Wizzard Media: 1 Billion Downloads in 2007, Podcasting Far from Dead
Wizzard Media, owners of the Libsyn, Switchpod and Blast Podcast networks, will announce tomorrow that it passed the 1 billion download mark in 2007. While online media consumption numbers are notoriously hard to verify, Wizzard's have some serious merit. They are ten times what several competitors claimed earlier this month.
Wizzard raised $7.5 million in funding this summer. With multiple major ad campaigns in the works, including one by a branch of the US Armed Forces (the ultimate brand!) - Wizzard's biggest challenge now may be meaningful monetization of an already growing audience.
The company claimed 85 million downloads for the month of May, which put it on a pace to hit 1 billion in a year. In their year-end calculation they determined that the Wizzard servers were receiving an average of 2.75 million requests for podcast episodes per day in 2007, up 300% from demand in 2006. That number is dwarfed by TV and radio viewing numbers but none the less demonstrated strong growth and contradicts the perception that podcasting has failed to live up to its promise.
Key moves this year
In August the company acquired Libsyn, long the most visible vendor in the podcasting community, and hired Rob Walch of the popular show Podcast411 as its VP of Podcaster Relations.
Alex Williams, founder of the Podcast Hotel conference, told me that while the numbers were large, the news of Libsyn and Wizzard's momentum was not a big surprise. "They were first to the market and they executed," he said. "This demonstrates the value of that. Plus they have strong, stand-up people."
It was also last August that Libsyn announced a partnership with Nielsen Netmetrics to certify downloads. Walch told me today that the Libsyn part of the network's downloads since August were the only part of the 1 billion number that was certifiable by Nielsen. Wizzard announced in September that the entire network of more than 8,000 podcast publishers would use Nielsen/NetRating's SiteCensus product to certify downloads in the future.
Muddy Waters
In addition to the challenge of verifying downloads, it's an entirely different question to ask how many users actually consumed the media they downloaded. Download and view numbers are generally believed to be widely inflated.
None the less, Wizzard's numbers were more than 10 times what competing networks have reported for 2007. Revision3 announced last week that it had played over 100 million "clips" and 25 million "shows" last year (with "an unprecedented 100% unaided sponsor recall" says the sales guy), whatever all that means. Video meta-network NextNewNetworks rode the fast cars and big boobs formula to more than 100 million claimed views in just 10 months of 2007. Podshow hasn't announced any numbers for 2007, which can't be good, but it did manage to spend a lot of money and lose Natali Del Conte to CNet. Perhaps it too topped a billion but was concerned that no one would believe them.
Libsyn love
Libsyn is widely appreciated but has in the past been criticized for some spells of down time. The company's own support blog reports a lot of problems with stats collection, but perhaps those are reports of problems solved and thus good news.
Libsyn charges podcasters a monthly fee for storage and delivery. When I asked people what they thought of Libsyn, almost everyone told me it was good and cheap. Further proof that you can charge people for online services today and they'll thank you for it.
Note: If you like podcasts, check out ours too. It's called ReadWriteTalk and even if you listened to it a billion times you'd still want more.
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This is interesting...I wonder whether podcasting will be this hot in 2008...is 1 billion the right data???
bookmark @ livbit
http://www.livbit.com
Offtopic, but what's happening to Omnidrive? Down for 2 days already!
what about podtech? I'm sure their numbers aren't high but I'd bet their calculated CPM is far ahead of the competitors. what about asking these vendors what their revenues are? itunes must have billions of downloads and they have no revenue model
Question why do we call it podcasting - I mean I know where the name came from but why do we call it podcasting?
Shouldn't it be call Internet Talk Radio or DAR = Digital Audio Recording.
The name is really confusing to the
Zune user out there. :-)
In response to Dennis Ray Nestor.
http://podcast411.com/blog/?p=38
Oh boy,
Can we just STOP with the whole damn 'change the name its confusing' crap once and for all? The word is Podcasting, it will STAY that way from now on. That fight has long, long, long since been over and done, and the 'podcasting' word won. You can't go back in time and change it now. So, listen to an mp3 on your Zune, that is what it does, the machine doesn't care what people call the file.
And with that... Podcast really doesn't 'promote' Apple much at all. Sad to say, no matter what your opinion might be, it doesn't. I don't think of Apple when I am shelling Peas for dinner.
In concept, I love podcasts but the reality is I don't listen to many. Perhaps it's a matter of time, and the fact most of my digital consumption is focused on blogs and video.
Marshall, Next New Networks is actually a partner with Wizard Media. They sell our podcast views (not our web views). Additionally, we have over 15 shows most of which have nothing to do with "fast cars". The content ranges from DIY Filmmaking, to fashion to pop culture. Automotive is just one category. We produce, package, program and distribute this content. Wizard Media is a valuable ad network partner for us but they do not produce the content, they aggregate it for sales purposes. I believe they do the same for Revision 3.
If the new TiVo video podcast capabilities are decent, and they'll probably improve with time, that could be just the shot in the arm that podcasting needs. The easier it gets for the mainstream public to access it, the better, although I'm wondering what TiVo will use for a directory and how open they'll be. The Zune directory is still pretty sparse. CastGrabber, if it takes off, could help with that, too. Kudos to the Pickle for that one.
Thanks for the information.
Most podcasters have a problem understanding statistics and especially with sites that have good hits through search engines, this is usually counted. Also several idiots have stupid feedreaders which hit on the mp3 files again and again.
Which basically means that you have a lot of people telling you about their great success in regard even to very old shows. The last time I checked (long ago) libsyn had cut out some of the obvious stuff.
Which does not matter much anyhow. This is mainly a site for personal to middle podcasters; meaning even if that number is a bit pretty, it is definitely a believable number. It does not even take into account the numbers of the big players.
The problem for podcasting to be successful on its own standard (what everybody is demanding) is that so much of traditional media has picked it on as well and integrated it. In Germany for example, Podcasting is lead by the very present public radio and TV stations, many of them in their normal program are received nationwide.
The audience does not differentiate between "old style boring radio" and "great new content!!! through innovative ways"; they just see "wow! great new content".
And that is the best part about it.
none the less is wrongly written... Correct spelling is nonetheless.
The reports of stats problems on the Libsyn boards are NOT reports of problems solved - look at the dates of the posts. They are a reflection of ongoing problems that have been ongoing, off and on, for more than a year.
There is measurable dissatisfaction about unreliable stats among Libsyn customers who visit the boards.
I'm very optimistic about the continued growth of podcasting, especially in Asia. I make an English learning podcast for ESL students and it's growing a lot. Literally tens of millions of people are roaming around the continent with mp3 players. A huge % of them still don't realize that you can put more than just music on these devices, and they are just starting to become aware of podcasts.
http://www.china232.com