Podcast publishers should be served by their technology partners, not beholden to them.
Building a business around the most trusted content on the internet requires building deep relationships with audiences, creators, and advertisers. And I am proud to work with and know some of the most amazing networks and publishers that do just that. The last thing these publishers need is to have their world turned upside down, their listeners frustrated, and their revenue partners confused or even angry.
Recently, a major technology platform, relied on by some of the largest publishers in the audio and video podcasting space, turned a major upgrade of their systems into a five alarm fire for their publishers. Since then, a growing number of executives have reached out to Michael and me, because everything they’ve worked so hard to build suddenly feels at risk.
What’s worse is this was not an unexpected upgrade. This was a planned change by the platform with lots of communication, meetings, and even documentation on how to be ready.
"We did everything we were told to do. And now we are flying blind and no one seems to know what is broken or if it’s even fixable.”
An internal analysis at Flightpath shows that some publishers are at risk of losing as much as 50% of revenue on currently running orders. The review shows frequency caps getting breached constantly, putting the revenue associated with these impressions in jeopardy.
The long-term impacts could be even more severe, with listeners hearing the same ad over and over. We’re seeing up to 25% of impressions coming from repeated creative within the same download. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t lead to trust lost with buyers, brands, and producers alike.
“Being asked to re-flight thousands of orders by hand is not a viable solution to a problem we did not create. And there is no guidance on how to implement the traffic decisions someone now needs to make for each order. My team is left to find the solution."
We want to be clear that this is not an outage or hardware failing. We would not be writing this letter if that was the case. Outages happen to all internet services. And a major deployment is challenging; it’s not unusual for there to be issues with communication or training of front-line staff. But these impacts are so broad and uncanny that we are left speechless.
Neither Michael nor I have any insider information regarding the motivations or decisions that were made. We are simply witnessing the growing impacts, pondering what publishers are sharing with us, and continuing to uncover unexpected behaviour from the platform. We are equally in the dark, as our last few requests for information from the platform have not resulted in a response.
What does a firm like ours do in the face of such an event? A question we’ve asked ourselves more than once in the past 5 years at Flightpath. One case comes to mind immediately: when Apple changed the rules on an entire industry overnight.
We saw it happening in the data, download numbers exploding. Michael and I regret how silent we were when the Apple change happened. I want to say it’s because we were focused on helping our clients, which we were, but that’s not why we didn’t speak out. We held our tongues because we feared retaliation and backlash. We are a small firm, then and now, compared to the tech giants that serve our industry. And this fear can likely be applied to many of the podcast networks and creators who found themselves with nowhere to turn.
A few people did speak out during the Apple event, such as Sounds Profitable and Podnews, among others. And, in the end, Apple listened. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but they responded because a few people spoke up and amplified the voices of so many who were impacted.
We believe that events like the one happening right now can, will, and do happen all the time, no matter the industry, size, or intention of the platforms involved. What’s different is us. Michael and I now understand that when something happens that we believe impacts the ability of our community to make a living and service their audiences, we need to be ready to speak up.
So today we are speaking out in support of podcast publishers, creators and networks, and calling for recognition of their right to control the inventory they own. And to be treated with respect.
And we’re also taking action. We diverted the resources of our entire company to deploy a set of new Automation Playbooks to help publishers take back control. And we did it in a week, with some amazing publishers joining us in the rapid build out.
This resulted in two new automation playbooks: The first manages flights to a cap, opening up features on any platform that doesn’t support maximum caps on flights. The other retargets hundreds or thousands of flights to overcome hosting platform limitations while also giving publishers new prioritization tools they control. More are planned in the coming weeks.
To hold ourselves accountable and ensure our actions match our words, we have established the following commitments for the Flightpath team.
We believe publishers have a right to control the inventory they own. And to be treated with respect.
We will speak up and lend our full support to publishers, giving them a voice they may not be able to use, lest they face retaliation or lose pull with a large service.
We now offer a free, no-contract consulting service to help publishers choose platforms that align with their business strategy, diversify their operations, and de-risk their tech stack.
To respect confidentiality, sharing your story and experiences through Podnews at editor@podnews.com could help bring support to publishers.
In solidarity,
Sean and Michael