The podcast rankings have had a different look in recent months as two of the biggest publishers and networks have disappeared. Wondery and SiriusXM are no longer featured in the either Podtrac’s or Triton Digital’s rankings of the biggest publishers, networks or shows in the US or Canada. While media companies have been known to back away from ratings and ranking services when their numbers are small and don’t help to bring advertisers on board, that wasn’t the case with either.
Wondery has had a strong story to tell. Its sales network ranked second with 21.2 million unique US listeners in November, second only to the iHeart Audience Network, while according to Triton Digital, Wondery had 25.8 million weekly downloads during November, which was also good for second place.
But a Wondery rep says the company has decided to discontinue participation in all of the opt-in rankings due to what it says are “evolving” audience consumption patterns. “These rankers only report audience size using RSS-based downloads, which is not representative of Wondery’s total audience,” a spokesperson says, pointing out Wondery is seeing more audience consumption and engagement with podcasts across a variety of RSS and non-RSS channels, including video, social, events, FAST channels, and streaming.
The SiriusXM Podcast Network last appeared in Triton’s ranking in September. It ranked second with 13.7 million average weekly users and 41.6 million average weekly downloads, putting it behind only iHeart. But the company also opted to unplug from the service. Similar to Wondery, a SiriusXM rep says the company doesn’t believe that Triton and Podtrac currently offer a complete representation of the entire landscape of podcast listening as neither includes Spotify listening in their rankings. As a result, SiriusXM has instead opted to lean into Edison Research’s third-party measurement, which doesn’t require networks to opt in.
Unlike other show rankings from Podtrac or Triton built from download data, Edison’s Podcast Metrics is based on consumer recall. It asks survey participants what shows they listened to in the past week. While it relies on people’s memories, it also allows Edison to offer a ranker of shows regardless of whether the publisher is a subscriber. And its sample size is large.
Edison’s data shows that the SiriusXM Podcast Network ranks second among listeners aged 13 and older during the fourth quarter, just behind Spotify — whose results are dominated by The Joe Rogan Experience listening. Edison also says the SiriusXM Podcast Network ranks as the top podcast network among female listeners overall.
Lack of ratings may make radio or television stations invisible in the eyes of many national advertisers, but Heather Osgood, founder and CEO of the podcast rep firm True Native Media, says that is unlikely to be the case for podcasters.
“I don’t believe opting out of these rankers negatively impacts ad buying,” she says. “Advertisers are increasingly prioritizing audience engagement, looking at ratings and reviews to gauge a show’s ability to cultivate an active and loyal listener base — one that’s engaged enough to spread the word.”
Nielsen may have a near-lock on broadcast ratings, but in the case of podcasters, there is no single currency on which networks and shows are bought and sold. That means buyers may need to do more to keep up with all the options, and some in the industry have suggested it could hold back revenue growth in the long-term.
“The beauty of podcasting is its open-source nature. It isn’t like other mediums, and it isn’t centralized. This means there are multiple measurement tools,” Osgood says. “While this is a plus for the overall individual contribution of the creators and the variety of companies that support these creators, it does make it difficult for ad buyers to know where a show stands. Having one centralized ranking system would be superior.”
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