Insights Into The Future of Podcasting | Chris Krimitsos

Whether you're a podcast guest or podcast host, gleaning insights into the future of podcasting and where the industry is heading is an essential part of your podcasting journey. In this episode, Alex Sanfilippo is joined by podcasting influencer Chris Krimitsos, who shares what he's seeing happen in podcasting right now, along with his predictions for the future of this great medium. Get ready to learn what you need to do to continue to succeed in podcasting on either side of the microphone!

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Takeaways

Podcasting started as a pure medium with no corporate involvement but has now grown into a vibrant and supportive community.
Podcasters should be aware of the different platforms and the importance of owning their RSS feeds to protect their content.
Community plays a crucial role in podcasting, providing support, education, and networking opportunities for podcasters.
The future of podcasting includes consolidation of tools and software, as well as the potential for AI tools to replace niche players.
Podcasting offers unique opportunities for monetization, with host-read ads and loyal listeners.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Appreciation
01:49 Building Community in Podcasting
02:13 Past of Podcasting (2015)
03:08 Early Origins and Monetization
04:33 Podfest and Growing Podcasting Community
07:17 Present State of Podcasting
08:43 Importance of Community in Podcasting
10:05 Different Platforms and RSS Ownership
12:30 Regulations and Protecting Podcasting
13:48 Consolidation of Podcasting Tools
15:36 Podfest and Building Community
18:17 Importance of Community for Podcasters
19:41 Shift in Podcasting Tools and Software
24:01 Future of Podcasting at the High End
26:18 Monetization and Advertisements
27:42 Future Growth and Integrity in Podcasting
30:09 Podcasting's Loyal Listener Base
31:07 Closing Remarks and Appreciation

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Transcript

0:02

You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple. I'm your host, Alex Sanfilippo. For this episode's guide and resources, please visit podprose.com slash 264. And now let's get to the episode. Chris Framitsos, welcome to Podcasting Made Simple. So glad you're here, man. Alex, thanks for having me. And I appreciate you thinking of me for this unique opportunity. Absolutely, man. I feel like I, maybe people already know this. They're going to be listening, watching later and stuff like that. But I always think. that I think of Chris Kermitso's. Cause you're one of the first guys to give me a shot in podcasting. I had a podcast and I'll never forget it. So I'm gonna tell the story real brief here, but somebody randomly, I don't know who it was, was like, oh yeah, do you go any of the podcasting events? I was like, there's no events for podcasters. I'm like, that doesn't exist. I'm like, yeah, there's a big one in Orlando. I'm like, there's no way. I look it up and sure enough, I'm like, podfest. I'm like, is this actually for podcasters? I emailed in and I immediately heard back from you. And I think everyone says this when they meet you, when they meet Chris Kermitso's, everyone says the same thing. But we instantly became friends. I was like, I like this Chris guy. I'll never forget telling Alicia that. And so since then, I believe on my side, now we're friends, I know, but at that point immediately I was like, me and Chris are friends. So again, man, just thank you for your contribution to podcasting at large, for building community among podcasts, and we'll get into some of that today, but dude, I just appreciate so much who you are in this space. And thanks for what you're doing in this space. And also within the podcast community, I don't think you could walk a couple of steps without someone coming up to you. You and a couple other people in our community are like, what I would call a podfest famous. So within podfest, you have your own little tribe that will come up to you. And it's interesting to watch. It's happy for me, because I'm able to walk more freely when you're around. Nice, that's funny, man. I love that. Man, yeah, I'm excited for every year. It's one of the main things I look forward to in podcasting is getting back together with the podfam of podfest. So again, thanks for what you do, man. So today we're going to kind of go high level. We're going to kind of dive into some things as well. I might have you break some things down, but we're going to talk past, present, and future of podcasting. This is the state of podcasting that we like to do every single quarter, kind of get an update from a true industry expert. You see podcasting from a very unique vantage point on multiple fronts, given the event that you run, given the giant podcast that you and Katie are part of, the network I should say that you all are part of, or that you all have created and run. So I'm excited to kind of hear some of your stuff. But the very first thing I want you to share is just briefly on the past of podcasting, we're not going to go back to its origin. I want to go back to 2015 because if I'm not mistaken, that is when podfest first got started. Can you give us a glimpse into what podfest looked like at that point and to get the year right real quick? Is that the right year? I think you do. We started, the first meetup was 2013. And I know you've seen the visuals of like 13 of us talking about it. And then that planted seeds. the very first, we did then a bunch of events in 2014 and then we organized PodFest in 2015. I'll tell you a couple things I remember about that time. One is podcasters didn't feel it was right to monetize because it was such a pure medium. So I remember we're asking like, should we have ads? Should we monetize? And people have to understand back then it was such a pure space with no corporate involvement yet. It was like playing in a sandbox with your listeners, but there's no one else involved. There's no industry, so to speak. There was a couple tools that were early on that helped you do it. And then we had to also break through the noise of the word podcasting. Like people weren't fully sold on that word. They weren't sure what it meant. So that was like the infancy of podcasting. And there was Puris that had been at it at that point for about 10 years or so. But in that 10 years, it was very, how do you say, nascent. Even when we started, like I said, people were asking, should we monetize? So that was the early origins of podcasting. pod fast, but then we all said to people, hey, it's okay for you to monetize your art because you're helping others and you should get paid for it. But I just still remember it like, you mean we could reach thousands of people and we can make money? It wasn't like, it was almost like such a pure thing. People were like, I just want to talk to these people and have an impact. So that was, the early adapters were all about impact, almost always, very few were about the money. Remember, because there wasn't a lot of money then. So the money people weren't attracted yet. Yeah, it was a different time for podcasting. And in many ways, I kind of wish we'd kind of go back a little bit, right? To think before we're just like- It was very pure. Yeah. I think that's a, it's a great way to say it. It just out of curiosity, do you recall how many people were at that very first podcast because now there are thousands of people who are in the podcast network community and who show up to the events. But what was it like back in 2015 with that first one? It was like a hundred people. I think I was trying to get to 111. I don't know if I was doing it around November. I don't even remember the date. maybe it was beginning of year, but it was about a hundred people and podcasting was mainly audio. I know now we video is a dominant in many different ways. Audio is still very present, but at the time, if you were a podcaster, there was no, there was no confusion if it was audio or video. So that's another thing. If you want to go back in time, you said podcasting, there was very few, if anyone that confused it with the video platform like YouTube, it was strictly something on Apple. Spotify wasn't even a thing yet for a podcast. It didn't even offer it really. So it was interesting. Stitcher, that was the number two player, which now it's been folded into Pandora, I believe. So like, it's funny because a lot of those early people that built tech tools too early didn't make as much money as the people that came on the next three, four years. It's kind of funny timing. Like they had a larger market share and everything, but investors and people hadn't woken up to the industry called podcasting yet. So that's to lay the foundation that that's what podcasting was like. And we all were very tight knit because there wasn't a lot of us and we needed each other to keep informed of the updates. So back then the few people, like I'll give you an example, John Lee Dumas, uh, was big during that period of time. He created EO fire, his podcast paradise or his paradise community. That was like his higher end community probably had, you know, half of all active business podcasters in it, or they listened to the show. Like it was, it was a connection point. So it was Pat Flynn with Smart Passive Income. So it was very interesting how like a couple of things connected, let's say, an entire vertical. And then all the other things like True Crime were just evolving and emerging at the time. You know, it's so interesting, man, going back to that 100 or 111 people. I've seen some of your pod tour meetups, which we'll talk about in a little bit here, that you've done that have more people than your first podfest actual like full on event. It's so funny you'd say that. Wow. Yeah, someone mentioned that to me. They're like... you realize that maybe it was you they were like you realize that your meetups are attracting basically the same number you attracted that was like They go you should be proud. I was like I never thought of it that way. Yeah, good point Yeah, it's so cool man and hearing about some of those Pat Flynn John Lee Dean was those people that helped me from the start that I still now have the opportunity to know which is Like a really just a cool thing to like kind of come full circle But to kind of transition this conversation here going from past more into the present This is still something you said to me in the past, but I think it sets a great framework here When I first met you, one of the first conversations we had about podcasting that wasn't just about life, we were sitting there and you told me something along the lines of Alex, did you realize there's really only about 20,000 real podcasters? And I was like, okay, well, what does that mean exactly? You said those are the people that are involved and are going to stick with it that aren't just going to churn out of the industry and pod fade those people that are actually kind of sticking with it. And your goal at that point, I believe was 10% of them to be involved in pod fest, which you far surpassed. But At that point, I was just like, 20,000. Like everyone talks about at that point, I think there were 700,000. I was like, how is there only 20,000, right? But at this point, what you were sharing then, which was hard to actually validate, has not only been validated, but it's been proven that is the truth. And if we fast forward till today, keeping this evergreen here, it turns into about 3000 additional podcasters per year, since you first told me that, which I believe was 2018. And so it comes in to be about 3000 additional per year, is kind of like the true growth of the industry. And we now call this the actively established podcast category, right? That's kind of like what we've coined it. But seeing that you've kind of been on tour, you, this pod tour, pod fest, right? Like you're in front of podcasters. What is it that you're, those are the real podcasters. People are going to stick with it. What is it that you're learning from these individuals? Like, what is it that you kind of see is involved in the culture of podcasting? See, we talked about kind of where it came from. What is it like now with the people that are actually going to be the one sticking with it that again, they're in the community, they're part of this thing. So let's just break down that number just to, cause I know you have, what's the website you created where people could actually see the stats? Yeah, it's on PodPros and it's just in the top right corner. It's called the Actively Established Podcast Report. If you Google that, you'll find it. Well, no, I think that's important people to know that you could Google it and find it. Whatever the, the number of what you consider active, but right, launched in the last 45 days is what? 300,000 or something like that? It's, they've posted an episode within the last 45 days and they have more than one episode. So that was also a thing. There's about 38,000 ads were recording this, but again, every year that turns out to be about 3,000 more. What I did antidotally, just so, cause people, I wanna be very clear cause I don't want them calling us out on these numbers. What I did antidotally at the time was like, okay, there's like millions of feeds. Of those feeds, supposedly there's 300,000, you know, and like you said, that was like published in six months or something. I don't know how they came up with it, but it was like a very loose definition. Then I figured just, I used Pareto's. principle at the time. I'm like if 200,000 are considered active, I bet you only 10% of that is really what we would consider super active what you know, so that was like 20,000 and then I was like well What percentage that would even go to a conference and I did 10% of that So that's kind of how I came up with those numbers by the way youtubers you'd have to look at the scale But there's like 32 times more. It's it's a hundred times more. There's a lot more youtubers But again, how many youtubers consider themselves youtubers very few And what I mean by that is many people will create a show for different reasons, right? They have a message that they want to get out there, but they're not really loyal to the platform that gives them the opportunity. So there's a small percentage that realizes like, hey, we need to get together and compare notes because this stuff's going to change and we want to be around the corner. And that's kind of, you know, what podfest does. And then the second part of your question, if you could just remind me really quickly what it was. Yeah, talking about the man you're on your pod tour right now. So you're like, what are we talking about here? Yes. Yeah. What are you learning from it, man? You're gone every other day. I'm actually shocked we even have this time together right now. If I can be real. Poor Katie. I was like, Oh, I forgot I had to stop today. He's like, when? Tonight I'll be back at midnight. But it was luckily the floor stops. I could get back home. So what I'm learning is podcasting doesn't have an audio only definition anymore. And the reason why I say that is I had a guy down by the Texas Porter. His name is bumper and he does text mechs music and he streams on Facebook, but it is styled as a podcast. It's a talk show and he has these Tecano musicians come by and he's sponsored. You know, I just basically gave him some tips. I said, one, don't change what you're doing, but if we could take that to a podcast, so it also has an additional home because the CPM is much, if you have a decent size audience, you can make a lot more money, but then he's also using music, so there's a lot of nuances. So now. I'm still a big believer in RSS owning your feed because of like in Canada now, they're trying to censure podcasts and create rules about language. And I'll give people an example of how that affects people. Let's say you're Democrat type podcast and you hate Trump and you talk about how much you hate Trump. There's AI right now that will flag Trump and demonetize that podcast. So what people don't realize is it's going all different ways. And it's affecting everybody. So I'm really big on the freedom of use of podcasts and what it represents. But what's happening is the newer people come in and don't even understand what I just said, like RSS, you own your feed. So they're creating a podcast on YouTube or they might have like a micro podcast on TikTok, you know, they consider, and it could be a podcast, literally it could be an interview format that they clip three minutes out only. So what I'm seeing now, Alex, is I'm traveling is I almost have to always ask what platform are you using? Do you have audio? I always want to know, do you have audio? Sometimes it's not possible for them to have audio because it's very visual. So then I'll ask them, do you have a subscription service? Do you have a Patreon or locals page after? So I'm really big on people having a robust ecosystem because having traveled the last couple of years, I would say this year it's not as bad as the last couple of years. I've seen people that don't even talk about politics getting banned for what they're talking about. Many of them in the health and wellness niche. around different remedies, sometimes not even relating to COVID. But what happens is these new rules happen and it scales across the platform for anyone talking about homeopathic stuff. So one, I'm very optimistic about the future. I think that podcasting has a huge long tail. Two, I would say there's a lot of people using video platforms that consider that they have a podcast. I would agree that they do have a podcast, but I would assert. to make sure that their podcast is protected by having other outlets where their audio is protected. And part of that is having a hosting company that can protect your feed. Cause most people, Alex now they'll be like, Oh, I put it out over YouTube. I'm like, they don't even know that you could have a feed. And there's literally, I don't even know how many, you might know how many players are, but I lose track. It might be over a thousand, but it's in the hundreds. I know that. And I know Katie and my wife, she literally has a checklist. to make sure that her shows are listed on every platform. And sometimes we catch a couple that, you know, the feed didn't go through or whatever. And that's very powerful about podcasting. So that's kind of a summation of, podcasting now means a lot of different things. There's people that do video only, it's considered podcast. And then I would say that we have to be very careful about regulations. We don't want podcasting to be regulated like radio because then many, many voices that are already here. will be gone over the next generation as if that ever happens. Man, there's a lot of really valuable stuff that you just shared there. And one of the main things I actually want to point out and highlight is what is a podcast, right? The definition of it. If we really go back to the original Adam Curry and Dave Weiner, right? Going back to like what it is that they say a podcast was it's based on an RSS feed, which again, that is typically audio only. Some people were figuring out how to put video into that, which is kind of cool, right? But it's still RSS, which is what you control, what you own. And I'm finding exactly what you're saying to be completely true. It's a very regular occurrence now that somebody emails us saying, hey, why can't I join PodMatch? It's saying, I don't have a podcast. And it's because for us, you have to have an RSS feed. If you don't have an RSS feed, our definition currently is, well, you don't really have a podcast because that is what a podcast is, right? And so we're educating people. What we're finding out is they're looking up how to podcast. And we're talking to podcast guests and hosts today. So if you're a guest and you're saying, okay, this sounds interesting, but I don't have a podcast, look at what someone's using to quote unquote podcast, right? Ask who their hosting provider has is ask if they have an RSS feed because what I'm finding is the education online, I guess, when you start typing in podcasting is becoming very loose. And for that reason, I think that people that have been in it for a while, it is, it is our duty to be part of the podcasting community and educate future people on what podcasting is. And Chris, I actually think that's a great transition like for talking about today and then we'll get into the future in a second here. But what role do you think community really plays in podcasting? And community has, the word community has shifted over the last five or six years at this point of what that even looks like and means. But I'd love to hear your perspective on what maybe pod tours are doing, what podfest is doing to help people understand, hey, this is still the core of what we do. Like going back to like the pure core that it has, like what does that look like from your perspective? So what people don't realize like pre-COVID podcasters are, we were all virtual to begin with. That's kind of the nature of a podcast. So we needed PodFest to connect. And then post-COVID, what we realized was a lot of these cities don't have their own meetups anymore. Yeah, it's very costly to put on a meetup and takes a lot of time. So we just figured, hey, kind of like evangelists, why don't we go out to a city, find local leaders that'll help us, see if we have any small sponsors that could help defray some of the costs. Most of the costs are invested by PodFest itself, but we figured we could educate people where they're at and then bring them to the fold at PodFest. So I was happy if we had 10 to 20 people, quite honestly. I didn't expect, maybe it was a protection mechanism. I was like, hey, if we get 30, that's great. I wasn't expecting big numbers, but you've seen the pictures. We're getting 70 to 80 people at least half of these, and then the rest are like 30 to 20. And then right now and then we get 10 to 12 and we're happy to have all numbers that we don't really care. But it's just interesting to see how big these meetups are getting. And people are coming out looking for information, direction, support, a community they could tap into. And as creators, I think it's more important than ever to know other creators and have a community. So Podfest is proving to be very, I guess we're like, we're like an antidote to that in that we have a very caring, loving community. We don't judge our individual attendees. We make sure that they all feel welcome. And then they could plug in and learn. Now, when you talk about podcasting, the top two things people need to know, outside of setting up a podcast, and we do have tracks that cover it, they need to know, how do I grow my podcast? So that's usually like interview skills, quality, and how do I monetize down the road as they get bigger? They wanna monetize in some way, shape or form. And what happens is our community members, people like yourself, have some of the best master classes you can't find anywhere else because these people were homegrown from the community, sharing their best tips. So you walk into these rooms, you walk away with tons of great ideas, and I always tell people just grab one or two things to implement. And then when you're done that, implement the next one or two things. And it's great to see the success that these individuals are having, but you also know you're not alone. I think that's a big deal with any community. Like you're not siloed by yourself and that there's a path to... I don't want to call it success, but a path to like, if you want something growth wise, there's clues and other podcasters leave those clues so you can feel that you're maximizing your creatorship as a podcaster. Man, I'm thinking now like about myself as a podcaster. I really like, again, I was very new when I started going to PodFest and that's really what helped me. And so I just considered paying it forward. Now I'm maybe the person on stage and at some point someone will really... kind of even replace that, right? They'll be the person on stage educating, just passing off the next generation. And what I really love is it builds that sense of community and I think it's so needed among podcasters, pure podcasters, right? The ones that are using RSS. Because you think about it, it's one of the few forms of creation that there's no real direct way to hear from listeners. Like even if you have like a YouTube channel, you have this massive comment section, which maybe is good or bad. I can get into that, right? But in general, like if you're on stage, you have people that are there. Podcasting is one of the few, it's like you can really feel alone if you don't intentionally get out. and seek community. So, and that, what's better than being among other podcasters, right? Connect with your listeners by all means. Please find ways to do that. And then if you're the actual guest, be posting that stuff so you can have people tell you like, hey, what you spoke really spoke to me, right? And so I just think that the importance of community though cannot be understressed. I mean, it's just so, so important. You know, and this makes me think, man, something else about the podcasting industry and a form of community, if you will. This is a little bit of a transition, but I think this will kind of be a little bit more high level, but would be good for everyone to hear. This is kind of getting the future of it. I'm on the software side of podcasting. Yes, I'm a host. Yes, I'm an educator myself and always learning as well. But something I've noticed over the last couple of years, you and I have both seen and talked about a few times, is that the small startups in podcasting are one of two things that seem to happen to them. One, they're mainly, unfortunately, they're shutting their doors. So we're forced to find different solutions. Or two, they're getting bought up by the very big podcasting companies, the ones that kind of came in when they saw the dollars. I don't know if this is good or bad for the industry, but I'd love to hear your perspective. Again, you have a very different vantage point. What do you think about the tools, the softwares, the things that actually support podcasters in that shift that we're seeing in this space? Well, as the space grows, usually the tools consolidate to a handful of players, and then they go to the market and usually dominate and use that as a revenue, you know, revenue multipliers, whatever. It could be good as long as they're innovating. It doesn't become good when they stagnate. And also it's good for the consumer because now they have one place where they could have five or six different things successfully being done. That being said, there's a lot of opportunities for other companies to take advantage. Right now, you and I are seeing, you're one of the early adapters in AI, but the AI tools that are coming out right now are ginormous and they're doing a great job. The challenge I see with AI is it's becoming so good, people eventually I think could make their own AI tool to do what these tools are doing. Now, I think it'll take some time for that to happen, but it's just weird. Like now, PodMatch is a very difficult tool because you need to vet the people. There's work to be done in the vetting process. But if you're talking about a tool that's like show notes or transcription, from what I understand and what I'm seeing is some of these big tools like ChatGPT, you'll be able to make your own custom tool to do what it wants automatically. So I think that's still a year or two away. But it's interesting to watch. So innovation is happening at the speed of light. Podcasting is now considered the legitimate platform to go on a book tour. I know that sounds like a small thing. That's not a small thing. Like when you used to go on a book tour, you'd have to have a PR agent that was connected to the today show and different shows you had to be in the know. Now you could be a niche creator, have a few relationships, either through pod match or pod fast or whatever. And you can literally go on a mini book tour and promote your book to that specific niche. The reason why that's important is it allows ideas to explode within a small niche communities, allows ideas to proliferate, which back in the day was reserved to the few that had connections and money or the right, you know, Simon and Schuster or, you know, Manhattan agent. So that's decentralized out. So that's a really good thing for the creator moving forward. But I do see we're in a period of consolidation, Alex. So like what you and I have seen with some of the larger tools in our space. We're going to see that happen with the AI tools is my gut. Either they're going to get gobbled up by a bigger tool that already has different pieces or that bigger tool, just create their own AI and replace. These niche players. So right now there's probably you'd have to tell me, but we recommend like nine to 10 AI tools that are really great for podcasters probably only two will survive. And then they'll probably get gobbled up by a bigger player. That's kind of the, I mean, if you ask entrepreneurs in the space, most of them, you're one of the odd ones out why they created the tool so they could sell it. There are some people like yourself that are passionate about why they did it and they're excited about what they're doing. But most of them, they're passionate about creating a tool and then selling it to a bigger company. Right. For everyone listening or watching, I have no plans on selling, nor is that... I'm passionate about this community. I love what I do. Yeah, which you're a rare breed, but most people in the tech space... And it's not because it's money related. It's because they know competition will catch up to them if they're not constantly innovating. And you really need to be super passionate to stay on top of that trend. Yeah, for sure. You know, a little pro tip here for anyone who's like, okay, I'm a podcast guest, book tour sounds like something my future. What company do you go with if you're going to have the book like worked on for you? What I would do is look at PodFest and look at other podcasts and conferences and see which publishing house even if it's like an indie one is sponsoring that event, because they're building relationships with podcasters. And that's what you need. So little pro tip there. Very, very good point. And there are publishers at these places. Yeah, that's I didn't think of that. But that's I'll start saying that too. I like it. Cool. Good stuff, man. Hey, listen, give and take in this relationship. That's what Chris and I have always had, man. Hey, so going on the future of podcasts, I'll kind of end it here. We won't spend too terribly much time here, but I really want to talk about, first off, what you see happening at the high end, just given Katie Kermitso's, like her entire meditation woman's like, that whole network is huge. And so I don't know what you see from her perspective specifically, but I know that you're tied in with many of the high end people. So you probably see some things that the rest of us just don't get the opportunity to. What do you see happening at that top level? We'll be very brief with this, just to give everyone an idea of what this thing looks like from like, I guess the influencer celebrity standpoint. So Joe Rogan's contract is about to go up for negotiation. There's $200 million deal is about to come to a close. The estimates across the board are, it will be a multi-billion dollar renewal. So the way that goes will dictate how much money will be put into the system underneath him. So he's the, sets the standard on the high end. So I first see some very big seven, eight. nine figure deals happening and how that helps the independence is that money. I know it's going to sound crazy, but it does trickle down to everybody else because it raises the rates at the very bottom and it raises what a listener is worth for an advertiser to get in front of. So you're going to see a lot of that. And right now the one advantage that podcasters have that a lot of people don't realize podcasters have a thing called host read. Now, YouTubers, for instance, they get what's called, they call it, they don't call it host read, they call it, I'd like to just call it like a sponsor deal. And that's usually where they get paid thousands of dollars to, you know, go to Target or some brand shopping, depending on the YouTuber, but you know, if it's a shopping channel, they're going to pay you to go to their place and not get paid like three, four or five grand, depending on how big the influencer is. But those are one-off deals. A podcaster, especially the larger ones that are wrapped by the larger networks. And depending on the niche. They get $25 CPM, which is a high premium. You don't see that in any other, very few. The only other area you're gonna see that, it may be in YouTube, and I don't even know if it comes close, is in the financial space, financial influencers. So imagine a podcaster getting a host read ad at 25 CPM, and these larger networks are, they're telling advertisers, you have to pay a premium because this is one of the only areas where people are listening to audio. that the host can give you a really brand lift, talking about your brand in a very authentic way. So some podcasts don't have as many views as YouTubers, but like they're getting paid four or five times X. So you got to also look at that number. So just all I'm saying is podcasting is becoming more robust and a lot of these bigger companies are stating the case behind the scenes saying, hey, you're not paying for some like. 10 second video view, you're paying for someone that listens so long for them. They probably listened to the entire show. Majority of podcast listeners listened throughout the whole show. Like the, the numbers have been done there and that ad holds a lot of weight. Therefore you're going to pay 25 CPM. Now the networks are going to take 30 to 40% off the top. That still means you're going to make 16 CPM and a podcast. You could do two of those, three of those, sometimes four of those in a show, depending on how they leverage them. So it could be very fruitful. for people that are building momentum in their downloads. And what I love about this is it goes beyond just running advertisements and here's why. That's kind of the baseline of this. So as that climbs, it means every other form of monetization for podcasters is going to climb. If you're the guest being like, well, why do I care? You care because the better off the podcast host is doing, the more that they're able to make, the better they're able to get at reaching their ideal audience. That's right. Money is not everything, but it certainly helps us, podcasters, connect with the people we're looking to really serve. And that's a huge win on either side of the mic. So I love that insight, Chris. Before I let you go, man, do you have, I only know what I know, and where we sit is extremely different. Is there anything else about the future of podcasting that you think that we should be aware of or know about? So one thing that Glassbox, Dave Segura, one of the founders of Glassbox in New York said that was interesting, and I'll share it with you, is they were banking on podcasting just exploding in growth. And because they said the music industry, they were going through different models, and they go, they always explode out. But the last couple of years, podcasting retracted in. So after COVID, there was an explosion of sorts, but then it retracted in. And he said, what we've learned is podcasting is made up of a very vibrant, supportive listener base that is extremely loyal. And what they want is really great quality content. And he goes, it's not based on like, everybody's gonna listen to podcasts. He goes, it's based on really great content, finding its audience, and then growing a rapid audience base over time. And I thought that was very honest to him. And a lot of these networks were giving huge minimum guarantees based on all everything's gonna keep growing forever. Now we did have a weird COVID spike where people were home and they were listening more and then they came back to work. But I don't think I think his assessment is correct that podcasting and you know this because we were talking about the numbers earlier in this interview is made up of a very loyal, very dedicated creator. and listener. And when you put that together, it creates a very unique relationship between those two people. And that's why those relationships are so valuable. So my advice I would give to anyone that's a creator, be careful of sacrificing your integrity in any way, shape or form. And what I mean by that is, I'm okay if you have an ad that you're like, I might not use the product, but it's a good product. I'm okay with that. As long as you tell people like, hey, this is a good product, I checked it out. Maybe you're not using it. But I'm not okay with you recommending a product you never use. You don't even know what it is. So like, you got to be careful. Like that to me is a slippery slope or thinking to yourself, they're going to listen anyways, so I'm just going to mail it in today. I'm just going to do a half-assed job on my podcast. No, a podcast listener, right? Even if it's on video, they're watching, listening, they're paying attention to everything that you're doing at a very detailed way that they pick up on those nuances. So sometimes you're better off telling them truthfully. that, hey, I had a rough week. I did my best preparing for this. Hope you enjoy it. Because there are some of the best podcasters have a monologue up front, and they'll monologue a little bit before they go into, let's say, the interview, and they have a very specific relationship with their audience. I'm not saying everybody should do that. All I'm saying is there's a reason why they do that, because there's an intimate bond that they have with their listeners. So just know that this is a very special place. We regard it as such. Your listeners regard it as such. And there's huge upside for growth. because a lot of people want the quick hit. And when they realize that podcasting is not at their league, which leaves a lot of room for the consistent players to keep growing and building. And we see that happen time and time again, man. Chris, man, I so appreciate your time today. One last thing I wanna share is Chris and I, a few months ago, we happened to be at the same conference together, and we grabbed a spot at the fire pit late at night, just us and a few other people. And Chris leaned over to me and said, Alex, what can we do to better serve podcasters? And I just love the purity of that question because this is like end of day. There's no one there's no reason to like to put that on for the people and be like, Oh, look at them. Right. It was just me and Chris. And I so appreciate your heart, man. Like I appreciate the fact that you have been at this for so long, really just out there to serve podcasters, man. So again, thank you so much for your time for sharing your wisdom being here today, man. I appreciate you. No, thank you. And you know, I think the world of pod match, we recommend it like everywhere I go, like Pied Piper, it's been one of my first tips that I recommend right off the bat, but keep doing what you're doing. You obviously, We love your customers and love this medium and we need more people like yourself and myself to help all the new people come in on board and welcome them to the medium. Absolutely, man. I appreciate you again. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, please visit podprose.com slash 264. Then share the link with one person that you believe it would add value to. Until next time, thank you for listening.