43
you'd get an email from me. Oh, it's, this is from two episodes ago.
36:46
- Oh, this is the feed drop question. Yeah. - Right. If you continue to do it, I'd probably drop you.
36:51
I don't have time to listen to podcasts. I, I don't have po I don't have
36:54
time to listen to the podcast. I scribe to, as it is now,
36:58
a quick host suggestion if preferred.
37:01
Also, I like the Clipse Fountain does. I found a couple new podcasts that way. Go podcasting.
37:06
Um, let's see here. Uh, Sam Sethy sent, it was actually interview, uh,
37:13
interviewed by Sam yesterday, so I'm gonna be on Pod News on Friday.
37:18
Um, so anyway, that's what's going on with sat.
37:20
So anyway, live and lit everybody, uh,
37:23
on a new podcasting [email protected].
37:26
And we appreciate all of you that stream by the minute stream of Satoshi.
37:30
That is greatly appreciated. And, uh, it's an
37:33
- Incentive for us to just keep talking for hours and hours on
37:37
- It. Yeah. Well, you know, <laugh>, I,
37:39
let me check our Skype here. See if our guest came.
37:43
- Yeah, that would be great. I think we're over.
37:54
Oh, - Hey guys, how you - Doing?
37:59
Good. Now let me do some screen changes here
38:02
because I, to get you in here.
38:05
Two, three, I don't know. I don't want that one.
38:08
I want this one. Five. Ah, there you are. <laugh>.
38:12
It's what's happening. Red circle's, what's in the house? Get
38:15
- In right. - What's going on, Caden? Yes.
38:17
- Caden. Yeah. What, welcome to the show, Mike.
38:20
- Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been listening to you guys for a very long time.
38:24
I listened to you on like one and a half x though. It's a very different experience to listen to you live, uh,
38:28
and, and get you at, uh, at the natural pace.
38:31
- You do know that, uh, when you listen at that, that pace
38:35
that your brain gets jacked up
38:39
and people have found that they, when they go back
38:41
to one time speed, they have less anxiety in life.
38:43
So we definitely recommend one time Speed, - <laugh>.
38:47
Okay, thanks. I'll, I'll switch it back. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's sometimes I'm listening
38:51
to the show, like, you know, it's a show about poker
38:53
or something for my, uh, for entertainment.
38:56
I tend not to fast forward. And then when I'm just trying to download, you know,
38:59
industry information directly into my brain, like the Matrix, uh, you know, I tend to turn things,
39:03
turn things up and speed it up. But, um, anyway, I've been listening to you guys
39:06
for years. It's cool to be on. - Yeah, thanks. So, uh,
39:10
you guys made an announcement today too? - Yeah, we did. It was a, a a,
39:15
a really interesting, uh, day for us. We launched a, a new product of ours that we call Open Wrap,
39:19
um, which I'm happy to tell you about. Um, many people think about Red Circle
39:24
as a podcast hosting company, which we are, you know,
39:26
we have a, a podcast hosting business and a a, a competitive product in that space.
39:31
Um, but the main focus for our business is on host Red advertising
39:36
and host Red Advertising Automation. And, um, the product that we released today sort
39:41
of takes all the stuff that we've been doing over the last several years
39:44
that helps us build, uh, and automate host red advertising
39:48
and brings it to podcasts that are not, uh,
39:51
hosted on Red Circle exclusively. So those things used to be tightly coupled our hosting
39:55
and distribution, which has its own dynamic insertion
39:58
technology and our ad automation. And now we're bringing our ad automation to podcasts
40:02
that are hosted on other vast compatible hosting platforms.
40:06
I just use a lot of jargon, so I'm happy to get into the details.
40:09
- Let me guess. You are intercepting the download link.
40:13
You decide if you have an ad inserted ad If it is,
40:16
you download the video reinsert and serve it,
40:20
and you incur the hosting bill to deliver that.
40:24
And if there's no ad, you deliver it from the host.
40:27
- No, we don't do it that way. I think that's the way, um,
40:30
what Dynamo did it, that was a product from Box Nest.
40:33
Yeah, from Box Nests. Yeah. I worked on that.
40:35
And that was an interesting kind of like, uh, end
40:39
around solution to the problem because, uh,
40:42
but the problem with that is then once you insert the ad
40:44
and you're the one delivering it, then you're, uh, incurring the bandwidth, which is no fun, but, but doable.
40:48
But also then can mess with the stats
40:50
that end up back on the, uh, podcasters.
40:53
That's right. Uh, host of Origin. Um, what we've done is that,
40:56
is we've used a technology called that Vast, which is supported by some of the like larger enterprise,
41:02
the more enterprise-y uh, hosting companies.
41:06
And what it does is, uh, it's, it comes from video, uh,
41:09
ad serving and it's a, uh, XML based protocol,
41:11
and it lets you kind of instruct the other ad server, Hey,
41:15
you know, insert this ad for me, uh, ping me back
41:18
after the a's been inserted. Um, and so we sort of talk server to server directly with,
41:23
um, the other podcast hosting company. - Yeah. So then you have to do an integration with the,
41:27
with the hosting company to do it. - Uh, yeah. It's an open standard
41:31
and it's, it's, it's supported by, you know, uh, megaphone
41:35
and R 19 and Omni and some, some ads with simple cast setups.
41:40
So it's supported by a bunch of those like enterprise hosts already.
41:43
Um, you know, there's always, when you do these kinds
41:45
of protocols, there's always little idiosyncrasies
41:47
to work out when you're integrating, but for the most part it's, uh, it's, it's functional
41:51
with all those places using the, without having to do a bunch of custom integrations.
41:55
- Yeah. When we did the Sounds stack for programmatic,
41:58
ours is a little easier because they just tell us whether they have an ad
42:02
for this particular, you know, so we serve it when, um,
42:08
there's no ad and they serve it when there is an ad,
42:11
and then they send us log files back so we get our log files back in the same exact format.
42:15
So we, we basically are able to maintain the,
42:20
the metric data and, uh, 'cause you know, they basically, we, we agreed on the,
42:25
on the log format and, uh, nice.
42:28
And then they, they just pop it back to us. So, um, you know, we thought about doing this
42:34
for programmatic as well, uh, kind of similar to
42:37
what you're doing, but it just, it's, uh, you know,
42:41
if if there's enough money, it's worth it.
42:44
You know? I guess that's the key. - Yeah. Well, so for us, uh, you know,
42:47
we've been successful in scaling up the host Red part
42:51
of our business, which is where we focus. And, um, Mm-Hmm.
42:54
<affirmative>, it was getting to the point where the main limiter for us was the amount of podcasts
42:58
that we could convince to switch to our hosting. Uh, and I think our hosting is great, um,
43:02
but I think there's lots of hosting providers that are out there that are great.
43:05
Uh, and so competing over there while also trying
43:08
to make my main business about advertising, uh,
43:11
was complicated from a, uh, and, and making it harder for us to scale
43:14
what we actually cared about, which was delivering hosted ads.
43:16
And so, while we still have a great hosting product,
43:18
and we're not throwing that away, or not gonna continue, uh, iterating on it
43:22
or anything like that, um, this enables us
43:25
to move fast on our ad product and,
43:27
and do it on podcasts sort of wherever, wherever they live
43:30
- Now, without revealing my entire
43:33
business relationship with Sounds Stack. Sure. You know, so I would just say
43:38
that their commission came outta my cut
43:41
- Uhhuh - <affirmative>, so I took a less of a cut.
43:45
Um, so basically they earned their commission.
43:49
I earned my commission. I just earned less commission
43:51
because, so how are you, how are you incentivizing me
43:56
to work with you, <laugh>? Yeah, well,
43:58
- The ad uh, the ad side of what we do is our own sales team
44:02
and our own direct relationships with brands and agencies.
44:05
And so, uh, there's nobody else that's like bringing the demand in from the other side.
44:09
Uh, it's us doing it and then we, we have a 30% rev share that we take from.
44:13
So it's in, in some ways it's sort of functions similar to how an ad rep would work.
44:17
The only difference is you're not dealing with, uh, a million emails and spreadsheets to pull that off.
44:21
Uh, you're just interacting with our application. - But, but if I'm giving you access to my host, what, what,
44:26
where's the, is there incentive for the host
44:29
to give you access to those customers? - You mean the podcast hosting companies?
44:33
- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. - Uh, yeah, there's a, there's,
44:36
there's different pricing models that those folks have.
44:38
They do charge like a small, uh, like CPM based fee
44:41
for the actual ad insertion over this technology,
44:44
but that's the extent of the, the fees
44:46
that are being taken by these hosts. - Yeah, that's interesting
44:49
because I, I wouldn't give up my
44:56
host for an insertion fee.
44:59
- Yeah. I mean, megaphones not letting me, uh, you know,
45:03
they have their own, their own thing called span,
45:05
which is like their programmatic thing that that runs above
45:08
anything else that is inserted into Yeah, the inventory.
45:11
- Sorry, you're getting whatever. Yeah, I underst ah, yeah.
45:14
- Their field's not super, you know, overwhelmingly high.
45:18
So there's plenty of inventory usually left.
45:20
No, that's curious. But they're, they're making sure that they get to, uh, to, to get the first dibs.
45:24
And there are other folks that I think, you know, recognize
45:26
that the publisher has an interest in being able
45:29
to source their own advertising and, you know, plug it in
45:32
and punch it into the, uh, dynamic insertion UI that existed megaphone.
45:36
Um, this isn't really that different. It's just happening a little bit more automated so
45:39
that the publisher doesn't have to, you know, copy and paste a bunch of measurement pixels
45:43
or make sure they get the dates correct when they, when they flight to campaign.
45:46
Right. All that is happening automatically on our backend instead.
45:49
- Yeah. - Hmm. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of what I wanted
45:52
to ask you about too, Mike, is, is
45:54
that you say in your announcement that you're automating all the manual steps, is it just
45:59
because you're, you're doing it through your own ad sales force,
46:02
or is there some other aspects of automating the manual steps here?
46:07
Are you guys doing that between your, your ad sales folks
46:11
and the, the brands? Is there something new going on there,
46:14
or is it just the automation of working with you guys
46:17
and not having to deal with it? - Yeah, so I mean, that's, that's the core of
46:22
what our product is, is, you know, we started,
46:25
five years ago, we released a free hosting just
46:28
to bring some podcasts on, and then we started selling ads by hand.
46:32
And I've heard Todd talk about this, and you can hear, yeah.
46:34
You know, you can't monetize the network and all these things.
46:37
Like, it's, it's so painful to run these campaigns by hand, right.
46:40
Uh, and you, you have everything from, you know,
46:44
podcaster says the wrong promo code to, you know, we forgot
46:47
to invoice, uh, or, you know, the agency didn't pay us on time or the pixel,
46:52
- Or make goods matter - For the stuff. Yeah. So every one of those things I just mentioned,
46:57
we have built systematically features for, to streamline
47:00
and make those part of our application instead of a bunch
47:03
of emails and spreadsheets. So, you know, as a podcaster, you get an invite
47:07
to an ad deal where we, we say, Hey, you know, here's the,
47:10
the, the dates and the terms and what's going on.
47:12
Like, are, do you wanna do it or not? They say Yes.
47:15
Um, and then from then on the platform is managing
47:17
everybody's deadlines. It's emailing the, the
47:20
advertiser saying, Hey, I need a script. I need a script. I need a script. The advertiser puts the
47:24
script in, uh, you know, it's then emailing the podcaster,
47:26
Hey, I need a read, a read. You know, you need to update in, you know, three days,
47:29
two days, one day, and we're sort of herding all these cats.
47:33
Um, and then again, the pixels and the reporting
47:36
and all of that stuff, these are features built into the platform.
47:39
There are things for, you know, podcast to read the wrong promo code or ad was not approved,
47:44
or, um, you know, putting the,
47:46
the right CTA and the R ss feed. All these things have, uh, features that we've built to try
47:50
and make this as streamlined as possible. And that's why we're doing, you know,
47:54
I, I don't know the number offhand. Usually like five to 600 concurrent host
47:57
red ads on the platform. We just have like one ad ops person that's kind
48:01
of being the glue whenever something isn't handled by the platform itself.
48:04
Um, but it takes a lot of focus and energy to just work on that
48:08
for many years. To get to that point, - Mike, you should have bought my Cams product.
48:13
- <laugh>. Yeah, - <laugh>. Because I've had this built for 10 years.
48:17
Yeah. Yeah. Not as deep,
48:20
but we built same thing, you know,
48:23
because it was like hurting cats. <laugh> Yeah. Was Cats and, and I was running it <laugh>.
48:28
Yeah. You know, so the Pi Piper, yeah, it, it was me,
48:32
you know, and, uh, it, it's, it wasn't as fancy as it,
48:36
it did automatically send reports to the media buyers.
48:38
It did send emails to the podcasters,
48:41
but we did true host reads. Nothing was inserted, everything was baked.
48:46
Because even today, this is what I don't understand,
48:49
95%,
48:53
96, 90 7% of podcasts globally
48:57
get 90% of the lifetime downloads in the first 96 hours.
49:00
So why, why do we even wanna bother for those shows
49:05
that are getting this maximum reach within the person?
49:09
Why even rebuild that? Why not just, just leave it in there?
49:13
You know? Um, sure. There's shows that have Yeah.
49:16
Long tail, they have Evergreen, you know,
49:19
but the majority of shows and podcasting looks like a,
49:22
a hockey puck, a hockey stick stood up on
49:24
end, you know, it's, yep. Right. So
49:26
- After the Apple changes, it's even more so, you know, the,
49:29
the back catalog stuff's kind of of even less, right?
49:33
Um, the reason why we focus so much on dynamic insertion
49:36
and don't do baked in at all, is not
49:38
because of the way it gets deployed into the content in
49:42
terms of the episodes it's in, but it's more about cat herding
49:45
and the efficiency of the process. Wow. By actually managing the insertion of the ad itself.
49:51
That means we're in a position to deal with the pixels
49:54
to make sure that it is flighted correctly, to make sure
49:56
that we, um, that we know when it went in
49:59
and when it came out, and all of those pieces. Mm-Hmm. Because I think there's been many other folks,
50:03
you know, pod in the past and others that are still around today that, um,
50:07
that have these, uh, uh, host read marketplaces
50:09
that have a bunch of, that sort of take all those emails and spreadsheets, right.
50:13
And move them into a web application. But then there's still that step at the end where it's like,
50:17
okay, podcaster, like, go take all this information, remember,
50:20
- And what you gotta do, do it - All correctly. And there's so many opportunities for mistakes, not,
50:24
not the Podcaster's fault, there's like 25 details in each of these deals.
50:27
Deals. And if you're doing three a week, it's, it's easy to make a mistake.
50:29
Um, and then, you know, you're sending screenshots of, uh,
50:32
reporting and stuff afterwards. So there's all this efficiency that comes
50:34
with doing it over dynamic, which is why, why we focus there.
50:37
- I, I still be honest with you, double middle fingers,
50:41
the media buyers that want pixels, you know,
50:44
are they really, are they really getting that much value?
50:47
No, I don't think so. I don't think so either. - Yeah. I think the, yeah, I mean they,
50:53
they're, I appreciate - <crosstalk> to hold over from another era,
50:56
- Right? - Yeah, yeah. But I think the, like the, like, one thing it is really good
51:00
for, and I, we find it really interesting when we get our hands on the data, is
51:04
to see the comparative performance of different podcasts.
51:07
So forget about like a real ROAS number that comes outta this thing.
51:10
Yeah. Right. But just to see like, hey, these two True Crime podcasts with 20,000 weekly listeners,
51:15
you know, that are reading the same set of talking points,
51:18
you know, one can perform five times better than the other.
51:21
And you know what the reason is for that?
51:24
Is, is, is anybody's guess, right? Is the, is the, the quality
51:27
of the ad read is the relationship
51:30
that Host has with this audience. And so, like, you know, me being able to see that
51:34
as the guy working with the podcaster and the advertiser is like very helpful.
51:38
But I understand also kind of like people tend
51:40
to over overvalue some of the data that comes out
51:42
of it in a way that, you know, sort of backs into like a hard ROAS number.
51:46
But it's still, you know, you gotta look at a, a much bigger picture than just a just one
51:50
one dot on a, on a graph. - So the universal question is,
51:54
and it still remains, which drives me absolutely crazy,
51:58
we're monetizing maybe four, 5%
52:02
of total podcasts out there. Um, you know, what does this do for the other 95%
52:08
who actually statistically,
52:11
'cause I've got years of data perform better
52:15
because audience are smaller and more intimate.
52:18
When are those shows, uh, when are those shows gonna be thrown a
52:21
bone or is it ever gonna happen? - Yeah, I mean that's, that's like the fundamental, uh,
52:27
motivation behind building why we chose to build this business.
52:30
Um, you know, we saw most of the dollars going
52:33
to the top 500 or top thousand podcasts,
52:35
but we believe more than just the number of podcasts
52:38
where there's like so many down the long tail, um,
52:41
but also kind of, uh, there's a huge kind of, uh, fat torso,
52:45
it's named after me, uh, of, of middle class podcasters
52:49
that are, you know, that have, uh,
52:51
a couple thousand listeners Yeah. Up to a couple tens of thousands of listeners.
52:54
And when you aggregate those up, they're actually bigger than the Yeah.
52:57
Just this middle school huge. And those folks, you know, they get an ad deal here
53:01
and there, they find better help or they have a relationship with an agency, um,
53:04
but they're way under monetized relative,
53:07
relative to the folks at the top. Um, and they represent a huge amount of, of space, uh,
53:12
for future investment from, from brands.
53:15
Uh, and that's, I think software like ours that, uh, aims
53:18
to like herd all those cats in a way that's possible,
53:20
where you can deploy 200, 300 podcast campaigns, um,
53:25
without having to pull your hair out, um, is going
53:28
to hopefully make it, I mean, over the last several years,
53:30
we've paid $16 million to podcasts like that.
53:33
I think we'll hopefully do more and more of that as we go.
53:35
Um, but that's what we're, that's, that's our main mission. That's what we're after this,
53:38
this product helps us move a little bit closer to the top
53:40
of the market too, because it's a little more focused on
53:42
those podcasts that are on enterprise hosts. But, um, but yeah, you know,
53:47
those two things together should enable us to continue to,
53:49
uh, to work with larger and larger brands and deploy larger
53:52
and larger budgets and make sure it gets distributed to podcasts of all shapes and sizes.
53:57
- Well, I would, I would love to see, uh, I'd love to see,
54:01
uh, you guys think about, uh, a way to, uh,
54:05
figure out a point system that incentivizes me,
54:08
<laugh> understood.
54:13
Yeah. I mean, I - Haven't thought about, - Yeah, in, in the end, you know,
54:17
let's be honest, I'm not greedy, but I'm gonna do the dev work to put something together,
54:22
which, you know, we can do, um,
54:25
that dev work's gotta be paid for in whatever overhead.
54:27
And then, you know, we obviously you can't cut the
54:30
pie 25 times. That's 'cause then you know
54:33
who gets screwed, the creator gets screwed. So for me, that's why when we worked with Sounds Stack, I,
54:38
you know, they took their commission outta mine
54:41
and I just took a lower commission. So, you know, and they, and,
54:44
and they provide all the, you know,
54:46
they provide all the inventory. I don't have to do nothing. I go to sleep.
54:49
And they, they manage it. So collect
54:52
- The paycheck. That's - Nice. Well, and, and not only that, I just, I give the, you know,
54:55
these are podcasters that would not have an opportunity
54:59
otherwise, you know, they can do value for value.
55:01
They can do all the other stuff that's available out there if they want.
55:05
Um, and we see a growing number of folks
55:07
that are using programmatic, which is good, but we both know where programmatic pricing is.
55:13
You know, that that'll never, you know, that'll never,
55:16
if it ever gets above 15, I think I'll, you know, I'll, uh,
55:19
you know, Rob, I'll probably eat that hat you're wearing <laugh>.
55:22
Um, but you know, right at I'd happy,
55:25
I'd be thrilled if it stayed at 12 or 13,
55:27
but usually it's 7, 8, 9, 10, you know, and,
55:30
but if we could get to find a way to,
55:35
to put money in podcasters pockets, guess what it does,
55:37
doesn't matter if it comes from, uh, value
55:42
for value, doesn't matter if it comes from donations,
55:45
doesn't matter if it comes from advertisers. We put money in podcaster's pocket, guess what they can do?
55:50
They hold up that check or that PayPal statement
55:53
or wherever that money's come in, and maybe they show their partner
55:57
or they buy themselves dinner, or they buy, make a car payment or whatever the number is.
56:04
This is a motivator. It's just as much as a motivator of,
56:07
Matt just sent us 2,112 SATs, he says,
56:10
watching the show from Spain. So that's, you know, that's again,
56:13
getting value back from Matt for saying, Hey,
56:16
I'm watching the show live. And then Dave Jones says, uh,
56:19
yo Mike hosting companies interviewing other hosting companies.
56:22
We live in a crazy world. Well, we're really not a hosting company there, Dave.
56:27
It's, we're doing a new media show. I happen to, you know, be a, a founder of one,
56:31
but doesn't mean we're doing, we're,
56:33
we're an open opportunity, uh, thing here.
56:36
And you can see I'm wheeling and dealing a little bit at the same time.
56:40
That was from Dave Jones. - Yeah. I think your point is valid.
56:44
These, these vast and programmatic integrations do a lot of work.
56:47
We've done them before. Yeah. And then found a hundred dollars on the other
56:50
- Side. It - Was a disaster. Um, you know, uh,
56:54
and so, you know, you do wanna make sure you're spending
56:56
your engineers wisely. Uh, I think the, like, the way, like I said,
57:01
the way these enterprise hosts do it is I think they charge
57:03
a fee for service. Um, that's just like another approach,
57:07
- You know? And, and I, and it's when it goes back to, you know, I,
57:12
I'm a creative first, it's, I, I don't think
57:14
that's any surprise. So, because I, you know,
57:17
I'm the one that's getting a check too. You know, I get a check from
57:20
GoDaddy and I, you know, I Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, I protect every point of that, that I can.
57:24
Right. So, um, so I, so I get it, I really do do,
57:28
this is cool what you're doing there.
57:31
Yes. Um, yeah, this could be done another way.
57:34
This could be done the way we did it with Sounds stack
57:37
where it's not as complicated of an implementation,
57:41
so, Hmm. How, how are you, how are you working the insertion points?
57:47
- So yeah. That's all managed by the, by the podcaster in their existing,
57:51
- In their system. Okay. So they set their marker.
57:55
- Yeah. And they, the way this ends up getting flighted on
57:57
their end is it's almost like a camp, a low priority campaign in their dynamic insertion system
58:02
that says, you know, my stuff that I flighted
58:05
for the ads I sold myself go first and then go down and look
58:09
and what Red Circle has to offer. And meanwhile we see those bids that are coming out
58:13
or those bid requests all the time. So we get a feel for how much inventory
58:16
is available on these shows. And we can use that to figure out how to size campaigns and,
58:20
and, and, and, and what to expect. - And when that call comes about this day of the month
58:25
where the advertiser says, oh, hey,
58:27
I got extra 25 grand to spend. Can you move that for me in 10 days? Yeah.
58:32
Um, this is an opportunity to get a flight up fast in two
58:35
or three days and get that money spent.
58:38
- That's right. And I think, you know, people when they think about how to do that effectively,
58:42
their, their brain turns to programmatic solutions.
58:46
Right. And I think that, that in addition to, you know,
58:49
helping us spread the money around to a larger set
58:51
of creators by, um, by taking out all the friction
58:56
with this automation, it can also increase the speed at
58:58
which we deploy these budgets, which makes it possible
59:01
for those kinds of things to end up in like higher quality,
59:04
authentic host red ads instead of, you know, Sunday, Sunday,
59:07
Sunday radio ads that could sometimes end up being those last minute ones. Right. What's
59:10
- The fastest time you've ever flighted a campaign <laugh>
59:13
on one of those Friday day - Calls?
59:15
Like an hour or two? <laugh> not, - Not, - You know, not to a hundred podcasts,
59:19
- Right, right, right. - But, uh, we have a button in the platform
59:22
that's called Start Early. You know, our typical turnaround time is 10 days,
59:26
but sometimes if we have to hustle, you know, we hustle
59:28
and there's a button that just like makes it go. - Yeah. I think the fastest I turned one was three days.
59:33
So you, I kudos to you for a couple hours. <laugh>, right?
59:37
- Yeah. Yeah. It's like, uh, you know, some
59:39
of my sales guys have the podcasters, uh, you know,
59:42
phone numbers, uh, saved as their favorites, you know, um,
59:45
it's like we, we need, sometimes if you move fast enough,
59:47
uh, there's, there's dollars to grab for, for everybody. Right.
59:49
- You know, and, and, and you know, this should, and this is to all the podcasters listening,
59:54
check your email twice a day, please. <laugh>.
59:59
- Yeah. That's actually one of the things that, uh, that,
1:00:01
uh, that we, that we found. So, uh, what one of the things we did
1:00:05
that really improved the response time
1:00:07
you text them was adding tech. Yeah. We sent text, - Uh, - We sent text five days before, three days
1:00:12
before, two days before, one day before and four hours before.
1:00:14
Right. If you haven't hit, if you haven't hit a deadline,
1:00:17
- <laugh>. Right. That ding ding is a brilliant,
1:00:22
my, my system, my, my system. I haven't touched in a while, does not have that. But yeah.
1:00:27
If we were ever to update it, I think that would be, oh man,
1:00:32
oh, hey, you know, to get this email, Hey, does
1:00:34
that campaign two weeks? You know, after the deadline?
1:00:37
Hey, is that campaign still available? No, we told you.
1:00:40
Yeah, that's, we told you had 48 hours to respond <laugh>.
1:00:44
- Right. That's an interesting product problem for us too, right.
1:00:47
Where it's like, yeah. I mean, we can, because like I said, it's all automated.
1:00:49
We can like relight the campaign Yeah.
1:00:52
And send it to you the next day. Um, but there's like a,
1:00:55
a give a mouse a cookie problem there too, where, you know,
1:00:57
we want the deadlines to mean something. Yeah. So everybody keeps their hair. And
1:01:01
- Especially if you've got a media Go ahead.
1:01:04
- I was gonna say, as much as we have solved a lot of the
1:01:08
friction with software, there are still like fundamental
1:01:10
people problems involved with this. And any, any interesting software has to kind of figure out
1:01:14
how to best take on those challenges. Right. - You see this - <laugh> <laugh>,
1:01:20
- I I attest this to five to seven years of dealing
1:01:24
with media buyers and podcasters who didn't respond to email
1:01:29
and Yeah. Make, yeah. So I
1:01:35
understand why you guys built what you built. Believe me, I I I understand completely. Yeah.
1:01:40
Go, go ahead, Rob. - Yeah, I was going to kinda shift the
1:01:44
conversation a little bit. Um, I don't know if all of you guys saw the post
1:01:49
that Lisa Laport made. Oh, yeah. Who's the CEO of TWIT TV about the,
1:01:54
the advertising market and why she feels like podcasting is struggling right now.
1:01:59
Um, and her top pick was podcast agencies
1:02:04
demanding, um, massive ad tech in, in
1:02:09
what they expect around campaigns. This would be, you know, um,
1:02:13
- Pixels, all of - Pixel tracking, tracking, uh,
1:02:17
brand safety, suitability tools, all sorts of, um, you know,
1:02:21
uh, kind of attribution type type stuff.
1:02:25
Um, and whe whether
1:02:27
or not that's kind of adding this expense layer to the
1:02:32
advertising business and making it difficult for, you know,
1:02:36
uh, like a network to kind of run their own stuff,
1:02:39
which is kind of what Lisa's trying to do here.
1:02:42
Um, versus wor working with a hosting platform like,
1:02:46
like Red Circle or Blueberry or whatever, is really the only way going forward.
1:02:51
Now, are you guys feeling pressured on the,
1:02:54
on the cost side in the complexity side around the,
1:02:57
the expectation of agencies and, and buyers?
1:03:00
Right, right now around ad tech, around podcasts?
1:03:03
- Uh, some, I mean, we, we, you know, the, the,
1:03:08
the podcast media buying agencies and there's a relatively small set of them
1:03:11
and, you know, we wanna maintain as spectacular relationship with them as possible, right.
1:03:15
By delivering efficient operations so that they don't have
1:03:18
to deal with the exceptions and the problems and,
1:03:21
and providing high performance content for them to be on.
1:03:24
Um, mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And in the end of the day,
1:03:27
you know, they control a lot of the ad spend,
1:03:29
especially in Host Red. And so, um, right.
1:03:32
You know, if they are trying to add services
1:03:34
or add complexity to be able to service their client as best
1:03:38
as they can, you kind of gotta play ball. Um, you don't wanna be on their bad side
1:03:41
because there's a million podcasts and networks out there,
1:03:43
and you want to be, uh, servicing them as best you can.
1:03:46
Um, and, uh, you know, I, I tend to trust
1:03:50
that they have the best view of what, um, of
1:03:55
what they need to keep their clients happy
1:03:57
in terms of technology. Um, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because they, they're the ones
1:04:00
who are really good at closing and maintaining those, those clients
1:04:03
and keeping that spend going. Um, and so I wouldn't say I have a problem with it,
1:04:07
but I, I, I completely agree with it's, it's a burden.
1:04:09
It's co it's complex. Um, and, uh, you know, our solution for that is try to build
1:04:15
as much software as we can to keep that simple. Um, but yeah, you know, sometimes we gotta copy
1:04:19
and paste 60 pixels into the software to make the thing work.
1:04:21
Right. Um, and that's a lot. - So there was one thing in her commentary that I kind
1:04:27
of took umbrage to, right.
1:04:30
And my reply, she complained heavily about the,
1:04:33
the drop because of iOS - 17. Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:04:36
- And - The drop in downloads and, and the changes in the consumption
1:04:40
- Side. And, and my, my response was that not everyone was hit
1:04:44
as badly as, and I said, then you need to be wiser in who you're picking
1:04:50
for a measurement provider, because, you know, as we've talked about on the show, yeah,
1:04:55
blueberry saw a little drop
1:04:57
because of some of the change in Iowa 17,
1:04:59
but I didn't get hit on the, the app having the issue
1:05:03
of doing the repeated downloads to try to download back catalog.
1:05:06
That wasn't ever an issue with us, which many other folks
1:05:11
seem to have an issue with. And I look at who I know who's measuring
1:05:17
Lisa's shows, and I go, Hmm.
1:05:20
So, um, you know, maybe, maybe, uh,
1:05:24
podcasters need to be a little wiser in, uh,
1:05:28
who they pick for measurement partner. Well,
1:05:31
- Yeah. I think you're shifting quite a burden onto
1:05:34
the podcaster there. Um, Todd, by by saying that because,
1:05:38
- Well, a podcaster, I - Dunno that a lot of people know the differences.
1:05:42
- A podcast, - Supposedly, if they're IAB, they're all doing the same thing, right?
1:05:45
- A podcaster in the adv doing advertising. Mm-Hmm.
1:05:49
<affirmative> needs to ask very tough questions
1:05:52
of the people that are measuring their shows. Right. And if they don't, I have, sorry,
1:05:59
that's your business. That's, that's your, that's your, your bundling.
1:06:04
And I'm gonna, if I'm going to some company
1:06:07
and they're gonna be measuring my show, I'm gonna be asking a lot of questions.
1:06:10
Again, people need to realize the IB podcast
1:06:14
and measurement guidelines are the minimum
1:06:18
standards. Right, - Right.
1:06:21
- Minimum. And when people realize it's the minimum, then
1:06:26
what are you doing above and beyond? And even with this new proposal that's coming out,
1:06:31
it's the minimum standards.
1:06:34
And I think podcasters need to get smart.
1:06:37
And again, maybe I'm just, maybe, okay, I,
1:06:40
I do have 19 years behind my belt on this. And
1:06:43
- Was it, yeah. Well, both of us do have a lot on this too,
1:06:47
but it's, it's more, you know, when you say minimum
1:06:51
standards, um, that I, that really means
1:06:55
that the better platforms will have
1:06:59
the capability of doing a better job of filtering, um, and,
1:07:04
and actually ultimately getting a lower number compared to other platforms.
1:07:08
- Well, that's, no one wants to ever get a lower number.
1:07:10
So better lies is the problem. Well, - That's, that's, that's the key to this whole conversation,
1:07:15
is that the IAB has not had a strict,
1:07:19
really standard here. Um, and, and not everyone adheres to it in the same way,
1:07:26
um, even on the up, you know, yeah.
1:07:28
Over the lower number side. Right.
1:07:31
Which just means that there's other filters being applied
1:07:34
that are not required by the IEB.
1:07:37
- It's just like now when people are saying, oh, we're seeing fraud.
1:07:39
Well, right. We saw fraud in 2007, so Right. And you
1:07:44
- Built filters to detect it. Right. - You know, and you, you haven't seen fraud in the past.
1:07:48
Well, uh, you know, usually if you're looking at your,
1:07:51
all your data right across the white stack, there's,
1:07:54
there's usually like a, a pipa
1:07:56
that pops up and you're like, what is that? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. You know, and that usually
1:08:00
that big pipper that shows up in your blog, you know,
1:08:03
if you, if you as a, a platform have a broad dashboard
1:08:06
to see all your traffic, not just one show,
1:08:09
you'll say, oh, what is that? And you go, oh, that, that's broad.
1:08:13
You know, because it sticks out like a red thumb
1:08:18
or whatever, sore thumb or whatever. No, I - Wonder why that podcast has, uh, 98%
1:08:22
of its traffic coming from, uh, iTunes on a Windows machine.
1:08:25
- Right, right, right. - It's not, it's not hard
1:08:27
to spot fraud Hunting is actually one of my favorite pastimes. Me too.
1:08:30
- Um, - I really enjoy it. Um, yeah, I think on, on this measurement topic, one
1:08:36
of the things I think is really interesting as well, uh,
1:08:39
is first of all, I think the changes that Apple made were important for the industry.
1:08:42
Yeah. You know, you can say what you wanna say about the,
1:08:44
like, how, how it was handled or so on, but like, those downloads were not high quality.
1:08:49
And so I'm glad they're gone. Um, on the other hand, uh, you know,
1:08:55
what you're hearing from people, and this is the range of hours, I think it was around 20%,
1:08:58
sort of what we ended up seeing, uh, as a change, you know,
1:09:02
20%, uh, decrease in, uh, in, in downloads.
1:09:07
- I know what you're gonna say. - Why is the price not up by 20%?
1:09:11
- Exactly. - You just, well, that's,
1:09:13
you just gave a nice big shave to the media buyers.
1:09:16
That's right. Uh, by not adjusting the prices com, uh,
1:09:18
- Accordingly this performance is the same - To me, this is a sign.
1:09:21
Yeah. Right. This performance is the same, but now you're paying, you know, 20% less price.
1:09:25
And to, to me, this is a sign that there's kind of still,
1:09:29
uh, not enough, uh, sort of pricing transparency and Mm-Hmm.
1:09:34
<affirmative> measurement tooling such that the market itself can find the
1:09:38
correct price for these ads. Uh, if it stays here at below 25, where it's been for a year
1:09:44
or two after kind of the economic sluggishness, um,
1:09:47
you know, that's a sign that something's kind of wrong, right?
1:09:49
That, that, that, uh, that, that the balance
1:09:52
of power shifted towards advertisers in a way that, um,
1:09:56
that, that is artificial. Uh, or, or, or was,
1:09:58
or it's been too far in, in publisher's favor for some time,
1:10:01
but why hasn't that moved? Uh, something, something funky about that to me. Well,
1:10:05
- It's, this is a second or third time there's been a haircut.
1:10:11
Um, the first haircut would've happened really probably
1:10:15
before most people in our space. It was when Lipson pod track
1:10:20
and us kind of, kind
1:10:22
of decided on a semi kind of spec.
1:10:26
It was actually the first eight pages of the,
1:10:29
we gave eight pages of the kinda the first spec
1:10:31
that we came up with to, to the IEB
1:10:34
and that kind of, well, this was back in like 2008.
1:10:37
Yeah, 2008. So there was a little, there was a big haircut then.
1:10:40
I mean, it was major because boy, it was, I mean,
1:10:42
we were, if - You're doing raw logs
1:10:45
- Before that, I mean, it's a big difference. Oh, raw logs and bots and everything else.
1:10:49
It was, you know, there was like a 60, 50, 60% cut,
1:10:53
you know, and when you found out that, uh, you know,
1:10:55
seven out of 10 downloads was a bot, you know?
1:10:57
Yeah. There was, so in 2008, there was, you know,
1:11:00
like I said, when an earlier, oh, I think I had about 40,000 people listen to my show.
1:11:03
It was more like probably 8,000 <laugh>, you know,
1:11:06
that was probably the real number. Right. But I was billing for 40,000, you know, so
1:11:12
then the second cut came when the IB first guidelines came out,
1:11:16
and everyone kind of tried to align, right?
1:11:19
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it ended up being kind of, kind
1:11:21
of like this, because like Rob said, you everyone's kind
1:11:24
of all over the spectrum a little bit. Um, and then this would be
1:11:28
kind of probably the third haircut. Yeah.
1:11:30
- It was a, the iWatch also was another - <crosstalk>.
1:11:34
Oh yeah. That was another one. Yeah. But a lot of us removed that before we were required to move it.
1:11:37
So again, you know, so, you know, three,
1:11:40
four little haircuts here, but you're right. Guess what? CP m's still 25 <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.
1:11:45
- It's just, Hey, it's 25 is podcasting. - Yeah. You know, and, and the performance hasn't
1:11:49
changed, so. Right. You know, technically I was getting 25 in 2008.
1:11:54
Now think about that. Mm-Hmm.
1:11:56
<affirmative> or 2006 two, I was getting 25 then
1:11:59
- Factor inflation Right. With that too.
1:12:01
- Yeah. And now it's still at 25,
1:12:04
they're getting a heck of a deal. Yeah.
1:12:07
- Well, there's not a lot of transparency. Right.
1:12:11
- I was gonna say, it's one of these things where again, you can see Yeah. Not enough transparency. You can, you can kind of see
1:12:16
how there are remnants of this market from a kind
1:12:19
of a radio era Yeah. Where people are kind of, um, you know, kind of
1:12:24
have set this price and, and this is how it works, and this is what we sell at,
1:12:27
and everybody's comfortable there. Um, and it doesn't feel like, like, you know,
1:12:32
typical digital marketing where the prices are changing dynamically
1:12:35
with demand and supply. And I, I don't know if the result of a more transparent
1:12:40
and automated market is going to increase or decrease CPMs,
1:12:43
but what I do know is if the, if the, if the amount of value
1:12:46
that you're getting <laugh>, uh, go changes by 20%
1:12:49
and the price doesn't change, like something is, is off there. Right.
1:12:52
- Well then, and I, I put it back on your sales teams
1:12:55
to push, and I know that's hard, but I also remember going, uh, I, I, I went
1:13:00
to a city in Texas, let's just put it that way. I leave it random enough.
1:13:04
And I was in a meeting and, you know, I was, you know, talking with this, you know,
1:13:08
group, and they showed me a spreadsheet and it had factoring on it.
1:13:13
And the factoring was every
1:13:18
podcast network had a factor put on it, a negative factor.
1:13:22
No one had a plus. So if the base was this,
1:13:25
let's say the base was 20, the
1:13:29
a factor 50% mean you are only gonna get offered 10.
1:13:33
And matter of fact, I know one network we're only out of offered five, and Rob probably knows
1:13:37
who we're talking about there because they used to count by sixes.
1:13:40
So, you know, there was factoring that was put against every network.
1:13:44
So it's the media buyers in the end back, these,
1:13:49
this data, every, every deal they do,
1:13:51
they've had a spreadsheet, and then they, in the end, they don't ever talk.
1:13:55
Do you ever, how many times the media buyer told you
1:13:58
how many sales they had? They won't. - That's exactly the problem. - They won't tell you.
1:14:02
It's rare. It's rare. Five, five and 20 years. And
1:14:06
- They don't want you to know, - They don't want you to know.
1:14:08
And and six, just GoToMeeting was the one that I knew
1:14:12
exactly where our, and that's why we got millions
1:14:16
of dollars from them when they were advertising direct
1:14:18
before they went to an agency. And so if there's factoring being put a a against every
1:14:25
network, what they're really matching in the end is they're,
1:14:30
you know, they do the math, it's just a pure math program.
1:14:33
They, they, they back it out to Dr and see what their cost per acquisition was.
1:14:38
And um, they say they don't, but they do.
1:14:43
And they determine next ad spend on, on cost per acquisition when they Oh, no, no, no, no.
1:14:48
We never, we, we don't do that. They lie
1:14:52
- <laugh>. Well, I think they, I think they're pretty transparent
1:14:54
to me at least that about like, you know, they're gonna make smart buying
1:14:57
decisions on behalf of their client. <laugh>, I think the interesting part of that thing
1:15:01
that you just said is that it could go both ways.
1:15:04
Right? Right. So, you know, like if my network has been network X has been like
1:15:09
downgraded and is is worth 50% of the other ones, then like,
1:15:13
uh, I should be willing, I should understand that,
1:15:16
and I should be willing to take a $12 CPM, uh,
1:15:20
won't tell you if I'm not filling it for something higher, but podcasters also won't accept that either.
1:15:23
Right. So it's sort of going both ways, right? It's like everybody thinks it's 25,
1:15:27
everybody thinks they're worth more <laugh>, everybody thinks it should be, you know,
1:15:30
so there's just no transparency. Uh, and I'd like to see that start to evolve.
1:15:34
Uh, it requires, um, a sort of combination
1:15:37
of the performance information, uh, with the, uh, you know,
1:15:41
with the transaction itself, - Which know what's going
1:15:44
to share the direct CPM they ever get.
1:15:48
They're not gonna share their download numbers either.
1:15:52
- Right. And there's not gonna be any transparency on ROI
1:15:55
coming back from the advertising either, because that puts their, their buying
1:16:00
situation in a, in a compromise. - Yeah. Because they don't wanna show you how well they did.
1:16:05
You know, the example I gave of the biggest mistake GoDaddy they made with me
1:16:10
when I was renegotiating the very first time in 2005
1:16:15
when I asked her how well did we do?
1:16:17
And I was only getting, I I, I'll just say it,
1:16:20
I got 300 bucks that first month. - Mm-Hmm. - <affirmative>. And
1:16:23
because I didn't know what to charge, had no clue. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, well,
1:16:27
- They could lie to you too. - They, she, and she told me 3 87, 387 new customers,
1:16:32
and I went, huh, <laugh>.
1:16:34
And I said, that's a lot more - Than 300 bucks.
1:16:36
- Yeah. And I said, I can need to get back to you. And I went back and I did the math, I did the math,
1:16:40
I did the math, and I, there was nothing to go by.
1:16:43
Called her back the next day, and I gave her a number
1:16:46
and just like a good used car salesman when you've screwed
1:16:48
up, she said Yes immediately, <laugh>.
1:16:51
And I, and in my mind I'm like, I just went too low. Right.
1:16:55
And I recovered quick enough, and it's a thing that saved me was I said,
1:16:59
and I said, I want a bonus, a performance bonus.
1:17:02
And she laughed, there you go. And she said,
1:17:04
you underbid it, didn't you <laugh>?
1:17:07
And I said, yes, I did. Right. And, and literally that, that split moment decision
1:17:13
was the difference between some months getting
1:17:18
four figures and some months getting five figures
1:17:22
and, uh, nice and a return. So, but if I had not been quick, if I'd have been hung over
1:17:29
and not quicken up on the uptake, you know,
1:17:32
I'd have been stuck at a four figure number. So knock on wood, you know,
1:17:36
but again, we had nothing to go by. And, and she told me the performance numbers
1:17:40
and it made me go, but now if she, if
1:17:42
that conversation happened today, I'd have come back,
1:17:45
she said 30,000 a month. - Right. - You know, that's, that's the number, you know,
1:17:50
that's what you're gonna have to pay for this inventory. Um, and also companies will never tell you
1:17:57
how much they, it costs them to acquire a customer,
1:18:00
especially on dr. They'll never tell you the cost of the acquisition on TV,
1:18:04
radio, or if they're even doing print or digital.
1:18:08
They won't tell you that. I guarantee you
1:18:10
podcasts are performing better. Yeah.
1:18:14
- Definitely cheaper. So that's not, it's not really in their interest to do it.
1:18:16
No, it's not. They, um, you know, and,
1:18:19
and so, so again, I understand kind of that perspective.
1:18:22
Yeah. Um, but you know, in a digital transaction
1:18:25
where there is enough volume,
1:18:28
also there's price discovery from competitors, right?
1:18:30
Yeah. So, um, you know, it, it should be possible
1:18:34
to find a slightly, slightly more dynamic market
1:18:37
where the price gets set by what the value is instead of,
1:18:40
um, you know, who has the fanciest - Rate card?
1:18:43
My, my sign was, whenever I knew the campaign wasn't doing
1:18:45
well, is when you start getting asked for make goods.
1:18:48
And when, when, when a media buyer called me and asked for make goods, basically, guess what I did?
1:18:53
I gave 'em whatever they wanted because I wanted that check.
1:18:57
I wanted that renewal. I'd go podcaster, say, Hey, we're underperforming.
1:19:01
I I need two more spots
1:19:03
or one more spot from every show this month.
1:19:06
You, if you wanna stay in the campaign on
1:19:08
a, you gotta give them one. And then, then we would overdeliver to make sure
1:19:12
that we made them happy.
1:19:14
Mm-Hmm. So they would come back and give us another ad searching order, you know, so,
1:19:22
you know, so it goes both ways. If, you know, if you're, if you're chasing the dollars,
1:19:26
sometimes you got <laugh>,
1:19:29
- Right? Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. Ah, but sometimes that's worth it, right?
1:19:33
- Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes that's, - Uh, that's, uh, uh, you know, you save the relationship
1:19:37
with that buyer and they come back, they appreciate it,
1:19:39
and they come back to you sometimes you never hear from them
1:19:42
again, and it was all transactional. Yeah. Um, so you have to kind of get a feel for, for how,
1:19:46
whether it's worth doing those extra bonuses and added value and all that stuff.
1:19:50
- But I do, one thing I do hate with
1:19:52
where the industry is now is let me just do a trial buy,
1:19:55
let me buy one episode that's been going on forever, Todd.
1:19:58
Stupid stupidest thing. Yeah.
1:20:00
It's, it's the worst, it's the worst thing you could do.
1:20:04
It's two weeks or one week. Oh, they want one episode, episode,
1:20:07
one episode a month, right? Or just one episode. Let's see how it does on one episode.
1:20:12
I'm like, good lord, a person just has to fart
1:20:16
and miss your a your attitude <laugh>, miss your ad.
1:20:19
Come on. Right. You know, it's just it. Yeah. Yeah.
1:20:23
But, you know, they're 25 years old and they know the best.
1:20:27
- Well, - It had - Some buyers, it comes out - That they, go ahead, Rob.
1:20:31
- It comes out out of the era of, of
1:20:34
of click link marketing campaigns.
1:20:37
And a lot of these folks think that this is like a sponsored link on a Google search
1:20:41
results page, is that they should evaluate the campaign
1:20:43
based on instant results. - You know, and I, I, I haven't done a lot of deals lately,
1:20:47
Mike, so I'm kind of out of the outta the loop. You guys know what's going on.
1:20:51
So, you know, it's, you got a better handle for
1:20:54
what these buyers are asking for. - Uh, I think everything you've just said, uh, sounds,
1:20:58
sounds familiar to me, <laugh>. Um, but the, the thing I was gonna say is we have had buyers
1:21:02
that, sophisticated buyers who sort of said, you know, look,
1:21:06
we've done this for a long time, and we, uh, we, I'm sure there's one-off situations
1:21:11
where somebody farts or whatever you just said, <laugh>, right, right. Where, and, and missed an episode.
1:21:15
But generally, like when we look across the breadth of the data we have, we can buy one time and,
1:21:20
and get a feel for performance enough where we wanna, um,
1:21:23
you know, where we, where we, that's enough for us to make a, a long-term buy decision or not.
1:21:27
That's, that's amazing. And, you know, most of the time when that happens, we sort
1:21:30
of say, okay, then I, you know, we'll go look for other partners because the, the effort, uh,
1:21:34
for everybody involved Yeah. - For one is - Hard as a
1:21:36
podcaster takes all the risk. Right. - And I, and, and again, you know, my philosophy
1:21:40
and if you're a media buyer out there listening to just try my formula once, you gotta be on
1:21:46
for 15 days in every episode for 15 days.
1:21:48
And if that's a weekly show, they gotta, you gotta be in there twice.
1:21:51
And then you look at where your performance is at 15 days.
1:21:54
Just take those first 15 days. And that's, that's just good if anything comes through
1:21:59
and then after 15 days, then make your decision.
1:22:03
That's my, again, I guess I'm just old school, but,
1:22:08
- So also, um, Triton Digital,
1:22:13
um, that document that, um, that, uh, Lisa shared
1:22:16
or that post that Lisa shared also included a screenshot
1:22:20
to Triton, oh, digital's
1:22:24
comparison of weekly, average weekly downloads from 2024
1:22:28
to 2023, and it showed a 41% decline
1:22:33
across all a lot of the major networks,
1:22:35
or at least the ones that are being tracked by Tritton,
1:22:38
which isn't a complete picture. But
1:22:41
- What did contract, 41%, how much did PO Track drop do we know from year to year?
1:22:46
- I don't know. I haven't seen - That.
1:22:48
Now, Mike, how do you guys do your measuring? You just go off the Pixel fire? - Um, we, yeah, so we have our, for our podcast
1:22:55
that are hosted with us, we have our own stat system,
1:22:57
which is based on the IEB. Yeah. And then we have, but it's not certified.
1:23:00
And then for the, where we're getting, uh, ping backs from,
1:23:05
um, you know, there, there's the IEB like, uh, ad delivery.
1:23:08
Oh, okay. Uh, thing, and that's what these enterprise hosts use.
1:23:11
We get a ping back on a, on a, on a url, very similar
1:23:13
to Pixel to say, okay, that ad was delivered. Um,
1:23:17
- But maybe not listening to <laugh>. Yeah.
1:23:20
- It's the same, it's the same, - Same thing. Yeah. - You know? Yeah. It's not just means
1:23:24
that the bytes were downloaded and nothing else. Um, the, that, that Triton tracker thing
1:23:29
that you just mentioned, um, if you look on there, like some
1:23:32
of the, you know, 42% is not the median
1:23:35
between those networks. Uh, there were some that were down by like massive percent.
1:23:39
Oh, yeah. Uh, and those were ones, I think if you think about
1:23:43
who they are, from what I saw that have like sort of, uh,
1:23:46
a lot of daily shows, right?
1:23:49
Sometimes with like, uh, some, sometimes with shows
1:23:51
that have like, uh, multiple clips of a radio show
1:23:54
that are produced as multiple episodes released in a day.
1:23:57
Um, and so those are the ones with a massive back catalogs
1:24:01
that were receiving tons of background traffic, right.
1:24:04
That, um, that, that sort of all disappeared overnight.
1:24:08
Right. Um, so I'm not surprised to see those giant changes.
1:24:11
I think, you know, I <laugh> it's funny, I've been listening
1:24:13
to the, you know, all the podcast industry podcasts and reading.
1:24:15
Nobody wants to like say the number that they're at.
1:24:18
You know, there, there's February, which is a few days shorter <laugh>.
1:24:21
And so, you know, you don't know exactly the numbers or whatever, or like, yeah.
1:24:23
We're, you know, I heard somebody say like, what are, what are you hearing instead of answering the question.
1:24:26
Um, and you know, I think a lot of places are seeing,
1:24:30
you know, 15 to 25% drops
1:24:33
and it has to do with how long your back catalog was.
1:24:35
Yeah. And sure, it has to do with what you said Todd about like how, how much filtering of
1:24:39
that kind of stuff you were doing. Um, and uh, you know,
1:24:43
but there are some folks I think that, that including individual podcasts on our platform
1:24:47
that had these, you know, daily sports podcasts with 2,500.
1:24:50
- So, oh, the daily got hit hard, hardest - Where it was really pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah.
1:24:54
- Because I, you know, that and - Plus, plus a lot of these big networks, um,
1:24:58
canceled a bunch of shows, so that's gonna impact your numbers
1:25:02
- Too. Well, you know, and also there's this phenomenon and,
1:25:04
and the only reason I learned this is because we went one year and we recorded like 60 interviews
1:25:09
and I was putting out interview every day
1:25:12
and I was like, man, these, these are hurting,
1:25:15
they're not getting good numbers. So then we went to every three days
1:25:19
and of course that, that,
1:25:23
that podcast episode stayed in the queue long enough
1:25:25
that it was automatically downloaded, and then they come in third day later
1:25:29
and put another one in there. And of course, you know that, that not guaranteed they were
1:25:33
listening, but at least it was registering to download.
1:25:35
Right. Or a play. And, uh, so, you know, daily shows are definitely at a,
1:25:43
at a, at a disadvantage per se.
1:25:45
So mean we're at the bottom of the hour, Rob.
1:25:47
We're already, we've already made it through here.
1:25:52
- We did. - Wow.
1:25:54
You're gonna be out in, uh, you're gonna be out, out in la?
1:25:58
- I'm not, unfortunately. I have a seven month old at home
1:26:00
and we just had a company retreat two weeks ago.
1:26:02
So I, I, I've maxed out on my ability to travel.
1:26:05
Um, but my co-founder and the rest of the business, you know, a lot
1:26:08
of our team's in la so we have a bunch of - People there.
1:26:10
Oh, okay. Yeah, I, I damaged a rib on Saturday.
1:26:14
I fell down in a no bummer water in, in a rainstorm.
1:26:18
And uh, I'm going, but I'm gonna be stiff
1:26:21
'cause it's either cracked or displaced or something.
1:26:24
Um, it's not good. So, uh, I'll be wobbling around <laugh>.
1:26:30
Um, Rob, is there anything, any other questions you had
1:26:32
for Mike or any thoughts? - Yeah, Mike, uh, don't you share with us how a person can,
1:26:38
or where a person can go to, to find out more information about your new, new platform?
1:26:44
Is there a Yeah. Landing page or something? - Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing to do is just go
1:26:48
to red circle.com and then there's a, there's a button at the top or either ad platform
1:26:52
or in the feature section. There's the thing for open wrap,
1:26:55
depending on whether you're an advertiser or podcaster.
1:26:58
And we're doing a special deal. We're like, uh, zeroing out our commission on your first
1:27:02
host Red Deal with us up to 250 bucks.
1:27:05
Um, if you sign up for the wait list, we are doing a wait list because there are some of these,
1:27:09
uh, third party platforms that we theoretically can connect
1:27:12
to with Vast, but we haven't done yet. And so we sort of need to work through some
1:27:15
of those example podcasts. Um, but we've got the thing up and running now
1:27:19
and it's, uh, it's working great, uh, on a couple of hosts.
1:27:21
Um, but yeah, red circle.com is the place to go, uh, and,
1:27:24
and just, uh, sign up and add your name to the wait list
1:27:27
- And think about that other opportunity there, Mike. Yeah, I'll
1:27:30
- Shoot you an email - About that. That's interesting. Interesting way to,
1:27:34
you know, 'cause guess what? Uh, I, I'd rather you lose your hair than
1:27:40
me lose mine. <laugh>. - <laugh>. - I have nothing left. So
1:27:45
- There's obviously more to lose there, right? Yeah, <laugh>.
1:27:49
- Well, COVID already took a bunch from me,
1:27:52
but it's only better at time. - Rob. I I will be, uh, in LA next week.
1:27:56
So are, you're doing your own little thing,
1:27:59
are you gonna try to do a, a independent new media show
1:28:01
or, uh, what are you thinking? Well, - We could do one if you wanna do one earlier in the day.
1:28:06
Um, that, that's fine. - Yeah. Let's see, - A live show that I'm, I'm doing is at,
1:28:11
uh, 5:00 PM specific. Yeah.
1:28:14
- Yeah. This Vid de pod thing is getting my calendar pretty
1:28:17
filled up already, uh, by YouTubers
1:28:19
that are gonna be at the event they wanna, they wanna talk,
1:28:23
so it's not complicated. Just go over and sign up. Right.
1:28:27
Um, anyway, uh, [email protected],
1:28:31
at Geek News on X at Geek News at
1:28:35
and at Geek News chat on Macon.
1:28:38
Did I say that right, Rob? - On X Twitter as well at Rob Greenley
1:28:44
and then off of YouTube, um, at Rob Greenley as well.
1:28:47
You can find me over there and if you wanna reach out,
1:28:50
my email address is um, rob [email protected].
1:28:54
I'm happy to hear from you. So, - And we wanna thank all the live boosts
1:28:58
and streaming SATs that came in today. Were live. And I was gonna ask you, Mike,
1:29:01
before we left, do you listen to, uh, to Adam and, uh, Dave?
1:29:05
- I do. Yeah. I, I, uh, I'm, I'm a consistent listener
1:29:08
and I'm into all that stuff, <laugh> and I, you know, at one point Red Circle had a, had a,
1:29:12
its own lightning node running in our production infrastructure and I lost, uh, $300 of the business,
1:29:17
you know, when I corrupted some Bitcoin, you know,
1:29:19
so I've been farting around with all that stuff, uh, as well.
1:29:22
- We had some new from Get Albi today. There's something coming from them.
1:29:25
So, but anyway, uh, yeah, so yeah,
1:29:29
so you can't, can't, uh, monetize the network according
1:29:32
to Adam <laugh>, but you put $16 million in people's pockets.
1:29:36
So I think that's, something's working. You think that's pretty good, <laugh>?
1:29:39
I think that counts good. Yeah, I think that counts. Good.
1:29:41
Alright buddy, thanks for being here and, uh, we'll keep you advised via
1:29:44
social, uh, what's going on. If Rob and I are able to pull one off,
1:29:47
and if not, if we don't do it live then or do some weird hour, it'll be in the feed.
1:29:52
So everyone, thanks for being here. And Mike, thanks for, thanks for coming too,
1:29:55
everybody. Take care. Thanks for having - Me. All right. - All right. Bye bye. Bye bye.
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