Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther (again, because I got a bee in my bonnet).

We need to talk about podcast listener numbers — voices.media

Yesterday, Bloomberg revealed that podcast companies are buying short podcast plays within mobile game apps, causing ‘official’ downloads of shows to be registered. These 6 million BS listens and the constant pressure for podcasts to get squillions of listeners has properly got me narked, so I've gone on a rant about it.

Do you know what the average number of listens for a podcast is in the first week of release? 29. Sure, there are a fair few podcasts from people whose only listeners are their mum and publishers should have higher expectations. But how do you gauge how well your podcast is doing when no one will be upfront about their audio audiences?

In this piece, I set out some benchmarking approaches for publishers. It varies hugely by brand, but there are a couple of fairly solid ways I've found give some targets for organisations I've worked with. Most importantly though, podcasting is high-engagement media. Small audiences still add up in terms of valuable time spent with your brand.

Google Chrome's "heavy ad" intervention: What publishers need to know — whatsnewinpublishing.com

This helpful FAQ defines what is a “heavy ad” and everything a publisher needs to know to make sure heavy ads aren’t negatively impacting ad impressions and revenues.

The Tab paid off parent company Digitalbox's buyout cost in 18 months — pressgazette.co.uk

I can remember The Tab (short for 'Cantab' and 'Tabloid') in its early days at uni being basically The Sun of student life, so it's really strange to see it now as a proper, grown-up media organisation. Company Chief Exec James Carter attributes its success to "being lean, keen, and able to be very granular about what we're doing."

The gender gap in media is still wider than you think — digitalcontentnext.org

Between 1995 to 2020, across 120 nations, the number of female news sources and subjects increased from 16% to 24% in newspapers, 15% to 24% in radio news, 21% to 26% in TV news, and 25% to 27% online. Let's not forget there's still a long way to go.

New episode:

As the streaming wars heat up, a reckoning is coming for traditional TV — voices.media

For this next season of the Media Voices Podcast, kindly sponsored by Poool, we’ll be publishing ten episodes exploring the biggest trends of 2022 and how they affect publishers. For this first episode, we're joined by The Addition's Charlotte Henry to explore how key moments in broadcast, streaming and TV have shaped the media landscape this year.

Lend me your ears! The power of podcasts to connect and serve — voices.media

If you need any more convincing about why podcasts are brilliant for engaging and building relationships with listeners, read this. Chris Phin has introduced multiple podcasts to DC Thomson's brands. He explains why podcasting is such a powerful format for publishers.