How Do They Know?

[scottandtelly]

Im just wondering how advertisers will know how many downloads of the show we get. Like, people could easily lie about those things. Is there a thing that has to be done that Im missing?

Thanks.

[WildeGeek]

Im just wondering how advertisers will know how many downloads of the show we get. Like, people could easily lie about those things. Is there a thing that has to be done that Im missing?
The advertising brokers I've negotiated with want to see my raw web server logs. One of them wanted me to keep them for something like 6 months! (That's quite a bit of disk space.)

Other advertising brokers do a re-direct -- they give you a URL for your show to give out which points to their server. That way they can track clicks, and then re-direct the browser to your file to actually download the show.

{Edited to fix incomprehensible typo.}

[WyethDigital]

Im just wondering how advertisers will know how many downloads of the show we get. Like, people could easily lie about those things. Is there a thing that has to be done that Im missing?
The advertising brokers I've negotiated with want to see my raw web server logs. One of them wanted me to keep them for something like 6 months! (That's quite a bit of disk space.)
Wow! Six months! So how much do your advertisers depend on the so-called podcast specific kinds of stats -- the stuff you get from services such as Libsyn or Feedburner, et al.? Is it safe to assume since they wanted raw server logs that these things may not be as important as they're billed?

Or do they pay more attention to their own way of tracking?

Eric

[WildeGeek]

The advertising brokers I've negotiated with want to see my raw web server logs. One of them wanted me to keep them for something like 6 months! (That's quite a bit of disk space.)
Wow! Six months! So how much do your advertisers...
I didn't sign with any of these companies (yet). So I only know some of the things they were telling me they needed in order to negotiate a price.

...depend on the so-called podcast specific kinds of stats -- the stuff you get from services such as Libsyn or Feedburner, et al.?
I understand that they take more stock in non-bot web page hits, and total audio file downloads, than they do subscriber numbers like Feedburner. Somebody at the Podcast Expo said that they'll count a browser download as being worth 2 or 3 podcatcher downloads, because a lot of people subscribe to feeds but never get around to listening to the attachments.

Is it safe to assume since they wanted raw server logs that these things may not be as important as they're billed?
What's important to them is their best estimate of the actual audience. I know that some of them are particularly looking out for fraud and artificially inflated stats as well.

Or do they pay more attention to their own way of tracking?
They didn't tell me how they were going to analyze those raw logs.

[WyethDigital]

Cool. That's kind of what I was assuming.

Eric