Podcast Measurement: Remote Audio Data Is Here

After a year in development, RAD is being deployed for podcast listening measurement, according to NPR.

Collaborative minds and leaders from across the media industry have worked closely with NPR to develop and launch a new podcast analytics technology: Remote Audio Data (RAD), a method for sharing listening metrics from podcast applications straight back to publishers, with extreme care and respect for user privacy.

NPR worked with a cross-section of nearly 30 companies to develop and test this new, parallel metric and we're excited to announce its open source release and launch in NPR One.

According to NPR, a devoted group of organizations that have been a part of the development work. Industry leaders are joining NPR in committing to implement RAD in their products in 2019: Acast, AdsWizz, ART19, Awesound, Blubrry Podcasting, Panoply, Omny Studio, Podtrac, PRI/PRX, RadioPublic, Triton Digital, WideOrbit.

Furthermore, more companies support and have participated in pushing RAD forward: Cadence13, Edison Research, ESPN, Google, iHeart Media, Libsyn, The New York Times, New York Public Radio, Wondery.

"Over the course of the past year, we have been refining these concepts and the technology in collaboration with some of the smartest people in podcasting from around the world," said Joel Sucherman, Vice President, New Platform Partnerships at NPR. "We needed to take painstaking care to prove out our commitment to the privacy of listeners, while providing a standard that the industry could rally around in our collective efforts to continue to evolve the podcasting space."

How does RAD work?

Podcasters mark within their audio files certain points (quartile or some time markers, interview spots, sponsorship or advertising messages, etc.) with RAD tags (ID3 tags) and indicate an analytics URL. A mobile app is configured to read these RAD tags and when listeners hit those locations in the file, bundle and send anonymized information to that analytics URL. The publisher can then use that data, from all devices, to get holistic listening statistics.

"Measurement has been one of the open challenges in the podcast industry for a long time," said Acast's Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Johan Billgren. "As the medium continues to grow, universal metrics will be key to its success. At Acast, we believe in the power of audio and have embraced measurement and reporting since the beginning for our thousands of podcasters around the world. We are proud to support the introduction of Remote Audio Data (RAD) with NPR and believe this is a significant step for the industry."

NPR will also be launching soon a free tag-writing tool for podcasters to create their RAD tags, and shares the full tech spec at rad.npr.org.