Todd and Rob in the afternoon. Hey. Afternoon to love. With Todd and Rob. Oh, yeah. Hey. We are Rob even though we're a little late because I didn't get out of bed. And people thinking get out of bed. You guys are you guys are late. The time change, I used to be able to get up at eight, be ready to go here by 9AM, and I forgot that I need to be getting up at seven and be ready to go at eight. So Yeah. It's a big time difference between us. Yeah. Well, not you know, now it's just it was just my stupidity. But anyway, hey. Here we are. And, welcome to the show, everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Great to be back again after all these years of doing this every every Wednesday. Right? So there was a there was a period of time when we actually did this twice a week. Oh, during COVID. Yeah. So that seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Oh, it does. And, you know, even thinking all the way back to the beginning of doing this show, and we've been doing this thing a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, I know you did some preparation today, which I I did not because obviously, obviously, I am I'm awake about let me hear Yeah. You were sleeping. Yeah. I'm I'm awake about nineteen minutes here. So Yeah. Right. Right. Well, as as usual, there's always a lot of stuff going on, and I pulled from past past days too of things that are going on in the space. But, I thought it was interesting, the article that came out from Odysee, talking about podcast superfans are super spenders, which I thought was kind of a a funny headline that came out of this, you know, and I think it follows common sense. You know? Heavy podcast listeners, those that are tuning in for more than eight hours per week. I guess that's a that's a pretty serious consumer of podcasts are are significantly more engaged with advertised products compared to average consumers. And, you know, I think that's that's been the case when podcasting for many, many years. I I I think that's what the research has been showing for a long time. I don't is there any comments about this, Todd? Well, the question is they're talking about ace a podcast superfan, not a super listener of a specific show. Right? Yeah. I would say they're kinda speaking more broadly. Right? So if you listen to, I guess, more than eight hours of podcasts a week, you're you're significantly more likely to convert on advertised purchases, on advertised products and purchase them, I think is what what it is. It says heavy listeners are 60% more likely to buy products advertised online. Now it didn't say advertised in podcasts online, but but it does say, increase in in store purchases. They're likely 71% more likely to purchase advertised products in physical stores as well. So I think this is really going after a lot of kind of brand podcasters to some degree or brand advertisers. You know, in the positive reception to ads and podcasts, 76% of heavy listeners acknowledge that the podcast ads introduced them to new products and services, and 57%, that they they had a likelihood to purchase. Well, it always comes back to the advertising, doesn't it? Well, yeah. I think I was talking to a person that works for Katz Media, and I thought it was an interesting conversation around advertising because this this person was telling me that the CPMs did drop over the last couple months Mhmm. Fairly significantly and may, may also, be a reason why we don't really hear people talking about CPMs much anymore publicly. So and then also that, most of the advertising now is programmatic, at least coming from Katz Katz Media side. So which is a radio centric kind of Is it is it DAI or is it programmatic? That's the question. Is programmatic and first that it's d a I, you mean, is it d a I? Yeah. Versus programmatic because, programmatic infers is just you get a random set of ads. Right. Yeah. I mean, I know their platform. They primarily do the prerecorded and then product. Yeah. Programmatic, dynamically inserted advertising. They don't I I'm getting a sense that the radio folks don't really do much with the with the host reads anymore. I gotcha. I don't know what that distribution is between host reads that are being done utilizing dynamic ad insertion. Right? So they're saying that the the category. So they're saying programmatic ads dropped, which is curious. We've not seen a corresponding drop. Did it get in Yeah. He didn't say specifically that. He he was just saying more specifically that the the the overall CPMs in the industry dropped from what he's hearing Mhmm. From the buying side. So they're just not, I guess the budgets aren't as strong and maybe they don't have as much confidence in in podcasting from a programmatic perspective. I I don't know. I'm not sure at the detail level what's what's going on here, but it does appear like the the research is showing, at least what's being put out publicly, is that the conversion rates and you have to stop and think, you know, why are they putting this information out, about the conversion capabilities of podcast ads. And and that's to drive more interest on the part of the brands to get involved in the medium and to show that there is conversion to be had here. Right? You know, I I I've check up on a periodic basis with, with Dave over at BackBeat Media and, you know, they're doing all of our host read deals for podcasters and, you know, it seems like things are strong. You know, CPMs vary on those on a campaign to can be basis, but, you know, I've heard not you know, no one being under 22, 20 three, kind of in that range where it's been. So when someone says there was a dramatic drop, it makes me go, Yeah. It does for for me as well because I I've I've definitely gotten the impression that the host read or the talent read that is either baked in or even dynamically inserted is the the most highly coveted Mhmm. Advertising slots that are out there. And it also depends on where they are in the content as well. Are they towards the beginning? Or are they towards the end? It's all the context, isn't it? Yeah. It's all and this is what's driving this conversation around getting better metrics. Right? For the advertisers to know where their content or their ad content is being consumed in the content and what the you know, in that attribution piece and all that stuff, which is challenging. There's already a solution. Yeah. We I've talked about it several times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On the chapters. Right? Yeah. You know, so, you know, when, you know, people, you know, like, they wanna cry me a river. And here's another thing too. The folks I'm hearing is this attribution piece is not even in conversations right now in most cases. They're not they're not the attribution it's not even a word that's being talked about. So it's, you know, they say in one word that we need all this, need that and then and then when I hear people say, no, they're they're really not bringing up attribution. Maybe one out of 10 ad deals is talking about pixel attribution. So I don't know. But getting back to that superfan piece Yeah. You know, I think just like anything else, you know, they're hardcore podcast listeners. But at the same time, I think it's more at a show level. I know on my show who my Yeah. Quote, unquote, superfans are, and, it's by the donations they send in. Yeah. It and again, the bigger the donation, you would think the bigger the fans. So Yeah. It's that direct relationship that's that I think the industry is moving towards, as what maybe what the future looks like more and more is these, you know, the whole concept of a superfan is somebody that you would think you'd be able to convert into a private community. Right? And I think some people are are better at that than others, to be honest with you. Oh, yeah. Oh, I agree with you a % on that. Yeah. Yeah. Some show genres lend themselves to it much better than others too. You know? And it's something, you know Personality driven too. Yeah. It's something we've been looking at, you know, internally is, you know, it's always about this engagement thing, you know. They're podcasters, well, let's just be honest, and here I'm umming this morning a lot. If you if you can get a donation, if you can get a comment, if you can get a boost, if you can get any type of feedback from a fan Mhmm. That's just like a dopamine hit and that will carry you to the next episode and being motivated to to do the next show. Mhmm. And when it's crickets, when there's just nothing going on and no nobody's providing you any feedback at all. Yeah. Yeah. That's when a lot of content creators on all sides, doesn't matter if you're doing YouTube or podcasting. That's when that's when you start, questioning. You know, is is this is this paying off? Yeah. It's the engagement part that, that keeps people energized to keep their shows going through, you know, what could be seen as a tough time. Right. When they're not making money from doing their show, you know, that that's the thing we talk about that a lot on this show is expectations for making an income from creating content now is probably at the highest level I've ever seen. Well, I don't hear it. We're doing, every Tuesday. Mhmm. We're doing an office hours where we basically they don't people don't have to host with Blueberry at all. They can just show up and and ask podcasting questions and we rotate it between Mike, Dave, and myself. And the, some weeks we have dedicated topics and this past week was about monetization. So I I it was, you know, we're gonna talk about monetization the whole time. And the one of the folks that I knew well, matter of fact, you might know him. I better not say his name because we did everything in confidence. We didn't we don't record these. But, anyway, this long term podcaster who is on another platform, getting advertising. He he's just being drove crazy by no transparency from the company that he's dealing with to deliver advertising. Is there just, you know, you you take the ads and it's kind of like a you'll take the ads and take it, and there's just not a lot of transparency in in the process. And So it's an ad advertising rep? Yeah. You can see. Is that what it is? Yeah. And a pretty big one too. And, he he's at a point where, he he just you know, he's looking for a new home because he feels that he's just a number over there with the company. And he does great numbers on on one of his shows. He does, you know, fantastic. Matter of fact, part of it is syndicated radio too. So he actually made it from podcasting to syndicated radio. So he had the about the time Leo LaPorte was drawing down, he kind of filled a few of those slots. So Okay. You know, I probably just gave away who it was. But he he is, very disgruntled on that. And then the on the other side of the fence, you know, the the question really, came down to with the the other creators that were on the, on the call. You know, a little bit discussion about programmatic and, you know, what it looks like from a CPM standpoint. And and then the conversation of, you know, do I really wanna run this? Because based on my show size, I'm making I'm only gonna make x, not x x x x. The difference between, you know, making $23 a month versus, you know, a dinner or car payment. So for smaller shows, you know, my advice always goes back to them is, you know, build that value for value. And you're probably gonna just by doing value for value as a smaller show, you're gonna make more money than you ever will on advertising as a small show. So I think people get wrapped around the axle these days of, oh oh oh, I have to have a GoDaddy or oh oh, I have to have a, you know, whatever is the the the top spender of the day, advertiser du jour. Mhmm. Then they completely forget about, oh, yeah. I've got a PayPal account. Oh, yeah. I've got to buy me a coffee account. Oh, yeah. I you know, there's lots of things that you can do to earn revenue and it doesn't always have to be the, you know, in some media buy. And I I I and and they just they kinda have this, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Why don't I do that? So Why don't they is the next question or They don't think about it. They don't think about it. Yeah. They're so wrapped around, so laser focused on on just getting an advertiser, you know. And A sponsorship. Yeah. And there was, you know, one gentleman that was on long time podcaster, intermittent publisher. In other words, he's not on a consistent episode publishing scale and he he was like, oh, yeah. Why don't I do that? You know, I've had a few donations come in over the years but I never asked and I think that's a big part of this is you have to ask. Yeah. Yeah. If you There's a bunch of, ways that people can attempt to generate revenue. I mean, I think that's the other secret in the creator economy right now is creating diversified revenue streams for whatever you're doing. Right? You can't just rely on one source of of of revenue coming in. You have to create some merchandise. You gotta create some products. You gotta create, you know, different ways that you can you can hopefully chip away at that revenue challenge if that's what's required for what you're doing to keep going. And I think that's what a lot of people struggle with right now is, you know, doing all that work. Right? It's a lot of work to keep up with all this stuff. Well, you know, are we are we have we become a society of wanting everything given this to us on a golden platter? You know, I'm Well, I that's that's a very deep interesting question, Todd, that I don't know that there's a clear answer to. I think a lot of people do. And I think I'll there are a certain amount of people out there that are willing to work hard and do what it takes to to create something. But even working hard and doing what it takes is no guarantee that it's gonna work out It's these days. That's the other problem. It's true. And I think at the same time, we have, well it's a train of thought. It was on the tip of my tongue here. I in the end, we're all responsible for what we do And everyone wants to be a superstar, but not everyone is gonna be a superstar. Right. This is the thing we've said from the beginning of time of the podcasting space and and, you know, people pump their numbers for years. I'm seeing more of that going on now again where it wasn't before. It kinda for about seven or eight years, there wasn't a lot of pumping of numbers and, you know, discussions. So, you know, the ugly baby talk a little bit. But at at the same time, we have to be responsible enough to understand that this is work. This is this is hard hard work. Now you and I, you know, we've been doing this for a while. We can, like I said, overslept. I sent you a text. I said, hey, you know, give me ten minutes to, you know, at least brush my teeth and and and get Yeah. Everything turned up here. And, turned out to be fifteen minutes or so before. But again, and maybe I'm not a %. Maybe I needed a cup of coffee, but, you know, we're we're cranking here and talking about topics at hand. Mhmm. Is it gonna be our best work? Well, from my standpoint, maybe not. But from you, I'm, you know, you've had more time to prep. So Yeah. But again, there is this opportunity. I think as creators, we're we're in charge of our own destiny here. This thing is gonna succeed or fail based upon what we put into it. I think about my own podcast and the work I've done over the years and the the changes I've made of recent to try to improve the show at twenty plus years making changes. Yeah. And sometimes you have to ask yourself is is it enough? You know, is it keeping you know, same with this show when we think about this show. Is it enough to keep up with the expectations of audiences and the market. And, you know, that's a very difficult question to answer conclusively. As you look at your own content, you're very close to it. You have a lot of Mhmm. Ingrained habitual behavior, that that that happens around your patterns of what you do. And I think there's a danger that that we kinda stray just based on our own, you know, inertia. Stray away from the the moving target that is the podcast expectations. You know, I I struggle with this with even the the other shows that I do too is that I do have this ingrained thought in my mind about what a podcast is and how it should be done. Mhmm. And it's very difficult to radically change that. You know, I think it's a different challenge for us, Todd, because we've been doing this for so long. Yeah. That We're old dogs. Right. It's hard to teach, an old dog new tricks. Right? That's the old saying goes. And it's that's why oftentimes we get labeled as, you know, we're OGs or we're Right. Right. Or, you know, past our our prime or something like that because we've been doing it a long time and not doing what the cool kids are doing now. So I think we both struggle with that to even know what the cool kids are doing now. So that's that's what I try and do every day with what I'm doing here. But sometimes doing what the cool kids are doing doesn't match with who we are or who I am. Right? So that's where the disconnect can happen. Well, the perceived cool kids, if I look at some of the top running shows, I have no inclination to want to run a show like that. Right. Well, that's part of it. Right? It's it's it's this ingrained inertia of who we are. We are who we are. We can't change that. I can't make myself convert into being a 32 year old again. Right. Right. I can't have, you know, long hair and and tattoos and, you know, and all all this kind of stuff that that's just not who I am. But maybe that's you know, if you look at a lot of the most popular podcast hosts, they they're tatted up and they've got, you know, they're they're I mean, you've got the bold look, but certainly the the most popular podcast podcasters out there are have that look to them. They're they're really, you know, beefy and strong and muscular. And and it's just, it's just a different kind of attitude than than what we bring to podcasting. But I think, you know, that kind of attitude people, appreciate now. It's like this very aggressive approach and this very kind of, edgy, cutting edge kind of content that's being produced. Just look at, like, a guy like Joe Rogan. He's a great example of what I'm talking about. What is that x factor that Joe Rogan has that that made him the most popular podcaster in the world? You know, he's willing to smoke a joint on the show. He I don't know if he drinks during the show. Oh, oh oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He does. You know, so, you know, I'm not sitting here at, 08:00 in the morning in my time with a with a bourbon. You know, maybe that, you know, and then and then if I did drink a bourbon, like, oh my god. He's got a problem. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I think you and I are both could come from a different generation. We come from a time when when it wasn't professional to do that kind of stuff. But You know? I think there's a lot of you know, we're in a different time now where people feel like they need to be really completely raw to who they are. Yeah. Right? And if they're like that in real life, they're gonna bring that to the podcast. The the only thing I changed on my personality when I started my show is I quit swearing. You know, because and every once in a while it comes out but you know I was You were a sailor, Todd. Yeah. And believe me, I could give as good as any of them, you know, when it come to, you know, to expect this. So, you know, it's it's like yesterday I had a little situation and I, you know, f word came out about five times in a row. And, you know, so it's just like I'm sure my neighbors like what's going on with this dude? Yeah. Right. So I think there is a little bit of that. I mean, life to do is listen to an episode of Theo Bon or somebody like that, and he'll give you an idea Yeah. Of what that what that vibe feels like in in some of the biggest podcasters in in the world. And they're they're they're just raw. They're real. They're funny. They're humorous. They talk about things that maybe they shouldn't talk about, or they they say things that they shouldn't say if they came from a earlier generation like us. So for us to become that, I think is a No. Is a stretch for us. Yeah. What I I just don't think it I don't think it works. I think people would be like, you guys need a psychiatrist. What's going on with you guys? You know, you're not being who you are and that's boring. Right. Right. Yeah. But we do a different kind of show too. We're not doing a show that requires comedy and Right. You know, and to be edgy. They'll they'll I'm sure that would help our numbers if we did. Oh, I'm not. Sure it would. You know? Everyone likes it when we fight, you know, if we have a good argument. Yeah. That's that's that's that's kind of a good example of what I'm talking about too. And I think, you know, at times, you play the devil's advocate with me. Yeah. And it, causes that kind of banter and back and forth that people are annoyed with as well as That's right. Yeah. They they enjoy. So it's it's giving everybody that that full emotional experience. And, speaking of emotional experiences, I noticed that, YouTube added a podcast tab to the home screen of, their their platform. So I haven't seen it I haven't seen it on my, YouTube TV yet. So Yeah. I don't I'm not sure it's on the smart TV yet, though, but but it is I have seen it in the web version, like in the browser and stuff. And I and supposedly it's in the Android TV app. So I would imagine But the problem is is, you know, everyone gets excited and, you know, it's cool. But guess what? You'll never 95 or 97% of podcasters will never be seen on that tab. Well, that and also, you know, I don't know about you, but when I access the the YouTube app, I go to, you know, like a like a featured page. Right? I don't think it goes to the master directory where I'm gonna, you know, click on a tab or something like that. It's more No. It's I don't have to go look at that. It's just like the home tab. I'm sure it's a curated of what they think you should watch. Yeah. Exactly. That's the majority of what you get presented with. And increasingly, I've I've noticed on mobile that YouTube really puts front and center, Shorts increasingly. Shorts is really where the the energy is that I see. On mobile, it makes sense because maybe you don't have time to watch a full feature. Yeah. It's like a TikTok experience. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I did add it to my my landing page on YouTube, all of the shorts that I've been publishing. And, they get they get decent views, but it's not like it's, you know, you're right, hundred thousand or something like that. So I will. You're not just you're not doing content that's gonna get a hundred thousand views because the audience isn't that big. Yeah. For the type of content that I'm talking about. Right? And that's that's always been a limitation on the type of genre of show that we do, Todd, is is that it doesn't have a huge audience reach. No. And and that's that's been been the case though. I have seen many many YouTube videos that have been produced that have the topic of podcast, like how to start a podcast that have, you know, a half million views or something like that. But I think that's rather kinda kinda rare, actually. And that maybe happened in the past and those numbers are from that that video being published many years ago too. Well, you know, we're we're starting some things on Blueberry to beef up our YouTube presence. Okay. And, you know, we're now starting to see a TikTok of in in because we we hadn't paid attention to it for years, but we're purely using it for marketing. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not I'm not a complete dummy. Yeah. I'm not gonna abandon you know, we did. I probably should have done this a year ago, but, you know, having added the people in The Philippines has given me the bandwidth to be able to, do this extra stuff that we just didn't have the bandwidth to do as a company before. And having a full having a full time video editor is helping too. Yeah. And the new reality that TVs are now the primary device now based on what the data that we're seeing for I believe that. Viewing. I believe that. Yeah. It's it's the landscape is changing, you know? And I think that the the legacy media out there, and and I know we've talked about this a lot on the show, is really kind of, I think, gonna struggle going forward, you know? I think some are embracing it. Well well, they are. But the problem is that, people aren't gravitating towards media, like big media brands. Right? They're they're gravitating towards, well, YouTube's trying to shove Fox News down my throat. Every every every other video that they suggest is a is a Fox clip. And, I, you know, maybe I watch one too many Fox News clips. Now they it thinks that's what I want to watch. Right. So I'm sure those that are in, you know, if you watch MSNBC or CNN or whatever, you probably get shoved those videos too. But, what what I'm seeing is that, you know, like a Chris Cuomo is a really good example. I went and looked at his his show that he does on NewsNation, And I compared it to his show that he does, called the the Chris Cuomo Project. And his numbers on his own channel are like five times or more larger than the views on YouTube of his, NewsNation show that he does. It's, you know, his own personal brand is actually much more popular than the show that he does on cable television. Well So Yeah. I had a great interview. Let me see here. A week ago with, Robert excuse me. Joe Polizzi. Mhmm. And, it is probably one of the best. It'll come out in about probably a month as we're we're scheduling stuff out. And, I told my entire team, I said, you got you got to just watch this because, Joe is a long time, content marketer. You know, he he's a guy that, was very very early in understanding the value of Internet marketing and, and and what really works in building an audience and keeping an audience in marketing. And and I you know, he's marketing focused, but the rules apply back to to to brands. And, he's he's a big advocate of same things I am in in regards to, yes, you can be in all these locations. You know, you can be you have a successful YouTube channel. You can have a successful TikTok or whatever you're doing. And Mhmm. But he, in the end, has said his three pieces of his three most valuable endeavors and everything he does today in the current landscape is, one, his website, number two, his mailing list, and number three, his, his podcast. So when you say mailing list, is that linked with a newsletter? Yeah. Yeah. So everything that he does, everything he promotes, everything that is, being announced is direct tie to his audience and he has access to his entire audience. Because for years, he has said sign up for the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter. And he gives them good he doesn't put out a newsletter, like, every day. He does it on a very dedicated has very purposeful. So when people get it, they understand there's value. And he says, I've launched conferences. I have launched brands. I have launched products all because I am able to control the I have the access to the people that listen to me. Those direct relationships. And he says on YouTube, he says, I lose all ability to have a direct relationship with the audience. Mhmm. Because it's a proprietary platform. I can get nothing out. He says, but my podcast and my and again, this guy is super super super super successful for many many years. He's basically said these are the three pillars of his strategy, and and that's what he's focused on and it was a very he's not an old school guy. This is a guy that is, pretty mainstream and well, I was pretty astounded that those were the three pillars of reaching the audience that he wants to reach because everyone that is, subscribed to his newsletter is probably subscribed to the podcast. He guarantees that they are going to see the new episode. It's not gonna be hidden. It's not gonna be by happenstance so that shows up on some page because that happens to me. I have a whole bunch of shows I subscribe to. YouTube does not surface when maybe three or four of the top things I watch on YouTube are surfaced on my home link. I have to dig into my subscriptions to find new episodes of content. YouTube decides what it wants to present to me and he and his point was in podcasting, that's never the case. Because people have done this direct action to engage with you and have physically subscribed to the show in the app, on the website, everything aligns. Yeah. And if you can give them access to be able to subscribe or follow you on these platforms, that helps as well. But again, it doesn't guarantee in YouTube if you follow or subscribe to someone. Yeah. You are not gonna know that there is a new episode out unless you are a hardcore dedicated watcher. Unless you're watching those videos on a regular basis. Right. Otherwise, otherwise, the 80 things that you've subscribed to, you're only gonna see 10 of them. Right. And he says in podcasting, he says that's not the case. That that episode is there front and center for them in whatever app that they are. So his his take up is kinda like my show's take up seventy two hours. You know, he is people have listened to that episode within within seventy two hours and he's able to invoke on whatever marketing campaign he wants. Whereas Mhmm. I may watch something on YouTube that was recorded a month ago just because I didn't go down in the stack deep enough. And guess what? It may be not relevant. Someone has a Valentine's, episode or, you know, something has happened a month ago because it wasn't presented to me in a timely fashion, then it's I'm gonna skip it. So this is what his strategy says. Podcasting is the only medium that guarantees his audience is going to them all. Content. Yeah. To engage his content. I thought, wow. That was a bit of a different perspective even for me now. You know, I was on board with building your own brand on your.com. Right. And that's that's a key. That's a key factor, you know, and I think the unknown right right now, how does how does AI factor into that? Oh, that's a big it's gonna change everything. Yeah. And how that works in this this this next story that I wanted to talk about too. I don't know if you're seeing it, Todd, but it's, Chris Stone, posted publicly about he, added 4,000 downloads in thirty seconds to his podcast. And he's he was he was surprised he didn't think of it before, but all he did was, change the publish date of an old episode to today's date, thus putting it at the top of people's listen lists. Yeah. That's cheating a little bit. Yeah. Because he was, you know, I guess he had a campaign or what whatever, an ad campaign, that he had to hit his his, numbers. A things that he could do to add another 4,000 downloads or, you know, multi thousands of downloads to his numbers. And he went through this this list, you know, like, his normal levers are like social promotion. While the it's free, it has a relatively low impact. And then extra love on the website, he says here has a relatively low impact. I guess it gets back to that engaged audience like you're talking about, Todd. You can't just only have a website. It has to be linked up with a pathway for audience to connect directly with you that you can regularly reach out to them. Right? To let them know about new episodes and things like that, or paid display or audio ads, and it's expensive. Right? So what are the levers that podcasters have to drive an increase in downloads? And so he he tried this, you know, change the the publish date of I don't know if he did it to just one episode or something like that, and it got him a bunch of downloads. Now that's not necessarily listens. Right? Just because he triggered more downloads doesn't necessarily mean that that because those those downloads could have been from people in the people in the past that maybe had already listened to the episode. Well, the if the app anything about this, I have to experiment. Would the app recognize that as a new episode? I don't think because, MingYang over at quick and dirty tips, they do this a lot too. Where they republish old episode. Yeah. And I don't know if they just been doing that for I don't know if they make it a whole new episode because the apps should still recognize I guess I'd have to go look. Never thought about it because apps will know when you have downloaded and listened. It will not redownload that. But I don't I I don't know. But linked up with the the ID The GUID. Or the GUID, right, of each of the items. I I think we'd have to look at the look at the individual app and see see what happened. Traffic came from. Right. Yeah. And see if I would the Goog would stay the same, I think, if you just change the date. But would it be enough to trigger, you know and if you've had an audience, you know, this is okay. So then, you know, let me play devil's advocate here. If your show's been growing and people haven't went to the back catalog and you've got a show that's got valuable content in in the back catalog, then I'm not saying that this is a bad strategy. But at the same time, how much of that is getting to new audience versus people that have already heard? Yeah. He claims that it it wasn't just downloads. It it it was verified listeners. Okay. How did he do that? Well, but I don't know that, you know, he's not stating that he got verified listeners. All he said is he's got verified downloads. Okay. That's simple. You know? You know? So was that yeah. The question is did people listen? Yeah. Maybe someone in the audience, that knows a little bit of it more about the mechanics. And I again, I haven't I know that this has been done. This is not the first time, obviously, that someone has done this. Yeah. You know, but I can imagine it would I think it I can imagine the reaction my audience would get if I, moved episode 100 up to the top. Well, you're a news producer. That's exactly right. It won't work. That would be Yeah. You featuring content that is outdated. Yeah. Going into a, you know, time capsule. Where I think it works better probably with a platform like, if you have evergreen content. I mean, like a minion's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Type of type of a network where it's creating that evergreen content. Yeah. And it's short content too. So so it's not demanding on people's time to potentially watch it. Someone said sound is bad. Oh, that's not good. What's going on with the sound? Our sound is bad? Yeah. Someone said our sound is bad. Your sound coming to me sounds good. So I don't know if it's a problem on the outbound out outbound side. Yeah. Could be. Could be. Right. I'll I'll investigate. Okay. So another thing that I found online too is is, and and so many stories came out of pod news as the, the, the, the idea is buying it. So thanks, James. I know he recently got caught up in a typhoon or something like that down in Australia. So he wasn't able to go to to Radio Days Europe, I guess. Mhmm. But, but anyway, this this other kind of topic I wanted to talk about is, is this concept of smiling in your podcast art. Yeah. So I actually, I I took the artwork that I normally use on my YouTube channel, that features the show and stuff like that. And I I found a piece of artwork out there or photograph of you, Todd, where you were smiling. So I added that to my thumbnail. And then I had one in there too that I added. So so that was so I guess, ads for hotels and hospitality shows have seen a 21% increase in sales with pictures of smiling people rather than serious looking people. So and this tends to, put people in a more likable and trustworthy kind of view on the part of customers or in this case would be possible listeners. And it also says that male hosts or males just in general can benefit more from smiling than female hosts because men are generally perceived as less warm, making customers more uncertain about their style or or hosting. So so this is a little bit of a stretch to apply it to podcasting, but I think it's it it is an interesting perspective on people's emotional reactions to smiles and how that could help you in your content or maybe help you with your your marketing. I don't know. Do you think about this, Todd? Well, anytime you smile, you, you're definitely more more positive. So what it was, Rob, your my and your output audio levels were low, so I cranked this up. So they're saying it's better. Oh, good. Okay. So that's that's my fault in not knowing OBS real well. Yeah. Yeah. I did hear people say in last week's episode that our my audio was low Yeah. Last week. And I I always think about the production in the other end. So my apologies. It was my fault here. Well, in in you you probably run this episode through, what, some audio normalization process. Right? But I don't really like the on demand part. Sounds better. The on demand part is the issue. That's where the people are complaining is the on demand's lower. Well, yeah. But the show's not over, so it's not on demand yet. It's still locked. Right. Right. Right. And I don't reupload over the top of the YouTube video. I don't take the live and replace it. So the live the live audio is low then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On the Yeah. Yeah. Instant replay. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But in the podcast, I I noticed on the replay on the podcast, it, it, it sounds better. Yes. It definitely sounds better on the replay. Yeah. So it's probably you're running it through an audio optimization process. Yeah. So so the so what really has happened here is I just had the the levels too low. So, Rick said Rob is good now. Audio level is much better. Okay. So, hopefully, that fixes it for me too because I crank myself up. So So if you think about your marketing, your visual imaging, things like that, you know, smiling for men, has a much more positive impact. Now, I guess it depends on the the topic of the podcast that you're doing and how serious that is. Right? It may not be a fit to have a smiling host in a podcast that's really kinda extremely serious, if you know what I mean. I mean, it has to match the the content that you have too, I would imagine. You know, I have a tendency when I do selfies to not smile. I don't know what it is. You know, have a serious look, but I don't put my face on my album art or episode art. I've never put my own face on on any art that I've ever done. Yeah. I do it, for my thumbnail for us. So it's, it's something that I, I visually put in there. You see a lot of, YouTube kind of like thumbnails have people's pictures on them. Right. It's a common, common thing to actually do. I can probably bring that up and I can show that. I'm cranking, cranking audio here, so things should be much better. Okay. That's good. Yeah. That's a good thing. And meanwhile, I'm turning myself down in my headset because I'm blowing myself out. Oh, okay. Yeah. So sorry about that, everyone. Thanks you for thank you for telling me that we all you have to do is ask and we will adjust. Alright. So here is the the artwork that I created for the show today. Oh, so it's we are smiling in that artwork. So you can see what what I did there. I just kind of made sure that both of us were were smiling more specifically for this artwork. Yeah. So I guess the rare time you caught me smiling, Yeah. Yeah. I found one while you were doing a show. I was able to screenshot it out. So right. So let me close that up. You have a interesting thing that you, didn't experiment with. Do you wanna share that now? Oh, yeah. I did a let's see here. Jumping ahead a little bit, but, I can do that. That's all right. I did a, I did a query in, grok three, that I I just ask it a simple question. Can you summarize the most recent episode of the new media show from 03/12/2025? So he asked Grok this. This was from Grok. Okay. I I asked grok first, but it came back saying that it didn't have access to that information. So grok three did not. Mhmm. I put the same query into chat GPT 4.5, asking for the same thing. And it came back with a fairly detailed outline and of all the topics that we talked about, Todd. So I thought that that was interesting. I didn't, give it a link to the content. It actually went out and got the the episode itself and did a summary. Did it do a summary from the description, or did it do a summary from the It didn't actually give it a description. All I said was, can you summarize the most recent episode of the new media show from March 12? But did they use the description, or did they use the audio? I don't know about that. All I did was ask, chat GPT to to give me an outline of the conversation. So it may have just gone to the website Into the website. And pull the other AI generated summary and and built this. So it basically built a a outline of the episode and the topics we talked about. And I cut and paste that pasted that into notebook l m. Oh, goodness. And so it's it basically created a, Robot. A AI generated, review of the episode of us. It had a a female host and a, a male host. Mhmm. And so I wanted to play that, so you you could hear the quality of the audio and the quality of, of the, of the review. I'm almost scared to hear this. Pretty personal. So here, let let me pull it up, and I can do a share on it, and I'll play the audio. So here it comes. So up on the screen is a is a screen share of the, notebooklm.google.com website. And so I cut and pasted that outline into it, and this is the audio that it created. Here we go. Okay. So from what we're hearing from a lot of you, there's this, like, feeling of being overwhelmed. Like, all this talk about AI, all the back and forth about audio versus video for podcasting, you know, it can feel like a lot. Right? So for this deep dive, we wanted to cut through that noise, you know, really get down to what matters right now. Absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of people are feeling that way. And we found a great episode of the new media show for 03/12/2025. Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee, they've been in the podcasting game forever. Oh, yeah. Those guys are like the OGs. Exactly. So we're gonna pull out the key stuff they talked about. Like, what are some of the practical challenges creators are facing? Right. And, you know, what are the things we actually need to pay attention to right now? Like, what's really moving the needle in podcasting? Yeah. Because there's a lot of hype, but we wanna get to what's actually useful. Exactly. So one of the things that really stuck out is Todd talking about his, well, his struggles with OBS. Uh-huh. You know, it's a popular software, but it can be pretty complex. Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful, but it's definitely got a learning curve. And he was comparing it to, like, the more integrated setups, you know, things like Roadcaster and TriCaster. Which I thought was really interesting because even someone like Todd, who's been doing this for so long, is still like, hey. Sometimes this tech is just a pain. Yeah. And it wasn't even just, like, a theoretical thing. He had this very specific issue with his Elgato Facecam Pro. Mhmm. His MacBook Pro just wouldn't recognize it. And it's like, those little technical hiccups can just completely derail derail you. Absolutely. I think everyone's been there. It's good to be reminded that even the pros run into these problems. Yeah. For sure. And it's not just the video stuff either. Like, even with the audio, which is, you know, kind of the heart of podcasting. Right. Rob was talking about how the audio quality can vary so much between different platforms. Oh, yeah. Like Zoom, OBS, even the RodeCaster. It's like getting that consistently good sound isn't as easy as it seems. It's a whole other layer of complexity. Right? Definitely. And then on top of all that, you know, there's all this buzz about AI. Right? Right. It feels like everyone's talking about it. But it also sounds like Todd and Rob are picking up on a bit of AI fatigue out there. Oh, yeah. For sure. It's like, okay, another AI tool. What does this one do? Exactly. And then you've got that whole audio versus video thing still going on. It's like some creators are like, I'm sticking with audio. This is what I know. Oh, yeah. And others are, like, diving head first into video. Right. And I think the takeaway there is, like, there's no right or wrong answer. Absolutely. Hey, Rob. Pause this for a second. You Sure. Audience and your content. Yeah. And So what I did was I it brought up the, the new media show website, and I'm looking at the description as this is going through, and they definitely pulled from the, from the show notes. They did not pull from the audio because I'm just watching as it is it stepping through. Because on the last show, we talked about the about the OBS issues and my issue with the camera and, talk about AI fatigue. And that is a specific word that's actually in the show notes from last time. So they definitely used the the show notes to come up with this summary. Yeah. I I didn't actually give it that text. No. But you had told him the last step. So Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So it actually went beyond what I gave it to get more information than what I actually cut and pasted into it. Yeah. So it's it's it's interesting here that, in how yeah. So it didn't look at the audio, but it is it actually not that bad of a summary. Right. And what I also noticed was that, the the female voice that was in this, I could sense some, human kind of hesitation in her spoken word too. I don't know if you noticed that where it was almost, I mean, not hesitation from a content perspective, but just like natural human like pauses to breathe and things like that. I kinda noticed that it was kind of interesting because usually these AI voices are very robotic. Right? And don't have that kind of like breathing inflection of sorts. I've played with this a few times and I don't know if it's improved. It doesn't to me, it doesn't sound like it's improved because they still have those quirky transitions that they do. And, oh, you know, and and, so but, what happens when we put our own voices in there? Well, that that would be the next step. Right? Is to go to like a 11 Labs. Labs or something like that and then pull the the direct transcript from, from the show and put it into 11 labs and just tell it to, I could probably do this today with the script actually. I just don't know how good the audio quality would be for your voice to us. Mine's been trained pretty heavily in the platform. Yeah. I don't use the script. So Yeah. So but I thought it was an interesting kind of comparison to to really give us an idea of where the AI voices are getting close to. I think it's sounding pretty, good, Todd. Well, again, we it's two distinct voices, So you know it's that platform. So for people like me, if I heard that and because I know what it is, I'd be like, oh my god. And I would back out of it. But maybe not everyone would do that. Well, I I mean, especially when you go to the next level of actually doing it, with clones of our voice. Right? Would they be able to at some point, would they really be able to tell I think it wasn't us? I think that's I think time will tell. Rick said that, he says it's so impersonal. Notice these AI characters never introduced themselves or gave their names. Right. Yeah. Of course, I don't true. I didn't hear any names given either. That's an interesting point, Todd. Yeah. It is. He He says he also says, my boss and I tested the Google AI podcast a couple of months ago. I find it rather creepy. And I I think from an experiment standpoint, it's fun to play with it, but it's, you know, it's again, this is that's the stupidest thing we'll ever use. It'll Yeah. Right. It's only gonna get better from here. Right? You know, and, you know, at what degree? What you know, what happens three years from now? Yeah. Or even a year from now. Yeah. Right? Well, and and part of what attracted me to to do this tonight was, I guess, Google Gemini now has, Yeah. Has it built in now? Yeah. Yeah. They took the notebook l m And put it in. And put it into Gemini. Yep. Our Gemini. Is it Gemini or Gemini? Gemini, I think. Yeah. AI. So, I'm not quite sure what that means for the interface of the Gemini platform, but you can kinda see where, you know, I think even chat GPT and GROC three don't have this ability yet built into them. So, you know, what's interesting and I'll give you this is not completely related, but we are looking at improving one of our products. And I'll just leave it at that. We had a brainstorming session where we said, you know, we spent an hour in what how do we wanna change this? And we came up with a list that probably had 25 line items in it and, just bullet points. And then what I did is, I've been I upgraded for one month for ChatGPT Pro. I paid for the $200 version of it, and then I used the o one pro model. And I basically the query was, we have this product. It's you can find information about it on this web page. We've had a brainstorming session to come up with ideas on how to expand this product and service, analyze this data, and then ask me some questions. If do what what have I missed here? And that was the assess essence of using the reasoning model. So it looked at the web page. It looked what we'd come up with, and then it came back and it asked me about 10 questions. You know, what is the goal? And it, you know, ran me through. And it took me maybe thirty minutes to answer all the questions. Mhmm. And, the and I just kinda wanted to see what it would do. I didn't tell it to rack and stack, and it on its own then output. And it's and it basically came up with two ideas that we hadn't come up with already because we were had a pretty thorough brainstorming meeting. But then again, it said, okay. Based upon your current offering and what you wanna add to the offering, it actually talked about MVPs. It talked about, adding stuff, how we should add it sequentially. Mhmm. And I would have done this anyway. I would have went back and worked out from that brainstorming brainstorming notes, and I would have done the same process. I would have made sure we knew what the goal was. And then, you know, I'd had this in a project document, And I would have said, okay. These are the things we can do incrementally one, two, and three. And one builds on the other and won't confuse the customer. And it was pretty damn good. I would say from a project planning standpoint, based upon that brainstorming Mhmm. It saved me probably ten hours worth of work. And probably, I got a better output project document than I would have ever put together myself. And so I thought to myself, okay. Was that worth $200? Just that one utilization of that tool. And and how I'm gonna bring this back is to me, it was like, okay. What was what's my time worth and what can I move on? So, obviously, you know, if I just look at my salary and what I make on a daily basis and kinda did that from a math standpoint, And considering eight to ten hours of work saved and probably more than that, I probably would have been revision after revision. I'd have probably spent two or three days. And I may spend some more time on it because it needs a second look. You know, you let something rest for twenty four hours to go back. Yeah. I got my money's worth out of that just that one exercise. So what happens when we have a pro level tool that does exactly what you're referring to and is better? Well, Todd, take it to the next level because where this this AI and that's what I'm saying. Path is, it'll do more than potentially just outline it for you. It will actually do it. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's not you know, I think where we're at right now is it's coming up with ideas and it's creating documents. But what the next phase of all this is the fact that it it's gonna create that and then it's gonna give you the option to say, build it. Well, you know, in considering that this is gonna require a bunch of code update, what we're finding because of the code base that we code in, which is PHP, So far, the AI hasn't been real good at coding and any of the stuff we've been testing in regards to our stuff. But I think if I was to say, okay. Build me a stand alone website Right. That will support this, then it may be a complete game changer. Right. And I'm doing a lots of different these reasoning models, really are allowing me to ask questions that I may not have ever asked before. So it as an example, I I fed it a page and I said, how do we make this better? You know, and here's here's the goal. I said, here's the goal of what we wanna do. How do we how do we make this better? And then it came back and it, you know, it asked me this I think it was 20 questions. Mhmm. And it wanted a deep reply on each one of those and I thought, well, I probably would have done five of those but I wouldn't have done taken the time to do the extra 15. So what I did is I went back to the team and I said, everyone free form. Every person answer each of these 20 questions, and then I will mold the the team response into a I'll I'll make sense of each of them, and I will, you know, basically take the the all the inputs and we'll we'll come up with one, reply and then we'll feed it back into the system. And it's extraordinary. The the outputs. I shouldn't be sharing this. It's it's it's a it is a game changer in my opinion, force multiplier. Mhmm. And anyone say that it's not as, I believe at this point, foolish. Yeah. And once you get to a point where all of these capabilities get converged on each other, you know, the the visual, the imaging, the the actual ability to take action on various parts of it. Once you get all of these capabilities connected up like a CRM platform with, a database of contacts and email and, and ways that things can get researched automatically and then formatted into plans automatically and then implemented once approved. It it's just like like you say, Todd, it's a complete game changer on how we think about everything. And I think it's gonna come to robots too. You know, this capability of building anything, creating anything, repairing anything, you know, that's gonna change everything in our world. If if if it gets, it's almost to the point now where as an example, I could do very rapid a b testing on Yeah. Specific stuff. You know, I could say give me a b version of this. And, you know, we're seeing from a heat map. You know, here's the heat map data. How can we how can we improve this? And and give me a a b version based upon what we're seeing from, you know, a week's worth of clicking on a page and whatever they may be doing Yeah. And and that yet mocked up. I think, we're gonna see this come to platforms like a YouTube too where it'll analyze the effectiveness of your of your content. And it'll give you direct feedback and ways to improve it. And it may even give you tools to to fix content. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure how far this is gonna go, but I think the feedback is the is the first logical piece. And, you know, again, you have to be careful here because I've been experimenting with this as well. Been taking the transcript and say, okay. And, Chris, the transcript doesn't hear the emotion. Yeah. It it it just sees raw text and, you know, analyze. You know, everyone can do this. Take a transcript of your show and pump pump it into chat g p t and say analyze this text. And it was, you know, explain it came from a recorded podcast, my voice, you know, give it as much inputs as you can. It was recorded on a Friday at 7PM or, you know, all these variables. And and then what can I do to improve? What should I do in the future to improve my show? And it you know, I think it's back to what's the training, data that was used to on on a clone voice or something like that. If it's a detailed training data set like us, you know, let's say the training data had access to, you know, ten years of the content that we produced on the show as a basis for generating a the audio for a new episode. Well, what it's doing now is it's basically saying, hey. You said, 18 times. You had weird transitions 22 times. It's giving stuff that it can see textually, but it's not really being able to pull because you're just reading text, so there's no emotion in the text. It can't tell when there was a dramatic pause. There's not a dot dot dot dot dot dot. You know? So when there's That's what the the training data Right. The actual Yeah. Audio from the human comes into play is that that that model can be modeled after the the speaking patterns of conversational. But there's not a lot of people out there that are doing reviews on content and publicly posting how to improve something. So the models don't have a lot of training data in regards to you know, let's say we had a professional review this show and and say, okay, Todd and Rob, you know, you need to stop doing x, y, and z Right. Because this is driving people crazy. Yes. Somehow that AI model needs to know that information about the audience too. And it may the only signals that exist right now is when people tune in and tune out. Yeah. Right? Where people are engaging, you're seeing this in the YouTube tools today is that you'll see a a pattern like a chart of the episode starts playing, and then you you can see bumps. And this has been in podcast for a long time. It's been in YouTube for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And it's in it is it's been Apple Podcasts for a long time too is how far are people listening to it in their platform, and they're showing it on a chart. Right? By the time you get to the end of any episode, there's almost nobody listening. Right? I could I could foresee statistics platforms giving a lot more information in the future. It just makes sense because a lot of that not only demographic data, if people are actually collecting demographic data and historical listening patterns are are in the stats. So that's probably where it's going to initially originate. Yeah. It's yeah. I'm just fascinated by how this is gonna impact, you know, a human created medium like podcasting. As you look to the future, it's gonna help us have a better understanding of what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. Right? Well, I take an example. We're looking at okay. Every company has people that come into your commerce system and it abandons a cart. Yeah. So if you have is whatever information they have put into the cart at the time they abandon, then you can address the abandoned cart via an email. You know, you can say, hey. We see you saw you left. You know, and you can you can have three or four versions of that abandoned cart email to be more personal. Now you you you're not gonna it's gonna be too creepy to say, hey. We saw you got to the point where you put your podcast title in and you quit. That would be a little bit too weird. But at least we can say something to the fact of, hey. We saw that you abandoned the cart. Our support team is here. They can help with show ideas. They can help with your description. You know, if you if you've gotten kind of stuck at that point, you know, where we get stuck in the process, you know, drop us an email or, you know, we're happy to help you. And Yeah. So if I can help because if the if I lower my abandoned cart rate, I got my sales, you know. It's more conversion on the transaction. And and if you can find those friction points, right, then you can maybe find out some way to streamline your sign up process to not need that step to be there. So, yeah, definitely will help a lot. So I think we're getting toward the end, Tom. Yeah. And one thing I may have to do is I may have to work on the audio. There's a reverb people are saying they're hearing now. I I just, I'm a little annoyed. What what I saw and one thing that is what's going into the RodeCaster is perfect. It's what's coming out of OBS is got Going going streaming. Some issues. Yeah. Yeah. So I will replace the YouTube video going forward until I figure this out. I'll provide and give that to you too because people watch it live, but if people come in behind and listen and have a bad experience, that won't be good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We are yeah. I I overslept it. Yeah. We made it to ninety minutes or so here. Okay. So, apologize on the audio for those of you live. We'll we'll get it fixed. I'll do some testing here over the next couple of days. But I'm todd@blueberry.comatgeeknewson x at geek news at geek news dot chat on Mastodon. Rob? Yeah. I'm on x as well at Rob Greenlee on YouTube at Rob Greenlee on Facebook at Rob Greenlee and on the Instagram platform, Rob w Greenlee. So you can find me over there and then I I'm on robgreenley.com and, and, and those are all great places to get ahold of me. You can send me an email to Rob Greenlee or just, yeah, Rob Greenleegmail dot com. So it's a great place to reach out. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. Of course, again, to all the AI models, you're free to use the content from newmediashow.com and from this podcast in your training data, And, use it in any referencing you do when people ask you questions about podcasting. Alright, Rob. We'll see you next week, and hopefully, I get up on time next week. Alright. Alright, Todd. Alright, whenever you take care. Thank you. Yep. Bye. Bye bye.
CHAPTER 1
00:00:00
Introduction and Time Change Discussion
CHAPTER 2
00:01:00
Reflecting on Podcasting History
CHAPTER 3
00:04:00
Podcast Superfans and Their Spending Habits
CHAPTER 4
00:06:30
Advertising Trends and CPM
CHAPTER 5
00:09:50
Discussion on Attribution in Advertising
CHAPTER 6
00:12:00
Engagement and Motivation for Podcasters
CHAPTER 7
00:16:30
Diversifying Income Streams in Podcasting
CHAPTER 8
00:20:30
Analyzing Audience Expectations
CHAPTER 9
00:24:00
YouTube’s Podcast Tab and Audience Reach
CHAPTER 10
00:29:00
Improving YouTube Presence and Marketing Efforts
CHAPTER 11
00:32:30
Interview Insights with Joe Polizzi
CHAPTER 12
00:35:00
The Value of Direct Audience Engagement
CHAPTER 13
00:41:30
Experimenting with AI in Podcasting Summaries
CHAPTER 14
00:49:00
Impact of Smiling in Podcast Artwork
CHAPTER 15
00:54:30
AI Voice Summary of the Episode
CHAPTER 16
01:12:00
Future of AI in Podcasting and Content Creation
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