How you measure the success of your podcast is a personal matter that depends largely on your goals.

For example, if your aim is to earn a substantial income from your show, you’ll want to use metrics that allow you to benchmark against other shows. If you’re only interested in understanding how to improve your content for your listeners, metrics that help you benchmark against yourself will be your priority.

Or, maybe podcast measurement doesn’t matter to you at all, and you’re just in it for the ride.

We ran a short survey of 150+ independent creators to find out what matters to them when measuring success with their podcasts.

Here are the main major takeaways, in a nutshell:

Less than half of those surveyed use downloads to measure success 

Downloads have slipped from 1st to 4th preferred method since our last survey in 2022

Followers/subscribers is the most popular measurement marker 

Listening time is seen as the most reliable or helpful metric

72% want better podcast measurement standardisation 

Let’s dive into some of those takeaways to see what the survey results tell us…

4 Key Takeaways from the Podcast Measurement Survey

1. Downloads have fallen from grace

One major takeaway from this survey is that the download is not the measurement marker it once was. Back in 2022, when we ran a similar measurement survey with podcasters, downloads were the number one preferred success marker for independent creators.

In 2024, this metric has slipped to fourth place. Now, less than half of respondents say they pay attention to their download numbers when measuring success with their podcast. 

So, what’s happened to make downloads fall from grace over these past two years? Well, quite a lot, actually.

Back in September 2022, a Bloomberg investigation revealed that some major podcast publishers were using gaming apps to amass thousands of extra downloads without gaining any ‘real’ listens. This is a click-farm-style marketing tactic called ‘rewarded traffic’. In short, the game was getting rigged. 

So, it’s not surprising that creators have lost confidence in downloads as a reliable metric. As one survey respondent said:

“It would be nice to have more confidence in the listener numbers we get, as we understand there are “fake”, “AI” and other tricks that show added downloads when there is NOT a real person behind them. Let’s tighten up the system!”

Scott at Standup Comedy “Your Host & MC” podcast

There’s also scepticism around how some hosting platforms gather listener data, too. For example, it emerged that Apple Podcasts automatically downloaded masses of missed episodes if listeners took a break from a podcast they subscribed to and came back to it.

This hugely inflated download numbers by including back catalogue episodes that listeners hadn’t even listened to. Facing pressure, Apple removed this feature in the iOS 17 update. And the result? Podcasters began reporting drops of as much as 40% in their download numbers.

Yet despite the instability of this metric, many advertisers continue to rely on downloads when choosing which podcasts to work with. 

However, it looks like downloads have had their heyday. As podcasters rely progressively less on this metric over time, the same will soon be true for advertisers. Even the podcast regulation experts we spoke to agree.

2. Follower numbers is the most popular measurement marker 

Tracking followers and subscribers to your podcast was the most popular marker for measuring success in our survey. This is interesting because, in practice, follower numbers aren’t massively reliable either when measuring success. Or, simple to track, for that matter.

First up, on reliability: How many podcasts have you subscribed to but never listened to a single minute of an episode?

I’ll admit it: when I scroll through my listening app library, there are podcasts that I don’t even recognise, have never listened to and have no idea why I followed them in the first place. In reality, it’s probably fair to say that follower numbers are a good indication that your marketing and promotion are on point, not necessarily that your content is getting listened to. 

Then there’s the tracking aspect. You can get your own subscriber/follower numbers by logging into Apple Podcasts Connect or your Spotify for Podcasters portal. Then, you can add them together, and that’ll likely account for most of your listeners. But this is hardly straightforward or intuitive.

If you play the winless game of comparing your numbers to others, you’ll struggle to get reliable metrics from podcasts besides your own. Castbox.fm is one of the few places I’m aware of that publicly displays subscriber numbers. YouTube subscribers are public, too, but those can never tell the full story.

3. Listening time is the most reliable metric

Listening time – or how much time a listener spends consuming your podcast content – is quite different from downloads and follows. It’s a metric that focuses on measuring quality (the time and attention a listener gives to your podcast) rather than vanity metrics. And unlike downloads, it’s not a metric that can be easily rigged. 

While listening time isn’t a marker that every podcaster tracks (only 16% of respondents said it’s one of the markers they use), it was declared the most reliable metric of all the options. 26% of those we surveyed chose listening time as the most helpful metric when measuring how well their podcast is doing. 

Listening time isn’t straightforward to track, either. Again, you can get a decent sample in Apple Podcasts Connect and YouTube (if you publish there). But Spotify only counts ‘streams’ as anything listened to for longer than a minute, and that’s all you’ll get there.

Like with follower numbers, your hosting provider can’t give you this data because consumption occurs on other platforms. They’re simply serving up the files, and once they do, they can’t know much more about what goes on elsewhere.

A critique of listening time as a metric is that it doesn’t work well for shorter podcasts. But that only assumes you’re using it to compare your show with others (good luck finding any data to do that!), and it also assumes you’re counting listen time as actual minutes and seconds, rather than percentages.

In summary, like most podcast measurement metrics, listening time isn’t perfect. But clearly, it matters to creators. Is it realistic to think we might get more reliable and readily accessible listening time data in the future? With so many players in the game, perhaps only Podcasting 2.0 has the potential to make that happen.

4. 72% want better podcast measurement standardisation 

We ended our survey by asking respondents to tell us what they think about how podcast measurement is standardised right now.

This is a topic that we know industry folks have a lot to say about, but we found that not all creators had an opinion either way. This could be because either a) they’re not entirely sure what measurement standardization involves or b) they don’t care about it because they run their podcast for pure enjoyment.

But of those podcasters who did have an opinion on measurement regulation, the overwhelming majority (72%) said they want better standardisation, even if it does make it harder for smaller shows to monetize.

As one anonymous podcaster said:

“I think it would be good to have something that works across the board because there are several shows that are saying that their show is doing better than certain measuring sticks would say that they are doing.

I think it may make the smaller shows look even smaller (if they are trying to monetize through advertising). It may make things more difficult for them to try to get out there. Not totally bad… they will just have to be more creative.

But as another respondent pointed out, clearer standards would make conversations with advertisers easier as everyone would be looking at the same data.

Mili, who runs No Ordinary Cloth podcast, said:

“If all platforms standardised the data, that would be super helpful. A centralised source for all your data across platforms will be possible if data is standardised and easier to extract insights from the data. It also makes conversations with sponsors and partners more straightforward. “

But again, it’s also true that for many independent podcasters, success is about how much you enjoy making your content.

As one respondent said: “I peek in to see which episodes have the best numbers as far as downloads and listening times, but for the most part… I’m happy with [my podcast] so that makes it successful in my eyes.”

One thing that’s certain is that we have little control over the data we can access to measure engagement and success.

But, we have full control over the quality and marketing of our podcasts. If you do your best work and consistently deliver value to the folks who need it, you can bet that your metrics will look good… even if you can’t actually see them!

Looking for help with audience growth and promotion? Check out our Growth Mastery course inside The Podcraft Academy.