Overview of uStudio’s Podcast Analytics Dashboard

You asked, we listened. New and improved podcast analytics dashboards are here! You’ll now notice a new series of dashboards designed to make it simpler to understand how your podcast program is performing. Content trends, program adoption and individual listener progress will supply better actionable insights to help you grow your best podcast program.

It is important to consistently measure your private podcast usage with analytics to improve how your company communicates. Employee habits and podcast listening behaviors may change over time and you don’t want anything to go unnoticed as this can successfully shape your future content.

Podcast analytics that are available in uStudio’s private podcasting solution include the following.

Metric Definitions: 

Audience Activity:

• Licenses - The number of podcast licenses you currently have purchased regardless of the time frame selected.
• Activated Users - The number of podcast audience members who have made use of the podcast application before the end of the time frame selected
• Time Played (Minutes) - The number of minutes your audience listened to podcast content in the selected time frame.
• Total Plays - The number of times your audience played a podcast in the selected time frame.
• New vs. Returning Users (weekly) - For each week (Monday to Sunday) in the selected time frame, this graph shows the number of first time (new) users and returning users. This does not mean that the users are “new” for the time frame, it means they are new since the podcast program launched. You can mouse over any of the bars in the graphs to see details of new, returning, and total users.
• Play Time of Day (GMT) - In the given time frame, shows the number of times your audience plays podcast content in each hour of the day (00 is midnight, and 23 is 11pm). The time of day is in GMT which means you will likely need to convert GMT into your local timezone. Future versions of the dashboard will do this conversion for you automatically. You can mouse over any of the bars of content to see the actual count of plays in that hour of the day.
• Web vs. Mobile Users (weekly) - For each week (Monday to Sunday) in the selected time frame, this graph shows the number of users that used the mobile application and/or the web application. If an audience member used both, they will be counted twice. You can mouse over any of the bars in the graphs to see details of Web, Mobile, and total users.
• Web vs. Mobile Play Time - In the given time frame, this pie chart shows how much time your audience spent playing content in the mobile application and web application. You can mouse over each piece of the pie to see the number of minutes spent listening to content in that application in addition to the percentage of time.
• 

Content and Plays:

• Monthly Podcast Content Published (Minutes) - The number of minutes of new podcast content that was published each month in the time frame selected. You can mouse over each bar of the chart to see an exact number of minutes in that month. Note that this chart is not available in the Groups dashboard, only the top-level account dashboard because Groups restrictions on published content may change.
• Weekly Podcast Content Published (Minutes) - The number of minutes of new podcast content that was published each week (Monday to Sunday) in the time frame selected. You can mouse over the graph to see an exact number of minutes in that week. Note that this chart is not available in the Groups dashboard, only the top-level account dashboard because Groups restrictions on published content may change.
• Monthly Podcast Content Played (Minutes) - The number of minutes of podcast content consumed by your audience each month in the time frame selected. You can mouse over each bar of the chart to see an exact number of minutes in that month.
• Weekly Podcast Content Played (Minutes) - The number of minutes of podcast content consumed by your audience each week (Monday to Sunday) in the time frame selected. You can mouse over the graph to see an exact number of minutes in that month.

 

Audience Details:

All Users (ranked by play time) - Displays all Users in your podcast audience with details for each. The Users are ordered with those with the most play time in the given time range at the top and those with the least at the bottom. If there is more data than can be seen on the screen, press the link at the bottom of the table to “View all ### rows”. This drill-down view also allows you to sort by different columns and export the data.

• Email - The email address of a User (if available).
• Given Name - The first name of a User (if available).
• Family Name - The last name of a User (if available).
• Play Time (Mins) - The number of minutes of podcast content a User consumed in the given time range (if any).
• First Seen - The date and time that a User was first added to the podcast audience.
• Last Seen - The date and time that a User last used the podcast application.
• User ID - The unique uStudio ID for a User.
• Status - The state of this User. All available states and their meanings are listed below.
  • ACTIVATED - The User has logged into the podcast application and is using a podcast license.
  • INVITED - The User has been invited to the podcast application, but has not accepted their invitation. The User is not using a podcast license.
  • REGISTERED - The User has an entry in the uStudio podcast application, but has not logged into the podcast application and is not using a podcast license. Users may have this Status because they accepted an invitation, but did not log into the application or because an entry was made in the uStudio podcast system for the user via SCIM, but the user has not logged into the application.
  • DEACTIVATED - The User was deactivated from the podcast application by a podcast administrator or by a SCIM notification. The User is not using a podcast license.

Progress by User - Displays details about content consumed by Users in the given time range. The rows are sorted alphabetically by the User’s email address. If there is more data than can be seen on the screen, press the link at the bottom of the table to “View all ### rows”. This drill-down view also allows you to sort by different columns and export the data.

• Email - The email address of a User (if available).
• Given Name - The first name of a User (if available).
• Family Name - The last name of a User (if available).
• Show Title - The title of the Show of the Episode that was consumed.
• Episode Title - The title of the Episode that was consumed.
• Progress % - The maximum percentage through the Episode that the User consumed. Below are a few examples.
• • If a User listened to 40% of the Episode and never listened again, this value will be 40.
  • If a User listened to 40% of the Episode, then rewound and listened to the first 10% six times, this value will be 40.
  • If a User listened to 40% of the Episode, then fast-forwarded and listened to the last 10% of the Episode (90% through 100%) this value will be 100.

Adoption Within Your Podcast Program 

Adoption can be viewed through your analytic dashboards by comparing the number of your activated users by the number of your licenses. If your adoption number seems low, you may need to reevaluate how you are promoting your program to your audience.

For those who use SSO for authentication within their podcast initiative, this offers the unique opportunity for private podcast content admins to compare user logins to credentials found on the organization's roster. By comparing the SSO attributes passed to uStudio by user metrics, your organization can better understand login activity and track users who should be leveraging the tool. If there are members who should be leveraging the tool but are not, it would be worthwhile to dig into why, and contact their manager for feedback.

Characteristics of Your Users

Podcast Administrators can now clearly view the amount of new vs returning podcast users for each week in a given time frame. Building a recurring audience that comes back for content week after week is important to the long-term success and community surrounding your private podcast. If your returning podcast user number is low, you may need to think about how you can make your published content more engaging. In order to best drive returning podcast users within your program we recommend having a predictable editorial calendar, utilizing promotional materials such as promotional embeds and pushing subscriptions within your audience.

You can also clearly view your podcast audience’s web vs mobile play time. This can again be valuable in determining listener preferences and adjusting your content accordingly. In our recent podcast episode, CCC Information Services told us they had switched to more video podcasting when they realized 80% of their workforce was consuming podcasts on the web during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the display on a desktop is larger than a mobile device, they knew video would be even more engaging in this setting.

What Is Driving Usage and Engagement? 

Our new dashboards should make it easier to understand your podcast usage and engagement. For example, within the content and plays section of your dashboards, compare your content published graphs with your content played graphs. Are you receiving more plays the more often you publish content? Does a regular cadence impact plays at all? Does a show that contains more episodes have more overall listens? In our shows and episodes graphs, you can also view engagement for your unique content including the amount of plays, shares, likes and more for each podcast episode and show living within your studio.

uStudio customers have also expressed wanting more specifics on unique audience members and the content they are consuming. In our Progress By User section, administrators are able to easily view exactly every podcast episode an audience member consumed and how far they listened within that episode.

Take Note of Trends Between Groups

If you have created groups within uStudio’s Podcast Management Console (PMC) you can also filter your analytics dashboard to a particular group. This can help you determine how one group’s listening habits within your podcast channel might differ from another group.

Maybe your sales organization needs short, high-level content while a group consisting of system and software engineers might prefer more deep dive, interview-style private podcast content. Understanding how group patterns differ can help you to develop the most targeted and successful podcast content for your specific internal teams who are consuming private podcast content. You can learn more about group analytics here.

Raw Event Data

All of the data presented in the Podcast Analytics Dashboard is powered by databases of user information, media content, and user events. Most of the data comes from the raw user events via the Podcast Analytics API. Because this data is so detailed, there are often more than 100,000 rows and/or 20 MBs of data available within a select time frame that you cannot download the chart into a CSV. We have provided you a link to our Statistics Dashboard, which is a prototype tool that will allow you to download vast quantities of raw event data. Here is a Statistics Dashboard tutorial on how to generate and download a basic report of raw event data. Our raw event data includes the following:

• Timestamp - The date and time the event happened in UTC.  The format is “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS”.
• User_Id - The unique uStudio ID of the User that prompted this event.
• Event_Type - The type of event that happened.  Event types include:
• • download - The user downloaded an episode
  • like - The user liked or “un-liked” and episode.  If is_active is true (1), it was a like.  If is_active was false (0), the user removed their “like”.
  • login - The user logged into the podcast application.
  • played_time - Corresponds to a player.progress event for each 1% of an Episode consumed.  The “Played_Time” field shows the number of seconds consumed for each 1% of the Episode.
  • player.impression - The media player was loaded.
  • player.play - The media was played.
  • player.progress - Corresponds to a played_time event for each 1% of an Episode consumed.  The “Progress” field shows the percent of the Episode consumed.
  • player.ratechange - The user changed the speed of the content playback.
  • share - The user shared an Episode
  • subscribe - The user subscribed or unsubscribed from a Show.  If is_active is true (1), the user subscribed.  If is_active was false (0), the user unsubscribed.
• Show_Title - The title of the Show of the Episode that was consumed.
• Episode_Title - The title of the Episode that was consumed.
• Played_Time - For the played_time event, shows the number of seconds in 1% of the Episode consumed.
• Is_Active - True or false value for the like and subscribe events.
• Show_Id - The unique uStudio ID of the Show.  This is necessary because Show titles may change over time, but the ID never changes.
• Episode_Id - The unique uStudio ID of the Episode.  This is necessary because Episode titles may change over time, but the ID never changes.
• Application - Will have a value of WEB or MOBILE to indicate which application the audience member was using when this event was fired.
• Email - The email address of the User that fired this event (if available).
• Group - A list of Group IDs of which the User was a member when this event fired.

Our raw event data gives you even more reporting options. Pipe data into your own internal systems to further correlate the numbers with your business goals.

A crucial component of a successful private podcast strategy is measurement  - something that doesn’t have to be hard thanks to uStudio’s analytics. At the end of the day, remember your podcast’s success might look different than another company’s podcast. It is all dependent on the objectives you originally place, your business goals, and what you seek to accomplish by implementing a private podcast for your business.

Visit our product page to learn more about how uStudio is helping companies leverage podcasting for internal communications and training needs.