So much media consumption isn't real

PLUS: Literary fiction’s death is greatly exaggerated

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So much media consumption isn't real

The podcast industry is going through a bit of an emperor-has-no-clothes-moment now that Apple has tweaked the way it handles automated downloads.

Basically, the Apple Podcast app is designed so that if you stop listening to a podcast for a certain length of time, then it stops downloading new episodes. But if a person then suddenly listens to the show again, it auto-downloads the episodes you missed. 

Or at least that’s the way it used to work. With the latest iOS update, those automated downloads no longer get triggered. If your podcast only publishes occasionally, the update probably wasn’t a big deal, but those publishing more frequently saw a seismic hit to their download numbers. In fact, the change was so consequential that the downloads for the top podcasts are down by as much as 20%.

Unsurprisingly, those shows were heavily dependent on the lost downloads, mostly so they could exaggerate their listener base to advertisers. As Semafor reports: 

Reactions to the change have ranged from mild annoyance to legitimate alarm. Some advertising deals were inked under the assumption that shows had audiences they no longer have. The update also means that some shows could struggle to meet minimum download agreements. The fact that no major podcasts would talk about how much they lost is a sign that many big shows aren’t ready to admit how much their audiences have shrunk.

To be clear, Apple did nothing wrong here. If anything, it took a vanity metric and replaced it with a more accurate one. Because of how podcasts are delivered, it’s long been difficult to measure how many people actually listen to a given episode, and so that’s why the industry has settled on the download as an imperfect proxy. The iOS update simply eliminated downloads that were unlikely to convert into listens.

And while every publisher would have grudgingly admitted prior to the iOS update that downloads did not reflect true audience size, that never stopped those same publishers from touting their monthly download numbers in the media kits they sent to advertisers, and they still set it as the main KPI on which their advertising contracts are based.

In fact, this incident just drives home a truth that pertains to the entire internet and arguably the offline world as well: so much media consumption just isn’t real. Almost every metric we use, both privately and publicly, to measure the success of our content is grossly exaggerated, and there’s very little we can do to change that.

To start with, many experts believe that upwards of half of all web traffic is generated by bots; and while some of this bot traffic can be detected by your web analytics platform, a good bit of it isn’t, hence why ad fraud is such a massive problem. If inauthentic bot activity were easy to spot, then adtech platforms would simply weed it out, and publishers wouldn’t have to lose an estimated $84 billion every year to ad fraud.

Even in cases where a human being actually visited your content, they probably didn’t consume very much of it. I’m always reminded of this when I open my YouTube dashboard and see the average watch time is five minutes. Given that my videos usually span about 45 minutes, that means an enormous portion of my viewers are opening a video, watching the minimum 30 seconds needed in order to be counted as a “view,” and then closing the video not long after. Web articles also have a depressingly low completion rate.

To be fair, lots of publishers track KPIs that are meant to measure actual user engagement, but even these metrics have major flaws. One metric you hear referenced often is “time on page,” with the assumption being that the longer a web page is open, the more engaged the reader. But a gigantic number of websites are opened each day only to sit there unread in the Chrome tab bar. There’s even an entire genre of article that coaches people on how to be OK with closing all their tabs. And if you’re using a platform like Google Analytics, those open tabs all count toward time on page.   

Then there are newsletters, a medium that’s been forced into adopting all sorts of flawed metrics simply because it’s so hard to track activity within the inbox. We used to track open rates as a proxy for newsletter engagement, but then iOS rolled out updates that automatically opened every email in the inbox. Then publishers moved on to click-through rates, which are measured when a user clicks on a link in a newsletter and is briefly rerouted through the ESP’s server. But it turns out even those are vastly inflated:

Omeda, whose clients send over eight billion emails per year through their platform, told Inbox Collective that 63% of all clicks they see in emails come from bots. AWeber, one of the longest-running email service providers, shared their internal data: Only about 5% of clicks on their platform come from bots.

So why do we tout so many figures that, deep down, we know are highly inflated?

Part of it has to do with the fact that it can be difficult to actually pinpoint true consumption, since we don’t have a camera situated on each and every user as they view our content. This is a problem that’s plagued media for at least a hundred years; in fact, if you think web metrics are controversial, ask a TV or radio executive what they think about Nielsen ratings.

Then there are the business motivations. Not only are publishers incentivized to inflate their audience size as much as possible, but most media buyers are also willing to turn a blind eye. Ad agencies are paid based on a percentage of ad spend, so often they’re motivated to buy as many impressions as their budget allows, regardless of whether those impressions came from attentive humans.

Finally, I think we shouldn’t discount the notion that these metrics inflate our self worth. I can’t be the only newsletter writer out there who takes pride that his open rates are hovering around 50%, even though deep down he knows that the true number is nowhere near that. Many of us would be truly depressed if we actually knew how many people were consuming our content on a regular basis, so we settle on the fake numbers. Sometimes it’s OK to embrace a little fiction if it helps us get up in the morning.

What do you think?

Can the Creator Economy go on strike?

Ever since actors and screenwriters forced serious concessions from Hollywood studios, creators have been wondering if they could gain similar leverage over the major social media platforms:

Over the years, several leaders in the creator economy have floated the idea of a creators’ union. In 2016, longtime YouTuber Hank Green tried building the Internet Creators Guild, but the idea came perhaps too early; the project lacked the funding and momentum to keep it running, so it shut down in 2019 …

… Now, Ezra Cooperstein, a veteran in the industry, is working on a project called creators.org, which is a nonprofit aiming to act as a unified voice for creators. A similar group, the Creators Guild of America, launched in August. And in 2021, SAG-AFTRA opened up membership to creators, but the union won’t negotiate with brands; rather, this special agreement allows creators to qualify for benefits from the union, like health insurance. But none of these organizations has become popular enough to attract a big enough community of creators — at least not yet.

I'm extremely skeptical that the Creator Economy could ever organize a comprehensive "strike." Creators are entrepreneurs, not employees, and the industry is incredibly disjointed, making it extremely difficult to organize in enough numbers to make a difference.

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A cool local news innovation

This is pretty neat: a Massachusetts media entrepreneur created a local social media platform where people can follow each other and local news media. "The 016 has received 17 million email opens, 13 million click-throughs to other media, 6.7 million video views, and 4.5 million clicks on the site’s own original news articles."

The rise of shopping influencers on Substack

The Guardian profiles several newsletters that specialize in product recommendations:

A big part of Substack’s appeal is that fashion content on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok has become saturated, homogeneous and often so glossy it’s hard to trust. On the flip side, a disingenuous “relatable aesthetic” is also rife. Buying clothing from a link posted by someone who is only promoting it under duress of a paid partnership or ad has started to feel a little … icky.

I'm kind of surprised that product recommendations are thriving on Substack given Amazon has a strict policy against its affiliate links being used in newsletters.

Want to pick my brain on your content strategy?

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Literary fiction’s death is greatly exaggerated

There's this widespread belief that "literary" fiction — which I guess could be defined as realistic storytelling that places a high emphasis on writing craft — doesn't sell very well and is mostly written to appeal to MFA grads and other aspiring writers. That's not necessarily true:

While granting the usual caveat that “literary fiction” is a vaguely defined and easy-to-critique label, literary fiction sells quite well. Look at the NYT bestseller list in any given week. By my count, about 50% of the current NYT hardcover list would get that label. Publishing isn’t giving huge advances to the Jonathan Franzens, Sally Rooneys, and Donna Tartts of the world for giggles or because of a CIA-MFA conspiracy. They do it because those books can make a lot of money. Publishers make bad bets, surely. There are plenty of famous big money literary flops. But there are plenty of big money flops in YA and other genres too.

The LA Times continues to struggle

A few years ago I read a fact that blew my mind: the New York Times has more paid digital subscribers who live in California than the LA Times.

I think that really speaks to the challenges that nearly every newspaper that isn’t the New York Times still faces: it’s incredibly difficult to get people to pay for local news.

Anyway, I was reminded of that factoid while reading this piece on why the LAT’s executive editor resigned:

“The LA Times does good journalism but it has not figured out how to become enough of a must-read to readers in Southern California,” said the former editor.

“The LA Times needs 1 to 1.5 million in circulation just to be viable,” this person said. “And it is stuck at around 700,000.”

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