Introducing Vid2Pod and RedCircle’s new Host Read Ad Offering #583

- Strapping, we're gonna talk podcasting. You're gonna break it down. - Everything - Gonna - Story - Sharing - Expertise, each episode a adventure. - So turn out - The volume and let's get started. - Here we are on the new media show, , uh, Rob, uh, what do you think of that? - That's awesome. . Definitely a, a more UpToDate kind of, uh,

music track for us, that's for sure. It, - It's a little bit long , and I guess I didn't check to see how long it was, but would you believe that's AI generated? - Oh, these days, nothing surprises me on that front, so it's great though, - At suno.ai. - Suno, huh? - S nno.ai. Yeah. That's - Interesting. Yeah, - It is interesting. So, anyway, I don't know why it was repeated.

It was only supposed to be 30 seconds, but it was going on while, while, - So what's the, what's, what's the copyright situation on that stuff? Do you, do you have any idea, - Um, what's happening here? Did we lose the stream? No. Lemme check mine. Let me double check. Make sure we're still online. Yeah, we're still online. I, I, I think I, I did - A, okay, I see it in mine. So, - Are we on Rumble? Maybe that's what happened. I don't know. We didn't - it didn't, uh, didn't connect on Rumble.

- Uh, you know, I was, be honest with you, I was like running, we, we were five minutes before the show started. Lucky I had the studio already turned on . And, um, I had recorded something earlier because we were in the middle of launching our AI system today. And I, that launch went at two. And then I'm just trying to, you know, do the orchestra thing here. And I looked up at the clock and it was two 50, like 2 53. Yeah. And, and, and I was like, a big F word come out

of my mouth. So we're getting - All the balls in the air, right? Yeah. - We're, we're lucky. We are, uh, even on, and it says YouTube is not receiving enough video to maintain a smooth stream. Okay. Is it still complaining? I don't know why it would, that would be the issue. I'm looking here anyway. Um, I may, yeah, - I'm seeing it too. It says, it says a a YouTube is not receiving enough video to maintain a smooth - String. Yeah. I don't know why.

Because, yeah, I think I know why, but, uh, it, it's, it's my mess up. So anyway, it, it is, it is what it is. We're gonna have to live with it. 'cause I was pushing too many buttons. Um, no. So, um, yeah. All right. So anyway, that's, my team was in the middle of launching the AI stuff. So been a busy, busy week. Of course, Monday was a big day. - Yeah. So let's talk about your, your video to audio podcast product that you, uh, that you announced. It's kind of, kind of cool.

It'd be good to kind of give a little demo of that, uh, of which I saw a, a video, uh, online that you, that was linked to in pod news. I saw. So Yeah, there's - Really no, no demo. It's just basically you - Screenshot or a screen share. - Yeah. You just, you know, you, you link, let's see if I can get, find one, find a a show here, because, uh, you caught me all on it, unready. But basically all it does is you link, okay, I, I've got one here. Hang on here, let me go find it.

Which show do I want to do? Okay. - Or just pull, pull up that, that screen on your page or - Something. Yeah. I'm making sure that I've got the right one here. So, uh, nope, it's not that show. I gotta get the other one here. - Yeah, I know that, uh, we've been talking about for, for months now, the need for the video creators over on YouTube Yeah. And other platforms to be able to have a, you know, an audio podcast version of their, of their YouTube show.

And it looks like Todd, your team has done a automation process that can grab a, a - Playlist. Yeah. So off - Of YouTube, - Essentially all, all the podcasts are, they can either originate on our vid to pod or if they're an existing podcaster. It's real simple. Mm-Hmm. . And when, when they're in our dashboard, there's a place over here where we have, uh, show settings.

- Yeah. - So this basically is a place where they normally set if they want a page blueberry or if they want a free blueberry free WordPress site, or if they have their own website. And if they own a website, they can link it up and all that stuff. But down here we have a new feature. It says, uh, vid to pod. And all that really is, is, is we, we make it so that you enter your at sign. In my case, it's at Geek News.

- Mm-Hmm. - . We pull up the, in the onboarding process, we pull up the channel, then, um, we show the playlist, our playlist, and you have to select the right playlist. You confirm, um, that and certify, and this is through the terms of service as well. There's a terms of service screen, actual terms of service screen you have to do before you get to this screen. Um, and then you decide you wanna use your own channel art, or you wanna use, or you use your own cover art.

Do you wanna use your channel art from YouTube? Do you want all videos or you want videos from a certain date? And once that is set, and once a podcaster agrees to that, and again, the terms of service and why we have to have a separate terms of service is pretty obvious. Number one. Uh, giving us permission to pull their content, some other licensing stuff, making sure they know number two, that if they have music in their video podcasts, that the music licenses will not transfer.

And that they should not be using this service because, um, they'll be liable. Because if they've used YouTube music as a copyright in their content, uh, that copyright does not cover in an audio podcast, they're, they're not clear. So we make them understand that any music in your podcast has to be licensed. It has to have the appropriate license for podcasting, - Probably externally from, from right.

From YouTube that has the license to be able to be on YouTube as well as, as a, as a - Podcast. But if you, if you're using YouTube music Mm-Hmm. , um, that is not licensed for podcasts, that you, you can't bring that across and you're not eligible, uh, for, for this service.

And then once that's done, every 15 minutes, we go out and well, what we do is we migrate you first, and then when the episodes are, and what we do is we pull the media over and what then shows up in the system are new episodes. And we pull in the title, the description, the chapter file. And, uh, we auto publish the media. So anytime you publish a new mm-Hmm.

episode to a, to a playlist over on YouTube, the playlist you've designated, uh, within 15 minutes, we'll pick that up, pull it in, convert it, and, um, auto publish. You don't have to do nothing, set it and forget it. Um, so they can still make additional episodes. They can still participate in anything podcasting. They can still set everything up just like a podcast. Uh, but the main process here is we've just completely automated so they don't have to do anything.

- And so I have a couple of questions. Is there a way that, let's say a YouTube creator can just go to blueberry.com or whatever and, and say, I I want to create a podcast, and all they do is enter their, their, um, their address to YouTube. Yeah. - That's what happens during the onboarding be - Or something like that. 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. The special link will set a, a cer a set of flag.

If they come to us just as from our hosting account, they'll have the opportunity to do the vid to pod option after onboarding. It's not part of the normal process, but we can, but it basically, we want them to start the process on our bid to pod page. - Yeah. 'cause you might capture a lot of YouTubers that are saying, well, you know, I'll just, this is easy to do. Yeah. I'll just, - Yeah. We already have, - Go over here and I'll put in my, my Path to my YouTube account.

Yeah. And then I can select what channel I want to have. We go into a podcast feed and it's, we we're pretty much done. We, - We reached out to folks that already had podcasts. Mm-Hmm. , um, on real podcasts, A AKA. And, um, all of them that we reached out to have migrated to us, or they originated with us, and they changed the process so that they do not know, do they do not do any additional work now that they've migrated, they're over, they just set it, forget it.

So now they're saving 15 to 20 minutes. They don't have to come in and create a post. Everything is done automatically. It - Just transfers all that data outta YouTube. Yep. And just uses it Right in the RSS feed. Yeah. Okay. - And, uh, yeah. That's awesome. And we convert it to high quality audio. Um, again, what's - The default kind of playback bit rate? Is it - We're doing 128 k? I'd, I'd have to look if it was mine or stereo, but, okay.

- Um, yeah. - But I think - Most of the stuff on YouTube, I think is in stereo, I believe. - But so, and again, it's, yeah. It's one of those things where the, we just made this so that it would be simple. Yeah. Um, - So is there any kind of, uh, authentication of ownership of the - YouTube account? You have to, you have to certify that it's your account. - Okay. - Um, we're, we get a daily running report of who's added content that we're reviewing.

Um, so, you know, you basically have to certify, and plus you have to have a credit card on file. You have to pay for this. This is, there's no free, you know, there's basically, uh, um, what we've seen and what we saw on other platforms is people on Reddit and other folks have made all kinds of hacks. Mm-Hmm. . And they're putting, uh, YouTuber's content into apps, um, that are not even podcast apps. Um, yeah. And the YouTuber's getting no credit for it.

So way we set this up too, is that, you know, if a, if a YouTuber's monetized and they're worried about losing monetization, you know, they can turn on monetization programmatic here. And again, it's, it's an audience way. We feel this, this is a growth opportunity people are gonna watch, continue to watch. And then those, is - There any, any potential way that, let's say some Joe Below podcaster types in Joe Rogan's account and is able to create a podcast?

- If they do? Uh, it'll be caught really quick on our site, because again, oh, it would, we're we're reviewing every day. Good. - Good. - You know, and if we, and, and if we run into any type of issue, then we'll go to authentication. But we just wanted to lower the onboarding process. Um, you know, it's not something that's it. It's, so again, they gotta, they're gonna have to pay to do that. And not saying that that's, - Well, it might be worth it. - Right. Well, not saying that. That's right.

Um, but, you know, we're not, we're gonna make sure associated accounts are associated accounts. - I would say that's probably the biggest risk there is people getting in and trying to hijack content. - Yeah. But the question really then is for what, uh, a few hours, you know? Yeah. I - Mean, if, if there's processes that can catch it, I think that's terrific.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had the same problem back when I was working at Spreaker, um, where people were cloning feeds in the platform, and that caused all sorts of problems. - Yeah. We've seen very, very little of that. Anytime you have to put a credit card on, and I got your credit, - It does cut - Down on that. I got your credit card information, you know, your name, your zip code, your billing information. - Yeah. Yeah. That's a different, that's a different level, right.

- Of - Yeah. Of engagement. And if, I think we're mainly this kind of stuff happened is on free, free platforms. Yeah. - Right. Yeah. And there's a couple out there that doing this now for free that I'm surprised that, you know. Yeah. - Oh, oh, they are. Okay. - Well, there, you know, there's, there's a, yeah. Not doing this now that creating an RSS feed. Oh. But someone that's basically creating audio. - Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like a website that you enter - Your Oh, it's, it's an app, your

- YouTube account. Yeah. Right. - Yeah. - And it, it exports all the audio or all the video out - There. Yeah. So yeah, I've - Seen those. Yeah. Awesome. Is there any other details like this? It sounds like, I mean, does it work outside of the WordPress plugin and inside the WordPress plugin? - No. It only works on the blueberry dashboard. - Just on the dashboard. It doesn't yet work in the - No, - The plugin. Yeah. No, - No. And we probably won't be put it in the plugin, I don't think.

Because again, so you have, if you have your own website, uh, already, you can link that in the system. So there is a way, um, if you, if you, again, so far we haven't run into anybody that, um, has been publishing via Mm-Hmm. their own website. And then you do, then, we'll, we'll talk to 'em, figure out how we're gonna work it with them with turn off auto publishing or something. 'cause then they would still have to manually publish on their own website.

- Yeah. 'cause that's what I'm doing doing with, um, with your platform right now is I publish directly to my WordPress instance that then goes into your Yeah. Your system through, through the plugin. - So I don't have a solution for you on WordPress now. So again, it's, and we figured the majority of these folks that were gonna coming over, you know, those that are have a process are.

But again, I've moved some people already off other web off by their podcast hosting platforms to just want the ease. And the only had over there was a landing page. Anyway. So - Yeah. I think it's those that are, are creating videos that are, you know, serialized o over there that have been put into a podcast playlist. So th this is any of the playlists, not, not just the ones that are designated podcast playlists. - Oh, it's anybody, yeah. Any playlist.

Tom says, there's so many reaction videos to license music, and it seems impossible to police disclaimer or not. Yeah. It's gonna be impossible to, it's on them, you know, we've warned them, uh, right. You know, and - Spotify's gonna catch it and take it - Back - And - Yep. Right. We've warned them, you know, and basically, it, it's very, very clear that, you know this, you better have a life if you've got some music in your content.

Matter of fact, you know, you have to click and say that, you know, basically. And if they didn't read the paragraph, I can't help that. But, uh, I'm sure some somebody's gonna, and we'll get a take down on a Yep. - Well, it'll - Happen on a piece of content. I'm sure. I'm sure it'll happen. - Yeah. And it also creates, creates an interesting loop too, if you think about it.

Um, where you could, um, have a playlist video that you import in your system, create a podcast feed, and then that podcast feed could be submitted to YouTube Music . Right. - Rob? - What? - We're trying to get 'em to come this way. - I know, but it could go both ways. That's what I'm saying. - Right. Well, and they should already have that designated as a podcast playlist anyway. Not set the Rss s feed. - Yeah. Buting, that would just an audio only version.

Right? Yeah. So you'd have the video and the audio version. - Guess that's, I guess that's true. - Yeah. - You know, so, and, and really what it, what what this stemmed from as I came back, you know, podcast we had, as you know, I was talking to this gal, she says, I'm doing a YouTube channel Right. Just quite adamant with me - Is - I don't have time, I don't have time to do a podcast. - Yeah. It's a hill to climb to. - And, and, and it was, you know, and she was pretty,

and I'm like, okay, okay. No. - Right. And it's automated once you get it set up. Right. Right. So each time you uploads to, to YouTube, it automatically generates it. And - Post, I emailed her yesterday 'cause I had her in our contact list. I said, Hey. And she goes, oh, that's cool. And, you know, so you don't have to do any work. - Right? Yeah. Yeah. - So we will see how this works out. I'm not saying that there is a, you know, there's, there's lots of things.

There's, you know, the interesting product - It is. It is. And it, it, it changes the conversation around working with, um, coming outta YouTube and getting involved in podcasting, which I think is, - And, and again, making that easier. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I, we really tried to emphasize on the product page is, is, is the benefit, the bonus podcast centric opportunities? Number one, they can get a free WordPress site with us if they want.

Mm-Hmm. , they get an audio player, they can share pre, they can create premium content. They can go into Apple Podcasts that can go into their own blueberry premiums. So if they wanna do premium audio, they can Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. , they can, if they decide they want to, they can add another show and create a true video podcast. So we feel, feel these are all marketing, messaging, training opportunities.

They can do V four V, um, they can do, um, promotions for stuff that's gonna happen on their channel. They can do pre-rolls into the audio content, say, Hey, by the way, we're gonna have a, you know, we're having a live YouTube event in, uh, a week. We want you to be there. Mm-Hmm. , they could pre-roll this into all their audio content. - Yeah. - And the best part is they never have to worry about a platform taking down their content.

So, you know, that's some of the bonus stuff, you know, um, you know, monetizing immediately, distribution, analytics. So, you know, the goal here is to, you know, that's gonna be part of our messaging, is to educate, you know, there's a whole nother world over here. You got this great world you're participating in right now, you're Mm-Hmm. . And again, this is really designed for video first folks. So your video first, then we'll go from there.

- Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I think there's, there's definitely a need for that. So I think this is a terrific solution. It'd be interesting if we were able to do more of these kind of integrations, right. That can help content creators share content. - Well, we're, we're not done, you know, with this, we're gonna add some more. - I don't think you're ever done, Todd. - Well, we're gonna add some more platforms to Vid Pod. - Oh - Yeah. Why not? - Hmm. That has some interesting things to think about.

Sure. Hmm. Yep. So you also, you also announced some AI tools, right? - Well, it's, it's been, it's been released. So I think the announcement is going out this afternoon. So, um, but blueberry customers now have accessibility to what we're calling Blueberry Pie. PI, our Blueberry podcast, AI nickname Blueberry Pie. And that's, that's, that's the name of the, you know, a little, a little cheeky there. Um, so, - So does Pie, is Pie an acronym or is it just, - Hey, come on, Rob.

Blueberry Pie. You know, it's just - Fun. I know, I know, I know. - Well, yeah, so it's, it, it's PAI, so podcast ai. Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah. - So - P Okay. PAI. - Yeah. Okay. Yeah. PAI is how we're spelling not PIE, - . - So yeah, the blog and the product page and all that's probably coming to life as we're talking here. But I saw the menu item in the dashboard, so anybody that's in the dashboard can get to it now.

- Okay. - And we, given all of our customers five free trials of each product, and, uh, the media clip creator is, uh, heavy in work, I expect that and probably a month. So, - So let's, let's play it off scenario. So you have a, a podcaster on your platform Yep. That's doing audio now. Yep. But yet maybe they have a YouTube channel that has different content on it. Yep. How are you bundling that, um, to extend that, to maybe that account having two podcasts?

- Oh, they could podcasts, they could add another. And again, we, this is just getting started here on that. - Yeah. - So, okay. - Yeah. Because I'm sure there's examples of that where people, people create an audio podcast, but they create a different kind of content flow for YouTube. They might be able to convert that to an audio podcast as - Well. And here's the thing. It's everything that a normal podcaster does. Mm-Hmm.

- - Can do, they can do creating new episodes, creating premium within that same channel. - Right? - They're not limited to what we pull in. They can produce premium, they can do whatever they want. They can go to Apple Podcasts, apple Premium. They can, so they can do everything. They, and if they wanna create a new show, you have have the ability to create a new show. They wanna become a video podcaster, they can become a video podcaster. Hmm. So really, the sky's the limit.

The only thing that we're doing is auto publishing their, - You might wanna think about doing a deal with, uh, X maybe Todd, you know, I had to mention that. Well, - Again, we're not done with Vid Pod. - Right? No, I'm sure - That you're not done. So, you know, and you know, it is what it is. Um, yeah. So those of you that are on our platform, our episode plan, I won't go into everything. There's gonna be videos out about this episode planning. Mm-Hmm.

- , - We've got the episode production tools, and I'm just showing you the top, top of the menu system. Let me show you an output. - So what's the scope of the AI capability? What's the, well, the top level, let's, let's, - Uh, here's, here's the one I did for Gee Central. Mm-Hmm. . I got, uh, transcript. - Okay. - Title. I chose my own title. I didn't like the titles. It came up to with on this one. But we suggest 10 titles.

I get a show summary, I get bullet points of the content that's been covered. Uh, I didn't do episode Generation on that one. Let me back up. Let me find one. I've got episode generation episode art. - Okay. - And episode chapters. So this is a full chapter list of every, you know, the 30 plus topics I talked about in Ke Central. It automatically mark the chapters, put the time hacks in. I can upload images, do links. But here's the, so - That goes into the, the player too, I would imagine.

- Yeah. All, all this transfers right into, if I come back to Geekness Central and look at the last episode, you can see the chapter markers on the player that were, and also - Goes into the RSS feed too. Yeah. - Yeah. Okay. And then basically, so it's also there too. So we brought it into the Player, and it's also in the SS feed. But if I go back and go to the top of the food chain here, and I go over to the social promotion and the production, we've got the ability to do clips.

These are clips for Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Facebook. And I've got the ability to do an email promo as well. We added a little feature the last minute. Um, 'cause what this does, it starts off with a, uh, with episode planning, and there's a show profile. So my name, first name, last name, email, bio, podcast goal, podcast description, website, social media, links, destinations. Mm-Hmm. . And then Desired audience. So this is the folks you hope listen to your podcasting.

You actually set up a profile, and that goes into the episode planning section. But in the end, when we get all done, and we've done, we're doing a clip highlights, uh, I don't think it'll show up on this one because we just added - It. So that, that email capability there that you're generating there, is that, um, moving towards maybe kind of a newsletter type of - Capability? Well, this, this is designed, you cut and paste this and put this right into your email software to

- Okay. Whatever email. Yeah, - Yeah. Platform. Well, and you can edit it, of course. But it's, it does a great job. And we just, I mean, literally in the last half hour, we added, and I haven't created a new email, but we now embed within the actual email, your social platforms, your email, your subscribe links to the various, so we basically have that embedded in the AI melds that in. So I don't wanna get too deep into this.

You guys can, those of you that are not blueberry customers, come on over. We'll migrate you today. And here's the beauty. Here's the beauty. It's just 10 bucks a month with it's part of our Thrive Plan. So we've got - 10, 10 bucks a month in addition to the hosting plan, or - Yeah. But it includes, but it's part of our Thrive Bundle. A Thrive Bundle's already got like six or seven additional tools. So we've added a whole bunch of value to our, to our Thrive Bundle.

So yeah, 10 boxes. The is the cost per month. So that's cheaper than anybody's AI out there that's doing any AI stuff. And again, it's part of a bundle. You, you get, uh, you know, you get just a whole bunch of additional features. You get additional statistics stuff. It's, you know, and we're gonna Mm-Hmm. the clip creation, um, you're able to generate 16 episode images a month. So we did set a limit on that. That's the most expensive part of the whole thing. Mm-Hmm.

, um, clip creation is, uh, gonna take some overhead, but, so not trying to be a headliner, but I'm gonna, with the clip creator, we're gonna provide everything that basically Headliner does to a certain extent, except we're not gonna publish to YouTube. - Right. So is there any of these features that are getting bundled in with your basic plans? - With the, so, no. So you have to have the Add-on. You have to have the Thrive add-on Okay. To, to get the, to get the assistant.

Um, but again, I, it's a, it's a hell of a value. - That's what I was gonna say. I mean, it's that, I mean, if you were to get the same capabilities, you'd probably have to have multiple subscriptions with different - Platforms. Oh. With a lot of different platforms. Yeah. So, well, you one, you could, you know, you could pick, you know, and we went around and looked at all the pricing and, um, I, I, I, I think we've, we've done great value on this to see if I can, - Uh, - Let's see.

Is that the page? No, it's not. I don't want that. Where did I go? - Can you share what the AI platform that you're using is here? Nope. To, - Nope. Nope. - Okay. - We're not sharing, but I can switch. So whatever I'm on currently, I can switch. We've designed it. I could, if I'm on Claude, I can go to OpenAI. If I'm on OpenAI, I can go to Llama. If I'm on Llama, I can go back to OpenAI. So we made the, you know, and basically choose the, the language model.

Okay. And somebody all of a sudden next week comes out with something that's five times better. We will test in a test environment and then click the switch. - Mm-Hmm. , - I'm not, I'm not locked into any model. So - This has pre-written prompts behind them, right? Is that how it works? Yeah. - Yeah. The beauty above says - There's probably open, open areas in the prompt to fill with information from each content. - She says the beauty aboves, Todd, I notice images per chapter.

Does it mean you'll be able to produce an MP four? No, we're not talking about, uh, doing that for YouTube yet. Um, the, the, the chapters are purely a podcasting 2.0 feature that's supported in podcasting 2.0 apps. And, um, - Hmm. I can see where this might go in the future. Todd, it's interesting to think about the cross pollinations that could happen between audio and video here. Hmm. So when you start thinking about the growing capability of, um, AI video, where's that gonna take us?

- It'd be fun. - Yeah. - There's lots, lots of options here. - Yeah. I was impressed by some of the AI video that I've been seeing online lately. So, - Interesting. Or not. But, you know, again, I'm not doing, uh, it's very, very expensive. If you, okay, so let's say I have 30 chapters to do 30 images. If I was gonna do 30 AI images to add to a chapter file that's, uh, that's, that's not gonna be bundled into a $10 a month plan on top

of hosting, that'll, that happens. Now, is - There a lot of value in that anyway? - Well, no. No. If someone wants to have three minutes of this image, five minutes of that image, eight minutes of another image, if you wanna switch the image every that, I'm not gonna do video. That's crazy. I'm not doing a full motion video off an audio podcast. That's, you know, at this time. It's, it crazy how much that would cost. That would be crazy. Well, - You know, it's coming though.

- Well, you know, but it's, it's coming. It's, but it's expensive. It's really, really expensive. The, when you get into gen generating images - Yeah. - It's just like that little audio clip I just paid. You know, those are done on credits. Right. So, you know, you're not getting that, that, that is, that is, that is heavy lift. You know, you think about stressing you, you get something like that. It's, it's not inexpensive. - But Todd, I can totally see it happen. Oh yeah.

So let's say you do an audio podcast and you just use the - AI to create a, a 90 minute video of this show, - Show of the same content. Right. And then just have a - Avatar well have, just have, yeah. Okay. Well, I knock and anybody can do that for under, like, at this time, right? Under a hundred. Oh, - It's still early. Yeah's still - Early. It's still early. But, you know, do I wanna watch some swirling bs on a YouTube channel? I don't know.

- Well, if you think about the, the potential production capability that could Right. Be wrapped around that, um, it could be pretty impressive. - So Dave, Dave Jones says, bid to pot is a beautiful product. Massive kudos. The whole team. Are there any feeds in the wild yet? Uh, a couple. Yeah. I think there is. Dave. You'll have to watch Podcast Index , because we're pinging when we make the make the Show. So they would come from us.

So 51 50. I got a email from Darren or a, a, a Boost, but said, we are live and lit. I guess, I guess the Bat Single did go out. 2222. SATs from Darren Schwartz. Our church uses Rumbles a YouTube livestream backup when YouTube sends us a strike received one already, and have a, had a few older episodes banned because of Covid. What's interesting is that is more and more information comes out there, Mr. Shared in our America's Now Proven true.

There may come a day when we're having your own RSS feed will be the only way to get your message out. As of now, we publish YouTube Rumble and our own RSS feed. Great. Episode 5 81. - Yeah. 'cause you might be able to do the same thing, Todd with Rumble too. So - Another 2,222 sets.

Not answering your question, Rob , uh, this was from, - Well, it's also, you know, what's interesting is that, um, currently right now I have an account at at Rumble, and then I have a YouTube account and I can synchronize those together. Yeah, right. So they'll transfer videos out of YouTube into Rumble, uh, - That account. No, they won't do it that way no more. They quit. I'm pretty They did? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's only Rumble to YouTube now. - Oh, so YouTube cut - It off? I think so.

- Okay. I kind of did wonder why it didn't look like my Rumble account was full of my YouTube stuff yet. - So 2022 stats from, uh, Darren Schwartz says, sorry Rob, I'm with Todd on this one. If you dropped another show's episode in your feed, you'd get an email from me. Oh, it's, this is from two episodes ago. - Oh, this is the feed drop question. Yeah. - Right. If you continue to do it, I'd probably drop you. I don't have time to listen to podcasts.

I, I don't have po I don't have time to listen to the podcast. I scribe to, as it is now, a quick host suggestion if preferred. Also, I like the Clipse Fountain does. I found a couple new podcasts that way. Go podcasting. Um, let's see here. Uh, Sam Sethy sent, it was actually interview, uh, interviewed by Sam yesterday, so I'm gonna be on Pod News on Friday. Um, so anyway, that's what's going on with sat. So anyway, live and lit everybody, uh, on a new podcasting [email protected].

And we appreciate all of you that stream by the minute stream of Satoshi. That is greatly appreciated. And, uh, it's an - Incentive for us to just keep talking for hours and hours on - It. Yeah. Well, you know, , I, let me check our Skype here. See if our guest came. - Yeah, that would be great. I think we're over. Oh, - Hey guys, how you - Doing? Good. Now let me do some screen changes here because I, to get you in here. Two, three, I don't know. I don't want that one.

I want this one. Five. Ah, there you are. . It's what's happening. Red circle's, what's in the house? Get - In right. - What's going on, Caden? Yes. - Caden. Yeah. What, welcome to the show, Mike. - Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been listening to you guys for a very long time. I listened to you on like one and a half x though. It's a very different experience to listen to you live, uh, and, and get you at, uh, at the natural pace.

- You do know that, uh, when you listen at that, that pace that your brain gets jacked up and people have found that they, when they go back to one time speed, they have less anxiety in life. So we definitely recommend one time Speed, - . Okay, thanks. I'll, I'll switch it back. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's sometimes I'm listening to the show, like, you know, it's a show about poker or something for my, uh, for entertainment.

I tend not to fast forward. And then when I'm just trying to download, you know, industry information directly into my brain, like the Matrix, uh, you know, I tend to turn things, turn things up and speed it up. But, um, anyway, I've been listening to you guys for years. It's cool to be on. - Yeah, thanks. So, uh, you guys made an announcement today too? - Yeah, we did. It was a, a a, a really interesting, uh, day for us.

We launched a, a new product of ours that we call Open Wrap, um, which I'm happy to tell you about. Um, many people think about Red Circle as a podcast hosting company, which we are, you know, we have a, a podcast hosting business and a a, a competitive product in that space. Um, but the main focus for our business is on host Red advertising and host Red Advertising Automation.

And, um, the product that we released today sort of takes all the stuff that we've been doing over the last several years that helps us build, uh, and automate host red advertising and brings it to podcasts that are not, uh, hosted on Red Circle exclusively. So those things used to be tightly coupled our hosting and distribution, which has its own dynamic insertion technology and our ad automation.

And now we're bringing our ad automation to podcasts that are hosted on other vast compatible hosting platforms. I just use a lot of jargon, so I'm happy to get into the details. - Let me guess. You are intercepting the download link. You decide if you have an ad inserted ad If it is, you download the video reinsert and serve it, and you incur the hosting bill to deliver that. And if there's no ad, you deliver it from the host.

- No, we don't do it that way. I think that's the way, um, what Dynamo did it, that was a product from Box Nest. Yeah, from Box Nests. Yeah. I worked on that. And that was an interesting kind of like, uh, end around solution to the problem because, uh, but the problem with that is then once you insert the ad and you're the one delivering it, then you're, uh, incurring the bandwidth, which is no fun, but, but doable. But also then can mess with the stats that end up back on the, uh, podcasters.

That's right. Uh, host of Origin. Um, what we've done is that, is we've used a technology called that Vast, which is supported by some of the like larger enterprise, the more enterprise-y uh, hosting companies. And what it does is, uh, it's, it comes from video, uh, ad serving and it's a, uh, XML based protocol, and it lets you kind of instruct the other ad server, Hey, you know, insert this ad for me, uh, ping me back after the a's been inserted.

Um, and so we sort of talk server to server directly with, um, the other podcast hosting company. - Yeah. So then you have to do an integration with the, with the hosting company to do it. - Uh, yeah. It's an open standard and it's, it's, it's supported by, you know, uh, megaphone and R 19 and Omni and some, some ads with simple cast setups. So it's supported by a bunch of those like enterprise hosts already.

Um, you know, there's always, when you do these kinds of protocols, there's always little idiosyncrasies to work out when you're integrating, but for the most part it's, uh, it's, it's functional with all those places using the, without having to do a bunch of custom integrations.

- Yeah. When we did the Sounds stack for programmatic, ours is a little easier because they just tell us whether they have an ad for this particular, you know, so we serve it when, um, there's no ad and they serve it when there is an ad, and then they send us log files back so we get our log files back in the same exact format. So we, we basically are able to maintain the, the metric data and, uh, 'cause you know, they basically, we, we agreed on the, on the log format and, uh, nice.

And then they, they just pop it back to us. So, um, you know, we thought about doing this for programmatic as well, uh, kind of similar to what you're doing, but it just, it's, uh, you know, if if there's enough money, it's worth it. You know? I guess that's the key. - Yeah. Well, so for us, uh, you know, we've been successful in scaling up the host Red part of our business, which is where we focus. And, um, Mm-Hmm.

, it was getting to the point where the main limiter for us was the amount of podcasts that we could convince to switch to our hosting. Uh, and I think our hosting is great, um, but I think there's lots of hosting providers that are out there that are great. Uh, and so competing over there while also trying to make my main business about advertising, uh, was complicated from a, uh, and, and making it harder for us to scale what we actually cared about, which was delivering hosted ads.

And so, while we still have a great hosting product, and we're not throwing that away, or not gonna continue, uh, iterating on it or anything like that, um, this enables us to move fast on our ad product and, and do it on podcasts sort of wherever, wherever they live - Now, without revealing my entire business relationship with Sounds Stack. Sure. You know, so I would just say that their commission came outta my cut - Uhhuh - , so I took a less of a cut.

Um, so basically they earned their commission. I earned my commission. I just earned less commission because, so how are you, how are you incentivizing me to work with you, ? Yeah, well, - The ad uh, the ad side of what we do is our own sales team and our own direct relationships with brands and agencies. And so, uh, there's nobody else that's like bringing the demand in from the other side. Uh, it's us doing it and then we, we have a 30% rev share that we take from.

So it's in, in some ways it's sort of functions similar to how an ad rep would work. The only difference is you're not dealing with, uh, a million emails and spreadsheets to pull that off. Uh, you're just interacting with our application. - But, but if I'm giving you access to my host, what, what, where's the, is there incentive for the host to give you access to those customers? - You mean the podcast hosting companies?

- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. - Uh, yeah, there's a, there's, there's different pricing models that those folks have. They do charge like a small, uh, like CPM based fee for the actual ad insertion over this technology, but that's the extent of the, the fees that are being taken by these hosts. - Yeah, that's interesting because I, I wouldn't give up my host for an insertion fee.

- Yeah. I mean, megaphones not letting me, uh, you know, they have their own, their own thing called span, which is like their programmatic thing that that runs above anything else that is inserted into Yeah, the inventory. - Sorry, you're getting whatever. Yeah, I underst ah, yeah. - Their field's not super, you know, overwhelmingly high. So there's plenty of inventory usually left. No, that's curious. But they're, they're making sure that they get to, uh, to, to get the first dibs.

And there are other folks that I think, you know, recognize that the publisher has an interest in being able to source their own advertising and, you know, plug it in and punch it into the, uh, dynamic insertion UI that existed megaphone. Um, this isn't really that different. It's just happening a little bit more automated so that the publisher doesn't have to, you know, copy and paste a bunch of measurement pixels or make sure they get the dates correct when they, when they flight to campaign.

Right. All that is happening automatically on our backend instead. - Yeah. - Hmm. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of what I wanted to ask you about too, Mike, is, is that you say in your announcement that you're automating all the manual steps, is it just because you're, you're doing it through your own ad sales force, or is there some other aspects of automating the manual steps here? Are you guys doing that between your, your ad sales folks and the, the brands?

Is there something new going on there, or is it just the automation of working with you guys and not having to deal with it? - Yeah, so I mean, that's, that's the core of what our product is, is, you know, we started, five years ago, we released a free hosting just to bring some podcasts on, and then we started selling ads by hand. And I've heard Todd talk about this, and you can hear, yeah. You know, you can't monetize the network and all these things.

Like, it's, it's so painful to run these campaigns by hand, right. Uh, and you, you have everything from, you know, podcaster says the wrong promo code to, you know, we forgot to invoice, uh, or, you know, the agency didn't pay us on time or the pixel, - Or make goods matter - For the stuff. Yeah. So every one of those things I just mentioned, we have built systematically features for, to streamline and make those part of our application instead of a bunch of emails and spreadsheets.

So, you know, as a podcaster, you get an invite to an ad deal where we, we say, Hey, you know, here's the, the, the dates and the terms and what's going on. Like, are, do you wanna do it or not? They say Yes. Um, and then from then on the platform is managing everybody's deadlines. It's emailing the, the advertiser saying, Hey, I need a script. I need a script. I need a script. The advertiser puts the script in, uh, you know, it's then emailing the podcaster, Hey, I need a read, a read.

You know, you need to update in, you know, three days, two days, one day, and we're sort of herding all these cats. Um, and then again, the pixels and the reporting and all of that stuff, these are features built into the platform. There are things for, you know, podcast to read the wrong promo code or ad was not approved, or, um, you know, putting the, the right CTA and the R ss feed. All these things have, uh, features that we've built to try and make this as streamlined as possible.

And that's why we're doing, you know, I, I don't know the number offhand. Usually like five to 600 concurrent host red ads on the platform. We just have like one ad ops person that's kind of being the glue whenever something isn't handled by the platform itself. Um, but it takes a lot of focus and energy to just work on that for many years. To get to that point, - Mike, you should have bought my Cams product. - . Yeah, - . Because I've had this built for 10 years.

Yeah. Yeah. Not as deep, but we built same thing, you know, because it was like hurting cats. Yeah. Was Cats and, and I was running it . Yeah. You know, so the Pi Piper, yeah, it, it was me, you know, and, uh, it, it's, it wasn't as fancy as it, it did automatically send reports to the media buyers. It did send emails to the podcasters, but we did true host reads. Nothing was inserted, everything was baked.

Because even today, this is what I don't understand, 95%, 96, 90 7% of podcasts globally get 90% of the lifetime downloads in the first 96 hours. So why, why do we even wanna bother for those shows that are getting this maximum reach within the person? Why even rebuild that? Why not just, just leave it in there? You know? Um, sure. There's shows that have Yeah.

Long tail, they have Evergreen, you know, but the majority of shows and podcasting looks like a, a hockey puck, a hockey stick stood up on end, you know, it's, yep. Right. So - After the Apple changes, it's even more so, you know, the, the back catalog stuff's kind of of even less, right?

Um, the reason why we focus so much on dynamic insertion and don't do baked in at all, is not because of the way it gets deployed into the content in terms of the episodes it's in, but it's more about cat herding and the efficiency of the process. Wow. By actually managing the insertion of the ad itself.

That means we're in a position to deal with the pixels to make sure that it is flighted correctly, to make sure that we, um, that we know when it went in and when it came out, and all of those pieces. Mm-Hmm. Because I think there's been many other folks, you know, pod in the past and others that are still around today that, um, that have these, uh, uh, host read marketplaces that have a bunch of, that sort of take all those emails and spreadsheets, right. And move them into a web application.

But then there's still that step at the end where it's like, okay, podcaster, like, go take all this information, remember, - And what you gotta do, do it - All correctly. And there's so many opportunities for mistakes, not, not the Podcaster's fault, there's like 25 details in each of these deals. Deals. And if you're doing three a week, it's, it's easy to make a mistake. Um, and then, you know, you're sending screenshots of, uh, reporting and stuff afterwards.

So there's all this efficiency that comes with doing it over dynamic, which is why, why we focus there. - I, I still be honest with you, double middle fingers, the media buyers that want pixels, you know, are they really, are they really getting that much value? No, I don't think so. I don't think so either. - Yeah. I think the, yeah, I mean they, they're, I appreciate - to hold over from another era, - Right? - Yeah, yeah.

But I think the, like the, like, one thing it is really good for, and I, we find it really interesting when we get our hands on the data, is to see the comparative performance of different podcasts. So forget about like a real ROAS number that comes outta this thing. Yeah. Right. But just to see like, hey, these two True Crime podcasts with 20,000 weekly listeners, you know, that are reading the same set of talking points, you know, one can perform five times better than the other.

And you know what the reason is for that? Is, is, is anybody's guess, right? Is the, is the, the quality of the ad read is the relationship that Host has with this audience. And so, like, you know, me being able to see that as the guy working with the podcaster and the advertiser is like very helpful. But I understand also kind of like people tend to over overvalue some of the data that comes out of it in a way that, you know, sort of backs into like a hard ROAS number.

But it's still, you know, you gotta look at a, a much bigger picture than just a just one one dot on a, on a graph. - So the universal question is, and it still remains, which drives me absolutely crazy, we're monetizing maybe four, 5% of total podcasts out there. Um, you know, what does this do for the other 95% who actually statistically, 'cause I've got years of data perform better because audience are smaller and more intimate.

When are those shows, uh, when are those shows gonna be thrown a bone or is it ever gonna happen? - Yeah, I mean that's, that's like the fundamental, uh, motivation behind building why we chose to build this business.

Um, you know, we saw most of the dollars going to the top 500 or top thousand podcasts, but we believe more than just the number of podcasts where there's like so many down the long tail, um, but also kind of, uh, there's a huge kind of, uh, fat torso, it's named after me, uh, of, of middle class podcasters that are, you know, that have, uh, a couple thousand listeners Yeah. Up to a couple tens of thousands of listeners. And when you aggregate those up, they're actually bigger than the Yeah.

Just this middle school huge. And those folks, you know, they get an ad deal here and there, they find better help or they have a relationship with an agency, um, but they're way under monetized relative, relative to the folks at the top. Um, and they represent a huge amount of, of space, uh, for future investment from, from brands.

Uh, and that's, I think software like ours that, uh, aims to like herd all those cats in a way that's possible, where you can deploy 200, 300 podcast campaigns, um, without having to pull your hair out, um, is going to hopefully make it, I mean, over the last several years, we've paid $16 million to podcasts like that. I think we'll hopefully do more and more of that as we go. Um, but that's what we're, that's, that's our main mission.

That's what we're after this, this product helps us move a little bit closer to the top of the market too, because it's a little more focused on those podcasts that are on enterprise hosts. But, um, but yeah, you know, those two things together should enable us to continue to, uh, to work with larger and larger brands and deploy larger and larger budgets and make sure it gets distributed to podcasts of all shapes and sizes.

- Well, I would, I would love to see, uh, I'd love to see, uh, you guys think about, uh, a way to, uh, figure out a point system that incentivizes me, understood. Yeah. I mean, I - Haven't thought about, - Yeah, in, in the end, you know, let's be honest, I'm not greedy, but I'm gonna do the dev work to put something together, which, you know, we can do, um, that dev work's gotta be paid for in whatever overhead. And then, you know, we obviously you can't cut the pie 25 times.

That's 'cause then you know who gets screwed, the creator gets screwed. So for me, that's why when we worked with Sounds Stack, I, you know, they took their commission outta mine and I just took a lower commission. So, you know, and they, and, and they provide all the, you know, they provide all the inventory. I don't have to do nothing. I go to sleep. And they, they manage it. So collect

- The paycheck. That's - Nice. Well, and, and not only that, I just, I give the, you know, these are podcasters that would not have an opportunity otherwise, you know, they can do value for value. They can do all the other stuff that's available out there if they want. Um, and we see a growing number of folks that are using programmatic, which is good, but we both know where programmatic pricing is.

You know, that that'll never, you know, that'll never, if it ever gets above 15, I think I'll, you know, I'll, uh, you know, Rob, I'll probably eat that hat you're wearing .

Um, but you know, right at I'd happy, I'd be thrilled if it stayed at 12 or 13, but usually it's 7, 8, 9, 10, you know, and, but if we could get to find a way to, to put money in podcasters pockets, guess what it does, doesn't matter if it comes from, uh, value for value, doesn't matter if it comes from donations, doesn't matter if it comes from advertisers. We put money in podcaster's pocket, guess what they can do?

They hold up that check or that PayPal statement or wherever that money's come in, and maybe they show their partner or they buy themselves dinner, or they buy, make a car payment or whatever the number is. This is a motivator. It's just as much as a motivator of, Matt just sent us 2,112 SATs, he says, watching the show from Spain. So that's, you know, that's again, getting value back from Matt for saying, Hey, I'm watching the show live.

And then Dave Jones says, uh, yo Mike hosting companies interviewing other hosting companies. We live in a crazy world. Well, we're really not a hosting company there, Dave. It's, we're doing a new media show. I happen to, you know, be a, a founder of one, but doesn't mean we're doing, we're, we're an open opportunity, uh, thing here. And you can see I'm wheeling and dealing a little bit at the same time. That was from Dave Jones. - Yeah. I think your point is valid.

These, these vast and programmatic integrations do a lot of work. We've done them before. Yeah. And then found a hundred dollars on the other - Side. It - Was a disaster. Um, you know, uh, and so, you know, you do wanna make sure you're spending your engineers wisely. Uh, I think the, like, the way, like I said, the way these enterprise hosts do it is I think they charge a fee for service. Um, that's just like another approach, - You know?

And, and I, and it's when it goes back to, you know, I, I'm a creative first, it's, I, I don't think that's any surprise. So, because I, you know, I'm the one that's getting a check too. You know, I get a check from GoDaddy and I, you know, I Mm-Hmm. , I, I protect every point of that, that I can. Right. So, um, so I, so I get it, I really do do, this is cool what you're doing there. Yes. Um, yeah, this could be done another way.

This could be done the way we did it with Sounds stack where it's not as complicated of an implementation, so, Hmm. How, how are you, how are you working the insertion points? - So yeah. That's all managed by the, by the podcaster in their existing, - In their system. Okay. So they set their marker.

- Yeah. And they, the way this ends up getting flighted on their end is it's almost like a camp, a low priority campaign in their dynamic insertion system that says, you know, my stuff that I flighted for the ads I sold myself go first and then go down and look and what Red Circle has to offer. And meanwhile we see those bids that are coming out or those bid requests all the time. So we get a feel for how much inventory is available on these shows.

And we can use that to figure out how to size campaigns and, and, and, and, and what to expect. - And when that call comes about this day of the month where the advertiser says, oh, hey, I got extra 25 grand to spend. Can you move that for me in 10 days? Yeah. Um, this is an opportunity to get a flight up fast in two or three days and get that money spent.

- That's right. And I think, you know, people when they think about how to do that effectively, their, their brain turns to programmatic solutions.

Right. And I think that, that in addition to, you know, helping us spread the money around to a larger set of creators by, um, by taking out all the friction with this automation, it can also increase the speed at which we deploy these budgets, which makes it possible for those kinds of things to end up in like higher quality, authentic host red ads instead of, you know, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday radio ads that could sometimes end

up being those last minute ones. Right. What's - The fastest time you've ever flighted a campaign on one of those Friday day - Calls? Like an hour or two? not, - Not, - You know, not to a hundred podcasts, - Right, right, right. - But, uh, we have a button in the platform that's called Start Early. You know, our typical turnaround time is 10 days, but sometimes if we have to hustle, you know, we hustle and there's a button that just like makes it go.

- Yeah. I think the fastest I turned one was three days. So you, I kudos to you for a couple hours. , right? - Yeah. Yeah. It's like, uh, you know, some of my sales guys have the podcasters, uh, you know, phone numbers, uh, saved as their favorites, you know, um, it's like we, we need, sometimes if you move fast enough, uh, there's, there's dollars to grab for, for everybody. Right. - You know, and, and, and you know, this should, and this is to all the podcasters listening,

check your email twice a day, please. . - Yeah. That's actually one of the things that, uh, that, uh, that we, that we found. So, uh, what one of the things we did that really improved the response time you text them was adding tech. Yeah. We sent text, - Uh, - We sent text five days before, three days before, two days before, one day before and four hours before. Right. If you haven't hit, if you haven't hit a deadline, - . Right. That ding ding is a brilliant, my, my system, my, my system.

I haven't touched in a while, does not have that. But yeah. If we were ever to update it, I think that would be, oh man, oh, hey, you know, to get this email, Hey, does that campaign two weeks? You know, after the deadline? Hey, is that campaign still available? No, we told you. Yeah, that's, we told you had 48 hours to respond . - Right. That's an interesting product problem for us too, right. Where it's like, yeah. I mean, we can, because like I said, it's all automated.

We can like relight the campaign Yeah. And send it to you the next day. Um, but there's like a, a give a mouse a cookie problem there too, where, you know, we want the deadlines to mean something. Yeah. So everybody keeps their hair. And - Especially if you've got a media Go ahead. - I was gonna say, as much as we have solved a lot of the friction with software, there are still like fundamental people problems involved with this. And any, any interesting software has to kind of figure out

how to best take on those challenges. Right. - You see this - , - I I attest this to five to seven years of dealing with media buyers and podcasters who didn't respond to email and Yeah. Make, yeah. So I understand why you guys built what you built. Believe me, I I I understand completely. Yeah. Go, go ahead, Rob. - Yeah, I was going to kinda shift the conversation a little bit. Um, I don't know if all of you guys saw the post that Lisa Laport made.

Oh, yeah. Who's the CEO of TWIT TV about the, the advertising market and why she feels like podcasting is struggling right now. Um, and her top pick was podcast agencies demanding, um, massive ad tech in, in what they expect around campaigns. This would be, you know, um, - Pixels, all of - Pixel tracking, tracking, uh, brand safety, suitability tools, all sorts of, um, you know, uh, kind of attribution type type stuff.

Um, and whe whether or not that's kind of adding this expense layer to the advertising business and making it difficult for, you know, uh, like a network to kind of run their own stuff, which is kind of what Lisa's trying to do here. Um, versus wor working with a hosting platform like, like Red Circle or Blueberry or whatever, is really the only way going forward.

Now, are you guys feeling pressured on the, on the cost side in the complexity side around the, the expectation of agencies and, and buyers? Right, right now around ad tech, around podcasts? - Uh, some, I mean, we, we, you know, the, the, the podcast media buying agencies and there's a relatively small set of them and, you know, we wanna maintain as spectacular relationship with them as possible, right.

By delivering efficient operations so that they don't have to deal with the exceptions and the problems and, and providing high performance content for them to be on. Um, mm-Hmm. . And in the end of the day, you know, they control a lot of the ad spend, especially in Host Red. And so, um, right. You know, if they are trying to add services or add complexity to be able to service their client as best as they can, you kind of gotta play ball.

Um, you don't wanna be on their bad side because there's a million podcasts and networks out there, and you want to be, uh, servicing them as best you can. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I tend to trust that they have the best view of what, um, of what they need to keep their clients happy in terms of technology. Um, Mm-Hmm. , because they, they're the ones who are really good at closing and maintaining those, those clients and keeping that spend going.

Um, and so I wouldn't say I have a problem with it, but I, I, I completely agree with it's, it's a burden. It's co it's complex. Um, and, uh, you know, our solution for that is try to build as much software as we can to keep that simple. Um, but yeah, you know, sometimes we gotta copy and paste 60 pixels into the software to make the thing work. Right. Um, and that's a lot. - So there was one thing in her commentary that I kind of took umbrage to, right.

And my reply, she complained heavily about the, the drop because of iOS - 17. Oh, yeah, yeah. - And - The drop in downloads and, and the changes in the consumption - Side.

And, and my, my response was that not everyone was hit as badly as, and I said, then you need to be wiser in who you're picking for a measurement provider, because, you know, as we've talked about on the show, yeah, blueberry saw a little drop because of some of the change in Iowa 17, but I didn't get hit on the, the app having the issue of doing the repeated downloads to try to download back catalog. That wasn't ever an issue with us, which many other folks seem to have an issue with.

And I look at who I know who's measuring Lisa's shows, and I go, Hmm. So, um, you know, maybe, maybe, uh, podcasters need to be a little wiser in, uh, who they pick for measurement partner. Well, - Yeah. I think you're shifting quite a burden onto the podcaster there. Um, Todd, by by saying that because, - Well, a podcaster, I - Dunno that a lot of people know the differences. - A podcast, - Supposedly, if they're IAB, they're all doing the same thing, right?

- A podcaster in the adv doing advertising. Mm-Hmm. needs to ask very tough questions of the people that are measuring their shows. Right. And if they don't, I have, sorry, that's your business. That's, that's your, that's your, your bundling. And I'm gonna, if I'm going to some company and they're gonna be measuring my show, I'm gonna be asking a lot of questions. Again, people need to realize the IB podcast and measurement guidelines are the minimum standards. Right, - Right.

- Minimum. And when people realize it's the minimum, then what are you doing above and beyond? And even with this new proposal that's coming out, it's the minimum standards. And I think podcasters need to get smart. And again, maybe I'm just, maybe, okay, I, I do have 19 years behind my belt on this. And - Was it, yeah.

Well, both of us do have a lot on this too, but it's, it's more, you know, when you say minimum standards, um, that I, that really means that the better platforms will have the capability of doing a better job of filtering, um, and, and actually ultimately getting a lower number compared to other platforms. - Well, that's, no one wants to ever get a lower number.

So better lies is the problem. Well, - That's, that's, that's the key to this whole conversation, is that the IAB has not had a strict, really standard here. Um, and, and not everyone adheres to it in the same way, um, even on the up, you know, yeah. Over the lower number side. Right. Which just means that there's other filters being applied that are not required by the IEB. - It's just like now when people are saying, oh, we're seeing fraud. Well, right. We saw fraud in 2007, so Right. And you

- Built filters to detect it. Right. - You know, and you, you haven't seen fraud in the past. Well, uh, you know, usually if you're looking at your, all your data right across the white stack, there's, there's usually like a, a pipa that pops up and you're like, what is that? Mm-Hmm. . You know, and that usually that big pipper that shows up in your blog, you know, if you, if you as a, a platform have a broad dashboard to see all your traffic, not just one show, you'll say, oh, what is that?

And you go, oh, that, that's broad. You know, because it sticks out like a red thumb or whatever, sore thumb or whatever. No, I - Wonder why that podcast has, uh, 98% of its traffic coming from, uh, iTunes on a Windows machine. - Right, right, right. - It's not, it's not hard to spot fraud Hunting is actually one of my favorite pastimes. Me too. - Um, - I really enjoy it.

Um, yeah, I think on, on this measurement topic, one of the things I think is really interesting as well, uh, is first of all, I think the changes that Apple made were important for the industry. Yeah. You know, you can say what you wanna say about the, like, how, how it was handled or so on, but like, those downloads were not high quality. And so I'm glad they're gone.

Um, on the other hand, uh, you know, what you're hearing from people, and this is the range of hours, I think it was around 20%, sort of what we ended up seeing, uh, as a change, you know, 20%, uh, decrease in, uh, in, in downloads. - I know what you're gonna say. - Why is the price not up by 20%? - Exactly. - You just, well, that's, you just gave a nice big shave to the media buyers.

That's right. Uh, by not adjusting the prices com, uh, - Accordingly this performance is the same - To me, this is a sign. Yeah. Right. This performance is the same, but now you're paying, you know, 20% less price. And to, to me, this is a sign that there's kind of still, uh, not enough, uh, sort of pricing transparency and Mm-Hmm. measurement tooling such that the market itself can find the correct price for these ads.

Uh, if it stays here at below 25, where it's been for a year or two after kind of the economic sluggishness, um, you know, that's a sign that something's kind of wrong, right? That, that, that, uh, that, that the balance of power shifted towards advertisers in a way that, um, that, that is artificial. Uh, or, or, or was, or it's been too far in, in publisher's favor for some time, but why hasn't that moved?

Uh, something, something funky about that to me. Well, - It's, this is a second or third time there's been a haircut. Um, the first haircut would've happened really probably before most people in our space. It was when Lipson pod track and us kind of, kind of decided on a semi kind of spec. It was actually the first eight pages of the, we gave eight pages of the kinda the first spec that we came up with to, to the IEB and that kind of, well, this was back in like 2008.

Yeah, 2008. So there was a little, there was a big haircut then. I mean, it was major because boy, it was, I mean, we were, if - You're doing raw logs - Before that, I mean, it's a big difference. Oh, raw logs and bots and everything else. It was, you know, there was like a 60, 50, 60% cut, you know, and when you found out that, uh, you know, seven out of 10 downloads was a bot, you know?

Yeah. There was, so in 2008, there was, you know, like I said, when an earlier, oh, I think I had about 40,000 people listen to my show. It was more like probably 8,000 , you know, that was probably the real number. Right. But I was billing for 40,000, you know, so then the second cut came when the IB first guidelines came out, and everyone kind of tried to align, right?

Mm-Hmm. . And it ended up being kind of, kind of like this, because like Rob said, you everyone's kind of all over the spectrum a little bit. Um, and then this would be kind of probably the third haircut. Yeah. - It was a, the iWatch also was another - . Oh yeah. That was another one. Yeah. But a lot of us removed that before we were required to move it. So again, you know, so, you know, three, four little haircuts here, but you're right. Guess what? CP m's still 25 . Yeah. Yeah.

- It's just, Hey, it's 25 is podcasting. - Yeah. You know, and, and the performance hasn't changed, so. Right. You know, technically I was getting 25 in 2008. Now think about that. Mm-Hmm. or 2006 two, I was getting 25 then - Factor inflation Right. With that too. - Yeah. And now it's still at 25, they're getting a heck of a deal. Yeah. - Well, there's not a lot of transparency. Right. - 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 how there are remnants of this market from a kind of a radio era Yeah. Where people are kind of, um, you know, kind of have set this price and, and this is how it works, and this is what we sell at, and everybody's comfortable there. Um, and it doesn't feel like, like, you know, typical digital marketing where the prices are changing dynamically with demand and supply.

And I, I don't know if the result of a more transparent and automated market is going to increase or decrease CPMs, but what I do know is if the, if the, if the amount of value that you're getting , uh, go changes by 20% and the price doesn't change, like something is, is off there. Right. - Well then, and I, I put it back on your sales teams to push, and I know that's hard, but I also remember going, uh, I, I, I went to a city in Texas, let's just put it that way. I leave it random enough.

And I was in a meeting and, you know, I was, you know, talking with this, you know, group, and they showed me a spreadsheet and it had factoring on it. And the factoring was every podcast network had a factor put on it, a negative factor. No one had a plus. So if the base was this, let's say the base was 20, the a factor 50% mean you are only gonna get offered 10.

And matter of fact, I know one network we're only out of offered five, and Rob probably knows who we're talking about there because they used to count by sixes. So, you know, there was factoring that was put against every network. So it's the media buyers in the end back, these, this data, every, every deal they do, they've had a spreadsheet, and then they, in the end, they don't ever talk. Do you ever, how many times the media buyer told you how many sales they had? They won't.

- That's exactly the problem. - They won't tell you. It's rare. It's rare. Five, five and 20 years. And - They don't want you to know, - They don't want you to know. And and six, just GoToMeeting was the one that I knew exactly where our, and that's why we got millions of dollars from them when they were advertising direct before they went to an agency.

And so if there's factoring being put a a against every network, what they're really matching in the end is they're, you know, they do the math, it's just a pure math program. They, they, they back it out to Dr and see what their cost per acquisition was. And um, they say they don't, but they do. And they determine next ad spend on, on cost per acquisition when they Oh, no, no, no, no. We never, we, we don't do that. They lie - .

Well, I think they, I think they're pretty transparent to me at least that about like, you know, they're gonna make smart buying decisions on behalf of their client. , I think the interesting part of that thing that you just said is that it could go both ways.

Right? Right. So, you know, like if my network has been network X has been like downgraded and is is worth 50% of the other ones, then like, uh, I should be willing, I should understand that, and I should be willing to take a $12 CPM, uh, won't tell you if I'm not filling it for something higher, but podcasters also won't accept that either. Right. So it's sort of going both ways, right?

It's like everybody thinks it's 25, everybody thinks they're worth more , everybody thinks it should be, you know, so there's just no transparency. Uh, and I'd like to see that start to evolve. Uh, it requires, um, a sort of combination of the performance information, uh, with the, uh, you know, with the transaction itself, - Which know what's going to share the direct CPM they ever get. They're not gonna share their download numbers either.

- Right. And there's not gonna be any transparency on ROI coming back from the advertising either, because that puts their, their buying situation in a, in a compromise. - Yeah. Because they don't wanna show you how well they did. You know, the example I gave of the biggest mistake GoDaddy they made with me when I was renegotiating the very first time in 2005 when I asked her how well did we do? And I was only getting, I I, I'll just say it, I got 300 bucks that first month.

- Mm-Hmm. - . And because I didn't know what to charge, had no clue. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, well, - They could lie to you too. - They, she, and she told me 3 87, 387 new customers, and I went, huh, . And I said, that's a lot more - Than 300 bucks. - 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, I did the math, and I, there was nothing to go by.

Called her back the next day, and I gave her a number and just like a good used car salesman when you've screwed up, she said Yes immediately, . And I, and in my mind I'm like, I just went too low. Right. And I recovered quick enough, and it's a thing that saved me was I said, and I said, I want a bonus, a performance bonus. And she laughed, there you go. And she said, you underbid it, didn't you ? And I said, yes, I did. Right.

And, and literally that, that split moment decision was the difference between some months getting four figures and some months getting five figures and, uh, nice and a return. So, but if I had not been quick, if I'd have been hung over and not quicken up on the uptake, you know, I'd have been stuck at a four figure number. So knock on wood, you know, but again, we had nothing to go by.

And, and she told me the performance numbers and it made me go, but now if she, if that conversation happened today, I'd have come back, she said 30,000 a month. - Right. - You know, that's, that's the number, you know, that's what you're gonna have to pay for this inventory. Um, and also companies will never tell you how much they, it costs them to acquire a customer, especially on dr. They'll never tell you the cost of the acquisition on TV, radio, or if they're even doing print or digital.

They won't tell you that. I guarantee you podcasts are performing better. Yeah. - Definitely cheaper. So that's not, it's not really in their interest to do it. No, it's not. They, um, you know, and, and so, so again, I understand kind of that perspective. Yeah. Um, but you know, in a digital transaction where there is enough volume, also there's price discovery from competitors, right?

Yeah. So, um, you know, it, it should be possible to find a slightly, slightly more dynamic market where the price gets set by what the value is instead of, um, you know, who has the fanciest - Rate card? My, my sign was, whenever I knew the campaign wasn't doing well, is when you start getting asked for make goods. And when, when, when a media buyer called me and asked for make goods, basically, guess what I did? I gave 'em whatever they wanted because I wanted that check.

I wanted that renewal. I'd go podcaster, say, Hey, we're underperforming. I I need two more spots or one more spot from every show this month. You, if you wanna stay in the campaign on a, you gotta give them one. And then, then we would overdeliver to make sure that we made them happy. Mm-Hmm. So they would come back and give us another ad searching order, you know, so, you know, so it goes both ways. If, you know, if you're, if you're chasing the dollars, sometimes you got , - Right?

Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. Ah, but sometimes that's worth it, right? - Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes that's, - Uh, that's, uh, uh, you know, you save the relationship with that buyer and they come back, they appreciate it, and they come back to you sometimes you never hear from them again, and it was all transactional. Yeah. Um, so you have to kind of get a feel for, for how, whether it's worth doing those extra bonuses and added value and all that stuff.

- But I do, one thing I do hate with where the industry is now is let me just do a trial buy, let me buy one episode that's been going on forever, Todd. Stupid stupidest thing. Yeah. It's, it's the worst, it's the worst thing you could do. It's two weeks or one week. Oh, they want one episode, episode, one episode a month, right? Or just one episode. Let's see how it does on one episode. I'm like, good lord, a person just has to fart and miss your a your attitude , miss your ad.

Come on. Right. You know, it's just it. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, they're 25 years old and they know the best. - Well, - It had - Some buyers, it comes out - That they, go ahead, Rob. - It comes out out of the era of, of of click link marketing campaigns. And a lot of these folks think that this is like a sponsored link on a Google search results page, is that they should evaluate the campaign based on instant results.

- You know, and I, I, I haven't done a lot of deals lately, Mike, so I'm kind of out of the outta the loop. You guys know what's going on. So, you know, it's, you got a better handle for what these buyers are asking for. - Uh, I think everything you've just said, uh, sounds, sounds familiar to me, .

Um, but the, the thing I was gonna say is we have had buyers that, sophisticated buyers who sort of said, you know, look, we've done this for a long time, and we, uh, we, I'm sure there's one-off situations where somebody farts or whatever you just said, , right, right. Where, and, and missed an episode.

But generally, like when we look across the breadth of the data we have, we can buy one time and, and get a feel for performance enough where we wanna, um, you know, where we, where we, that's enough for us to make a, a long-term buy decision or not. That's, that's amazing. And, you know, most of the time when that happens, we sort of say, okay, then I, you know, we'll go look for other partners because the, the effort, uh, for everybody involved Yeah. - For one is - Hard as a

podcaster takes all the risk. Right. - And I, and, and again, you know, my philosophy and if you're a media buyer out there listening to just try my formula once, you gotta be on for 15 days in every episode for 15 days. And if that's a weekly show, they gotta, you gotta be in there twice. And then you look at where your performance is at 15 days. Just take those first 15 days. And that's, that's just good if anything comes through and then after 15 days, then make your decision.

That's my, again, I guess I'm just old school, but, - So also, um, Triton Digital, um, that document that, um, that, uh, Lisa shared or that post that Lisa shared also included a screenshot to Triton, oh, digital's comparison of weekly, average weekly downloads from 2024 to 2023, and it showed a 41% decline across all a lot of the major networks, or at least the ones that are being tracked by Tritton,

which isn't a complete picture. But - What did contract, 41%, how much did PO Track drop do we know from year to year? - I don't know. I haven't seen - That. 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 that are hosted with us, we have our own stat system, which is based on the IEB. Yeah. And then we have, but it's not certified.

And then for the, where we're getting, uh, ping backs from, um, you know, there, there's the IEB like, uh, ad delivery. Oh, okay. Uh, thing, and that's what these enterprise hosts use. We get a ping back on a, on a, on a url, very similar to Pixel to say, okay, that ad was delivered. Um, - But maybe not listening to . Yeah. - It's the same, it's the same, - Same thing. Yeah. - You know? Yeah. It's not just means that the bytes were downloaded and nothing else.

Um, the, that, that Triton tracker thing that you just mentioned, um, if you look on there, like some of the, you know, 42% is not the median between those networks. Uh, there were some that were down by like massive percent. Oh, yeah. Uh, and those were ones, I think if you think about who they are, from what I saw that have like sort of, uh, a lot of daily shows, right?

Sometimes with like, uh, some, sometimes with shows that have like, uh, multiple clips of a radio show that are produced as multiple episodes released in a day. Um, and so those are the ones with a massive back catalogs that were receiving tons of background traffic, right. That, um, that, that sort of all disappeared overnight. Right. Um, so I'm not surprised to see those giant changes.

I think, you know, I it's funny, I've been listening to the, you know, all the podcast industry podcasts and reading. Nobody wants to like say the number that they're at. You know, there, there's February, which is a few days shorter . And so, you know, you don't know exactly the numbers or whatever, or like, yeah. We're, you know, I heard somebody say like, what are, what are you hearing instead of answering the question.

Um, and you know, I think a lot of places are seeing, you know, 15 to 25% drops and it has to do with how long your back catalog was. Yeah. And sure, it has to do with what you said Todd about like how, how much filtering of that kind of stuff you were doing. Um, and uh, you know, but there are some folks I think that, that including individual podcasts on our platform that had these, you know, daily sports podcasts with 2,500. - So, oh, the daily got hit hard, hardest

- Where it was really pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah. - Because I, you know, that and - Plus, plus a lot of these big networks, um, canceled a bunch of shows, so that's gonna impact your numbers - Too. Well, you know, and also there's this phenomenon and, and the only reason I learned this is because we went one year and we recorded like 60 interviews and I was putting out interview every day and I was like, man, these, these are hurting, they're not getting good numbers.

So then we went to every three days and of course that, that, that podcast episode stayed in the queue long enough that it was automatically downloaded, and then they come in third day later and put another one in there. And of course, you know that, that not guaranteed they were listening, but at least it was registering to download. Right. Or a play. And, uh, so, you know, daily shows are definitely at a, at a, at a disadvantage per se. So mean we're at the bottom of the hour, Rob.

We're already, we've already made it through here. - We did. - Wow. You're gonna be out in, uh, you're gonna be out, out in la? - I'm not, unfortunately. I have a seven month old at home and we just had a company retreat two weeks ago. So I, I, I've maxed out on my ability to travel. Um, but my co-founder and the rest of the business, you know, a lot of our team's in la so we have a bunch of - People there. Oh, okay. Yeah, I, I damaged a rib on Saturday.

I fell down in a no bummer water in, in a rainstorm. And uh, I'm going, but I'm gonna be stiff 'cause it's either cracked or displaced or something. Um, it's not good. So, uh, I'll be wobbling around . Um, Rob, is there anything, any other questions you had for Mike or any thoughts? - Yeah, Mike, uh, don't you share with us how a person can, or where a person can go to, to find out more information about your new, new platform? Is there a Yeah. Landing page or something?

- Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing to do is just go to red circle.com and then there's a, there's a button at the top or either ad platform or in the feature section. There's the thing for open wrap, depending on whether you're an advertiser or podcaster. And we're doing a special deal. We're like, uh, zeroing out our commission on your first host Red Deal with us up to 250 bucks.

Um, if you sign up for the wait list, we are doing a wait list because there are some of these, uh, third party platforms that we theoretically can connect to with Vast, but we haven't done yet. And so we sort of need to work through some of those example podcasts. Um, but we've got the thing up and running now and it's, uh, it's working great, uh, on a couple of hosts.

Um, but yeah, red circle.com is the place to go, uh, and, and just, uh, sign up and add your name to the wait list - And think about that other opportunity there, Mike. Yeah, I'll - Shoot you an email - About that. That's interesting. Interesting way to, you know, 'cause guess what? Uh, I, I'd rather you lose your hair than me lose mine. . - . - I have nothing left. So - There's obviously more to lose there, right? Yeah, . - Well, COVID already took a bunch from me, but it's only better at time.

- Rob. I I will be, uh, in LA next week. So are, you're doing your own little thing, are you gonna try to do a, a independent new media show or, uh, what are you thinking? Well, - We could do one if you wanna do one earlier in the day. Um, that, that's fine. - Yeah. Let's see, - A live show that I'm, I'm doing is at, uh, 5:00 PM specific. Yeah.

- Yeah. This Vid de pod thing is getting my calendar pretty filled up already, uh, by YouTubers that are gonna be at the event they wanna, they wanna talk, so it's not complicated. Just go over and sign up. Right. Um, anyway, uh, [email protected], at Geek News on X at Geek News at and at Geek News chat on Macon. Did I say that right, Rob? - On X Twitter as well at Rob Greenley and then off of YouTube, um, at Rob Greenley as well.

You can find me over there and if you wanna reach out, my email address is um, rob [email protected]. I'm happy to hear from you. So, - And we wanna thank all the live boosts and streaming SATs that came in today. Were live. And I was gonna ask you, Mike, before we left, do you listen to, uh, to Adam and, uh, Dave?

- I do. Yeah. I, I, uh, I'm, I'm a consistent listener and I'm into all that stuff, and I, you know, at one point Red Circle had a, had a, its own lightning node running in our production infrastructure and I lost, uh, $300 of the business, you know, when I corrupted some Bitcoin, you know, so I've been farting around with all that stuff, uh, as well. - We had some new from Get Albi today. There's something coming from them.

So, but anyway, uh, yeah, so yeah, so you can't, can't, uh, monetize the network according to Adam , but you put $16 million in people's pockets. So I think that's, something's working. You think that's pretty good, ? I think that counts good. Yeah, I think that counts. Good. Alright buddy, thanks for being here and, uh, we'll keep you advised via social, uh, what's going on.

If Rob and I are able to pull one off, and if not, if we don't do it live then or do some weird hour, it'll be in the feed. So everyone, thanks for being here. And Mike, thanks for, thanks for coming too, everybody. Take care. Thanks for having - Me. All right. - All right. Bye bye. Bye bye.