BAYSIDE, CALIFORNIA, March 26th, 2019 – SaaS-based podcast and streaming solutions innovator StreamGuys today announced upcoming support for Remote Audio Data (RAD) technology across its comprehensive suite of podcast management, monetization and delivery solutions. The integration of the new podcast analytics specification combines with the company’s powerful dynamic advertising ecosystem and expanded publishing efficiencies to bolster producers’ monetization efforts and enhance their reporting to advertisers and sponsors. StreamGuys will discuss the new advances at the 2019 NAB Show, where the company will co-exhibit with partner ENCO in booth N2524.
“From podcasters to broadcasters repurposing their content, producers are increasingly using data to drive their business decisions,” said Jason Osburn, executive vice president, StreamGuys. “Publishers are asking for deeper analytics to help evaluate listeners’ engagement with their content, and as information they can use to sell advertising and sponsorship. Adding RAD support to our end-to-end podcast platform provides rich insights that they can use in their monetization efforts, and for live broadcasters, our efficient new aircheck creation workflow lets them quickly and easily supplement their reports to advertisers with recorded validation clips.”
Developed by NPR, RAD is a new podcast analytics technology designed to provide publishers and producers with richer listener metrics while respecting user privacy. While download statistics can provide information such as audience size and platform preferences, they offer no detail about how much of the podcast the consumer actually listened to. Individual platforms and apps may provide listening metrics in proprietary formats, but their lack of standardization and limited scope paint an incomplete picture requiring significant manual analysis.
Measuring podcast listening across a wide range of participating clients and platforms, RAD complements download statistics by aggregating deep, event-driven data to publishers’ analytics systems. Podcast publishers mark checkpoints within their audio files at periodic intervals or at specific content-related events – such as sponsorship or advertising spots – and specify a URL to which metrics should be delivered. When listeners reach those checkpoints, their RAD-enabled player or app will send anonymized data to that URL. The publisher can then analyze the data to gain new engagement insights such as which sections of the podcasts consumers are listening to, and whether ads are being heard.
StreamGuys will support RAD at each stage of podcast creation, distribution and consumption chain. Publishers will be able to insert RAD tags manually or at specified intervals using the intuitive, graphical waveform editor in the company’s SGrecast podcast management solution. StreamGuys’ managed, embeddable SGplayer will be enhanced to detect RAD tags and send RAD data to the company’s SGreports logging and analytics service, as well as to third-party destinations if desired. The integration of RAD information adds a powerful new data dimension to SGreports, augmenting its existing support for IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines Version 2.0 (“IAB 2.0”).
Advanced Advertising Insights and Easy Airchecks
By combining SGreports’ RAD listener analytics with dynamic ad insertion data, podcast publishers can share enhanced reporting with sponsors and advertisers, including whether their spots were actually heard. The new support is yet another way that StreamGuys is helping podcasters maximize their monetization initiatives. Unlike approaches that insert ads into downloadable media when the podcasts are initially published, StreamGuys’ server-side advertising tools can dynamically insert ads into the on-demand files at the time the content is requested. This keeps spots timely even for ‘long-tail’ content while enabling the use of targeting criteria such as geo-location to ensure relevance.
While RAD support helps both pure-play podcast producers and content-repurposing broadcasters deliver richer data to their advertisers or underwriters, SGrecast’s efficient aircheck publishing workflow is valuable for live, over-the-air broadcasters simulcasting their signals online. Leveraging SGrecast’s AudioLoggers feature to record streams 24/7, users can search the recordings by timestamp or metadata to find specific content such as a sponsor message. Stations can then quickly export an aircheck clip of that content through SGrecast’s waveform editor, and send it to their clients as validation of how their spots sounded.
StreamGuys plans to begin rolling out RAD support across its solutions in late Q2. Efficient aircheck publishing with SGrecast is available immediately.