Apple Podcast Video vs YouTube Podcast

Wondering if publishing an Apple podcast video is better than uploading to YouTube? After 100 episodes, I compare my stats to see where video podcasts perform best. In this episode, I dig into my stats from Buzzsprout and YouTube to reveal where the real audience is for Apple podcast videos and traditional YouTube content.

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Transcript

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Okay, this is the 101st episode of the Video Brand Infusion podcast, and I want to talk about the difference between publishing a video podcast on YouTube a hundred episodes in versus through RSS, where I have my audio hosted with BuzzSprout. Now, about 90 days ago, I did upgrade my BuzzSprout account so that I could also host video, like the video version of the podcast there too. So I want to dig into the stats there and see like, does anyone actually watch the videos through Apple Podcast, or is it mostly uh video consumption through YouTube? And we're 100 episodes in, so let's dive into this. If you're new here, my name is Meredith, and I'm here to help you look good, sound good, and feel good on camera so that you can build your Bingerothi video brand. And I started the Video Brand Infusion Podcast a little over two years ago, and I just wanted to kind of test out and see what it would be like to have a video podcast and kind of like utilize that feature on YouTube because it was a relatively new feature on YouTube at the time. But I'm a podcast listener, like a long, long time podcast listener. So I'm a big fan of audio podcasts myself as a consumer, but I know that video is so incredibly powerful. I thought, what a great experiment. So we're 100 episodes in. And not only are we a hundred episodes in, but we are also about 90 days into having video on Apple Podcasts Player. So let's just dive into all of these stats. Now I'm showing my screen, and if you're listening to the audio-only version, I'll be uh walking you through it out loud and talking as I go. Don't worry. But what you're seeing on the left is my YouTube stats only for the videos that are part of the podcast. So we're only looking at the 100 videos that are in the Video Brand Infusion podcast playlist on YouTube. On the right, you can see all of my episodes on the back end of Buzz Sprout here. Now, I don't really want to analyze this just for the last 90 days. I want to kind of look at all hundred episodes together. So I'm gonna look at this from April 4th, 2024, because that's when I published my first episode up until now. So we're like a little more than two years. We're almost like two years, three months-ish. So two and a quarter years, two and a yeah, two and a quarter years. And then um over here on Buzz Sprout, if I hit stats, I can go to all time, and you can see visually how um like the Buzz Sprout graph is like so much prettier, but you kind of see like how it's kind of like it's up and down, but it has grown over time-ish, right? And uh I'm just recording this on the very first of the month in August, so August looks um down, looks like really far down. But if we look at the number of downloads since I started publishing on Buzz Sprout versus the number of views, which is not exactly an apples to apples comparison, and I'll talk about why in just a minute. We're talking about almost 9,000 downloads in the last two years, over a hundred episodes versus almost 149, almost 150,000 views over the same exact amount of content, the same number of uploads. Now, if I was only approaching podcasting as an audio-only podcast, I would look at 8,914 downloads over two years and a hundred episodes as like okay, this is something not working here. Like, I don't like we gotta do something to either promote the podcast or run ads or something. Luckily, I know that um YouTube is the best discovery tool there is out there, and so that's like hello. That's why this is all on YouTube because I don't promote my podcast at all. Uh I upload my episodes to YouTube. I do send an email out to my list the next day uh to my email list. So, I mean, in that regard, I promote it, but I'm not out there on Instagram putting edited clips or like audiograms or any I'm not doing any of that. I'm not doing any of that. I'm just publishing the content. And you know, as someone who teaches uh business owners how to market themselves with YouTube, of course, this helps me make the case for why YouTube is an incredible discovery platform. You know I'm gonna say that, like you you know where this is all leading. So that like none of this is a huge surprise to me, but one thing to uh keep in mind, and I don't know if I don't know if Buzzsprout gives you any of the data on like how long people watch, like average listening duration. I don't I don't see that on here, but when you consider that you know these these videos are 20 minutes long, 30 minutes long, or longer, and average view duration on average for all 100 episodes is only three minutes and 44 seconds, whereas over on the Buzz Sprout side, I don't have that data, but I know generally audio podcasts have a way longer average like listening duration because people put the podcast in, they generally listen to the whole thing because they're busy doing something else, and that's why comparing 9,000 downloads to a hundred and almost 150,000 views is not really apples to apples because a view could be somebody clicked play after just a little bit of time, they get bored, they go watch something else, you got a view. Still, like the download doesn't mean they actually listen to it. Do you know what I mean? So it's there's more than one way in which comparing views and downloads is really not uh it's not a one-to-one match as far as like data is concerned. But let's come over here to the video downloads tab because it was just shy of 90 days ago that I upgraded my Buzz Sprout account so that I could host video content there because you know, a few months ago Apple announced that they would be showing video in the Apple Podcast Player, which is actually always been a thing, but the way that it worked with RSS meant you had to have two different RSS feeds and they like they updated or or modernized their technology for that, I guess. And um, and Buzz Sprout and lots of other podcast hosts said, sure, let's host video for our uh for our customers. Why not? So I wasn't sure what to expect from this. In my mind, I just don't imagine that people are really expecting video content through the Apple Podcast player. And even as a video like person, some of the podcasts that I listen to are now publishing the video version of their podcast. And I'm like, oh, that's cool, but but like I'm not watching it there. If I'm going to watch the video for me personally, just my behavior. If I want to watch the video, I'll just go to YouTube and watch the video. Um, very rarely am I wanting to be looking at my phone if I'm opening the podcast, opening the Apple Podcast player and selecting a podcast. It's just it's just like a user behavior thing for me. But over time, I mean we'll see what happens. But at the end of the day, YouTube is such such a uh a more powerful discovery platform, regardless of like just take the medium out of it. YouTube itself is just a powerful discovery platform, way more powerful than Apple Podcasts. And if you've ever searched for something on Apple Podcasts because you wanted to learn something new or you wanted the latest, newest information, it is really hard to sort through those search results to find what you're really looking for. Um, just recently I was I wanted to listen to something. Um, so I searched for it on Apple Podcasts, and like the top results were three years old, four years old, and what whatever the topic was I was searching for was like something kind of it like I want the newest information, I want the latest information, I don't want three or four-year-old information. And I thought, man, like it's wild to me that Apple wants to host wants to stream or display video content. Um, in my mind, I'm thinking because they want to um compete with YouTube, but like you can't even get the search function down, you can't even make the search function really useful. So I I don't know where Apple's going with the with the video stuff. The episodes that I've published in the last 90-ish days, we've got 60 downloads of those videos. Again, I don't know if people watched it. I have no idea if people watched the video through the Apple Podcasts player, but it is there. And if anyone was to like happen to find me through Apple Podcasts and they've never seen me before, like I'm not I'm not like somebody they found through YouTube, which I I just have a feeling would be such a rare occurrence, but I don't know. If you're out there, let me know, shoot me an email, find me on social or something, and let me know if you've like never seen my face before. Uh, but for those people, I think it is interesting to be able to um just like pop in a video there and be like, oh, here I am on camera. And I know some of the podcast hosts that do have video on Apple Podcasts, I've been actually really surprised because I never knew what they look like. And now that now I do, I just I never look them up on social or YouTube or anything. I don't know if like, oh, now I know what they look like, kind of a reveal is a powerful enough concept to like pay the extra that you have to pay to host your video on uh on Buzz Sprout or wherever you're hosting your video, especially when you know it doesn't cost you anything to host it on YouTube. But I do think that video content, you know, especially in the world we live with with AI, um, it's it's really hard to fake being a human on camera. Um, I mean, it's actually actually, I take that back. It's actually relatively easy to fake being a human on camera. Some of the AI out there is very convincing. But I think it's going to become harder and harder to fake being a human on camera because uh those of us who make video content are are now sort of uh released from the pressure of making everything perfect and and um having these like perfectly scripted videos with perfect lighting and perfect everything. Um we used to have so much pressure, like production pressure to get everything right. And now it's almost as if um the more perfect or more polished your video, the less trustworthy it is, right? And so I think now more than ever, it's never been more important to show up as a human, as a real authentic human on camera when you're creating your content, especially for a business. And it's like one of the easiest ways to establish trust with your audience, if they can see you, uh, and and kind of like put a face to the name and put a face to the voice. And I think ultimately like audio only content, I think is well, I should say audio content, I think is is incredibly valuable. And if you've ever if you've ever if you've ever listened to a podcast for years, or even really like weeks and months, like for the first time you listen to that, and then you go and you see that per that person, the host, um, like see their see their blog post or see a social media post or see something on threads, and your your brain is like reading it in their voice. I think that is there's something really powerful there with voices and how we um how we as humans connect to each other through voices. So I don't think audio podcasting is going anywhere, and I don't think it's any less powerful now that there's like the option to publish videos alongside the audio version of your podcast. But I think if you want more people to consume your content with less effort on your part, just turn on your camera and make it a video and throw that on YouTube. And I I realize for me it might sound like, yeah, yeah, Meredith, you already have a YouTube, you already have a camera and a microphone and lights, and like it's already plugged in and connected, and you know exactly how to record, you know exactly how to edit. Um, and I get that it's easier for some people than it is for others, but again, going back to the whole trust thing and the AI thing, I think it's worth the effort. I and I think you if if you have a uh like you have a reason for creating the content to begin with, I think I think you should feel like it's worth the effort to let it reach as many people as possible. YouTube is like the loudest possible stage that you could put your message on, which I realize is a little intimidating for people, but it it's worth the extra effort. And again, yes, my YouTube channel existed before I started publishing video uh podcast episodes on it, and so it had some um it had there was momentum there, right? There was there's there was already an audience there to be watching my video content. But if you feel excited about video content through Apple Podcasts and through Buzz Sprout or through your podcast host, you should be 10 times like literally 10 times more excited about YouTube because YouTube is just that much more discoverable and your content can go just that much further without you having to promote it and make all of the social media clips and do all of the dancing monkey stuff that you have to do to get people to know about your podcast. It can exist for people in the moment that they're looking to find it if you put it on YouTube. And then you have the best of both worlds. You have the audio, you have the video, you have the discoverability of YouTube, but then you have the uh like the the connection and and the uh like closeness, I guess, of having the audio version in whatever podcast player that your audience wants. Now, do I think that every video should be a podcast video? No, not necessarily. I still do feel pretty strongly that for the most part, if you're gonna call it a podcast, it should be enjoyably consumed in an audio-only fashion. And the video version of it is just sort of like a bonus. And this is uh, I think one of the biggest gripes that I notice people chatting about on threads when they're debating like what is a podcast, if it's on YouTube, it's not really a podcast, if it's on video, it's not really a podcast, right? All of all of this stuff, right? Uh if if you as the consumer are not able to comprehend or understand like what you're listening to because you can't see something, and you know, I say that as somebody who just like created a video podcast where I pulled my screen up and there's obviously a visual component to it. Uh, but hopefully I did a good enough job of describing what I was seeing on the screen with my numbers and my stats and everything like that to where it actually does make some sense. So a hundred episodes in. If you're wondering if I if I'm gonna keep creating my video podcast episodes, I think so. Yeah, I actually contemplated, I'm not gonna lie, I contemplated saying, hey, let's just stop doing it after 100. Um, but here I am at 101. So um I think we're gonna keep going for a little bit. Um I I'm just not I'm not really seeing getting it out um in the podcast players as like really any other mechanism other than as a courtesy to people who want my episodes in their podcast player. And I think that's just that is what it is, that is how it is um for right now. And uh I'll be back with another update if anything changes or if suddenly Apple Podcasts uh really is competitive with YouTube as far as video and discoverability and all of that stuff. So if you're listening to this, thank you so much. If you're watching this, give this a thumbs up, let me know in the comments that you're here, and um cheers to another hundred episodes of Video Brand Infusion.