Insights: FAQ
A collection of the most frequently asked questions about the Insights dashboard
Katie Rogers avatar
Written by Katie Rogers
Updated over a week ago

Can Insights data be exported?

Yes, you can export your show data by selecting the Export CSV button. This button can be found on all tabs in Insights.

Why can't I see any data in the Behaviour tab?

The Behaviour tab on Insights only includes data from the Acast platform, and requires a minimum of 100 listens to the episode in order to display.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify offer their own dashboards for additional information about your listens, including subscriber numbers and listen-through rate.

The analytics in my 'Today' graph (in the Overview tab) do not seem accurate. I checked the download numbers, then checked again the following day and the original number always seems lower. Can you explain?

First, don't panic! This is completely normal and we're happy to explain.

Your downloads on the 'Today' graph are an estimation as we haven't yet applied IAB filters to them. The following morning at UTC, the analytics are refreshed. I.E. we apply IAB filters to our data and then make it available in Insights for you. We do this to ensure our data is IAB 2.0 Certified, and therefore the data we give you is as accurate as possible. So the first numbers you are seeing are Estimates and should be counted as such, then the following day the numbers will be corrected according to IAB 2.0.

This explains how you checked your downloads and they read [X] for the day. When you checked again the next day, they were logged at a lower number. Due to the "strict" IAB filter, which removes any errant traffic (e.g. bots, duplicates) and arrives at a true amount the following day. Therefore, the number you see the following day should be treated as the most accurate representation of your real downloads.

The downloads for my latest episodes are much lower than the historical trend I have come to expect on Acast. The analytics seem inaccurate now on Insights. What is going on?

Most likely, your show may not have had Windowing configured as a setting beforehand.

FYI, Windowing was an advanced feature previously available on Acast used to guard against any errant or malicious download requests (illegitimate traffic). Essentially, it worked like this:

  1. We 'fingerprint' every incoming download request

  2. If we receive a request with the same fingerprint within a given period of time (the "window") we disregard that as a legitimate download, and do not count it in your analytics.

Previously, we offered the ability to set a Window of 1 hour (least conservative) up to 24hrs (most conservative).

If you had a less conservative Window setting beforehand or your Window setting was OFF, that would explain the decrease in the number of downloads you are used to seeing. Our current analytics pipeline filters against all manner of suspicious download requests (e.g. errant traffic, bots, duplicates).

Can I access more analytics for each platform?

Yes, platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify offer further analytics specific to listens through their platform.

To access your podcast's Apple Podcasts dashboard, log in to the Podcasts Connect you created when you submitted your podcast to them.

To access your podcast's Spotify dashboard, you need to sign up to the Spotify for Podcasters service:

  1. You will first need to have an active Spotify account. If you To sign up, go to www.spotify.com/signup.

  2. Also ensure the email address you’ve provided under the podcast’s General Settings is correct. Spotify will use this email address to confirm you are the owner of your RSS feed. In Create, go to Settings, then scroll down to RSS Settings to find or change your email address.

  3. Then sign up to Spotify for Podcasters at podcasters.spotify.com. You will be sent a verification code by email to confirm your ownership of the show.

If I migrate my show to Acast from another host, am I able to import my analytics as well?

Analytics will not carry over when changing hosts, simply because we can't guarantee the purity of the data. Acast is IAB certified, so carrying over analytics from a different platform would impact the integrity of the data. Don't worry, we take analytics very seriously: our dashboard is intuitive and clear, our analytics are highly detailed.

What counts as a download?

A download will be counted when at least 60 seconds of the episode has been consumed, from one set of IP-address and device. If the same listener would listen to the episode again on a different device, it would count as another download. This is according to IAB 2.0 which you can read more about here.

What does "Other" represent in Analytics?

"Other" is quite a broad, undefined category which you may see in the Sources tab in Insights. Basically, it's any "other" platform that's requesting a pull of your RSS feed, such as possibly a web player or other, smaller podcatchers that are not yet categorized (as the number of podcast players grows exponentially). The number will vary based on where the podcast is advertised, but also just based on the population of the listeners that are tuning into the show. The other category will be populated with a big or small number of various players that we cannot otherwise slice the pie up with (else the pie could be difficult to read with many, many little slivers).

Acast publishes to over 100 apps. In recent research, we found some estimates of the current landscape that are worth sharing:

  • Apple is by far the largest, at around 2 out of 3 listeners using the Apple Podcasts app that is preinstalled on the iPhone.

  • It is followed by Spotify, which is many times smaller but is still significant.

  • Then there are players like Pocket Casts, Castbox, Stitcher, Acast, and Google Podcasts, each of which have a couple of percentage points, and which jointly comprise about 20% of the total listenership.

  • There are dozens of additional apps (e.g. Breaker, Castro) that represent less than 1%.

Where can I see subscribers?

Subscriber information is recorded only by the podcast apps (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, etc, of which there are hundreds), and they do not reveal this data to Acast (or any other provider). You would need to access Spotify or Apple's respective dashboards to see their subscriber data.

In what time zone are my downloads being reported?

Stats are all reported in the same time zone. This ensures that a team with members in the UK and in Australia pull consistent reports for their organization, no matter where they’re individually located. Therefore, some small variance is to be expected.

How should I count YouTube views on Acast?

As video views are counted differently than podcast downloads, it would not be a good representation to compare them. YouTube counts one view when the following criteria has been met:

  1. A user intentionally initiates the watching of a video.

  2. The user watches it on the platform for at least 30 seconds.

An episode download on the other hand is counted when at least 60 seconds of the episode has been consumed. So w recommend to not compare the numbers and instead keep them separate, which will help you utilize the numbers more accurately to grow your show on each platform.

A have a lot of downloads coming from website referrals that I can't explain - what's going on?

If you see an unexplainable increase in listens from website referrals in your show's Insights dashboard, the website might have implementation pre-loading, which automatically downloads the episode and can cause inflated statistics. Read more about it and best practices to avoid it here.

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