How to read a podcast listener estimate
What Pod Engine’s audience number counts, what the confidence level means, and what to do when a show has too little data.
What the number is
A listener estimate is how many people Pod Engine expects listen to or watch a show in a month. It is an estimate, not a download count: podcast hosts don’t publish downloads, so we work it out from the signals we can see.
Take Lenny’s Podcast. Pod Engine estimates about 532K listeners a month.
Audio and YouTube
Many shows now have as many viewers as listeners, so we count the two separately. For Lenny’s Podcast that is about 391K on audio apps and 140K on YouTube.
Confidence
Every estimate comes with a confidence level: high, medium or low. It tells you how much signal sits behind the number. Lenny’s Podcast’s estimate is medium confidence.
When there isn’t enough signal
Some shows are too new or too small for an estimate we’d stand behind. Those show Not enough signal yet instead of a number, rather than a guess or a zero.
See the estimate for any show
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