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Newspaper’s hit podcast not all it seems

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October 30, 2024 6:00am

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  • Exclusive: Spain’s Hoy en EL PAÍS has been claiming impressively high download figures; yet today, Podnews can reveal that many of the downloads were never heard. The 14MB podcast was observed automatically downloading, without user intervention, in a browser using an iPhone user-agent - just by visiting the elpais.com homepage.: thus artificially growing the download numbers from every mobile visitor to the website. El País got over 118mn visits in September, according to similar web, making it the largest Spanish newspaper online. It’s owned by Prisa. The podcast is apparently the 12th biggest show, by downloads, on Triton’s Latin America Podcast Ranker, and 45th in Podtrac’s estimated Spanish podcast ranker - the show, hosted by Triton Digital, also appears to contain a spot for programmatic advertising.

    • Podnews notified the newspaper of this behaviour, with a method to reproduce it, and asked for a statement. The auto-download behaviour has now quietly ceased.
    • If you think you’ve seen this before, iHeart was auto-loading podcasts on its over 1,000 radio station websites in 2018.
  • Acast released its Podcast Pulse report, working with Edison Research. 80% of podcast listeners tune into niche podcasts, with 63% saying they are less likely to skip ads on those shows. 92% say they listen to podcasts because they cover topics more in-depth than other media. The data is available in full here.
  • The winners of the Signal Awards were announced. 170,000 votes were cast for the Listener’s Choice Award winners.

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