Podcasting: To YouTube or To Not YouTube – PCI 371

Speaker 0 00:00:00 You'll have to decide on your own whether you want to be over there or not. And again, it's the key to, the thing to remember is no programmatic advertising that will get you banned. So no programmatic advertising.

Speaker 1 00:00:15 You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast, bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. With the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting, welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 0 00:00:29 I'm Todd Cochrane, CEO and Co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting. And

Speaker 3 00:00:33 I'm Mike Dell, the Vice President of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 0 00:00:36 Today we're going to talk about YouTube's podcasting solution and why you might want to think about it if it's gonna fit the goals for your show.

Speaker 0 00:00:51 Well, Mike, uh, YouTube has announced that they're gonna start letting podcasters add their RSS speed to a YouTube playlist. Along with that, they're turning off a, well, what I'm terming a perfectly good podcast app Google podcast. Sadly. Now I got mixed feelings on this, and I think right off the bat, I just, I do, I wanna make a disclaimer. You know, I have my podcast on YouTube. I do live podcast on YouTube, and then take that YouTube or what I recorded during that live event, and I create a true video podcast. And we can talk about that a little bit later. But, so I have no issue with anyone that wants to be on YouTube, but I think we really need to talk about the, what really means here and what they're introducing from a a feature standpoint.

Speaker 3 00:01:45 My impression of it is they're, as I said in the, or, you know, as we wrote there, , they're taking a perfectly good podcast app that is a true podcast app run by RSS, and they're replacing it with YouTube. And there's nothing particularly wrong with YouTube, but YouTube is not by definition podcasting. Now, they are one step forward. They're, they are ingesting RSS, which is something they've never done in the past. But is that absolutely a good thing? Eh, I don't know, maybe .

Speaker 0 00:02:25 Well, and if you look at YouTube as a platform, YouTube has certain rules, conditions, virtual utilization. Obviously you can, within your a YouTube channel, you can do host endorsed advertising. You have to disclose that and market in your publishing system. There's a lot of things that you can't do. You can't run a Geico ad, per se, is just let it free run that. That's not allowed. And there are rules you have to follow. So what they have done in the very basic essence is only made it available for you to be able to get your audio content into a YouTube playlist that they convert to video, of which then they set that content to unpublished. You have to come into your YouTube channel, make that content public, and then add any metadata that they don't pick up from the RSS feed. And again, they're gonna take your audio, they're gonna convert it to video, and then they're gonna put some sort of image, probably your album art, not your episode art.

Speaker 0 00:03:39 So what you're gonna do is you're gonna have a whole bunch of episodes potentially on YouTube if you do this, that'll have the same exact art, which is not that compelling on YouTube per se. And you'll, people will be able to listen to your show on a channel. They can't subscribe to it and get it in a podcast app. They can only subscribe to it and add it to their YouTube subscriptions. And so ultimately, if you wanna make a change, let's say you've recorded this particular episode, it's been ingested by YouTube, then let's say a week down the road you say, oh, I made a mistake. I need to make an edit. Or maybe the sponsorship for your host endorsed ad has run out, which you're allowed to do the host endorsed, and you wanna remove that. You then have to go into YouTube and upload a brand new file that they will make a new episode in YouTube replacing the one that you've had and make the other one private. You can't just change the audio out. So it really is gonna screw with your, your potential view numbers. You'll be able to get the view numbers cumulative from your one that was set private. But this is the way it works with YouTube anyway, right?

Speaker 3 00:04:59 It's, there's nothing different about it other than they're taking your audio Yeah. Making it into a static video. Yep.

Speaker 3 00:05:07 And you still gotta follow all the rules and it's still just as much work. So my theory is, if you wanna do YouTube, do YouTube or do an actual video, even a talking head video will do a lot better than a static video in YouTube. I don't know whether this is gonna take off with listeners either. I'm a pretty heavy YouTube user as far as watching videos on YouTube, and I might have watched an audio static image video maybe once or twice. If I just tap it across it and I'm doing something else. Sure, why not throw it up on the tv? But I can't see making that part of my routine.

Speaker 0 00:05:53 And what's even more crazy is those of us that do a true video podcast, which is what I have for my two of my shows. I have an audio version that has a listing in Apple Podcast, and I have a video version that has a video version of the show in Apple Podcast. So two different listings, one audio, one video that you can watch an Apple podcast and other apps that support video. They won't even allow me as a video podcaster to send over my video podcast speed. So this is purely only for audio and ultimately in my personal opinion, based upon their history, if you look at the podcast link, which again, they've kind of, in my opinion, hijacked the name. If you look at the podcast link in YouTube as it is today, the only shows that they're highlighting are shows that are true video shows.

Speaker 0 00:06:47 So those shows that are true video shows that may or may even not have an RSS associated video feed going to Apple Podcasts and other locations, they are only highlighting shows that are calling themselves video podcast that are in a video podcast playlist or a playlist. They're not even showing off any of the audio only shows, which they're already literally thousands of on YouTube. 'cause podcasters have been submitting their audio version of their show to YouTube for years. They don't show any of those shows. So only the shows that they're really highlighting, again, are the top shows. There was a good point made recently by Tom Webster and saying that all this attraction about YouTube, AKA in podcasting is probably limited to about a hundred shows, a hundred of the top shows. And everyone else, even though people are watching, a lot of people are watching those top a hundred shows, let's say several million. It skews the numbers when it comes to making the average podcaster that doesn't have a true video show into thinking the show has to be on YouTube to gain traction. Now, again, I wanna back up, if you want your show on YouTube, you can do it. All you have to do is submit your R ss v now when it's available. But here's some things you have to watch out for. If you're running programmatic advertising, you can't, can't submit that. There can be no advertising that is normal advertising at all.

Speaker 3 00:08:29 Yeah. The only advertising they allow are host read endorsements. And you have to say it right at the beginning or in the metadata that it has host read endorsements.

Speaker 0 00:08:39 That's right. There's a place within the actual settings and each video, or each episode that you publish, I don't even wanna call 'em episodes 'cause they're really not called episodes in Yeah. In vlogs or whatever they're calling them in YouTube. The, there's a setting that there's a host endorse ad that's included in the video. Now, there's no way to set that in today in the RSS speed. So that's something you'll have to go over and manually set if you're doing a host endorse, uh, ad. So again, all the standard YouTube rules apply. They're gonna run ads against your content. Mm-Hmm. , if you don't reach that 3000, I think it's 3000 hour in a 12 month period, you'll not be able to monetize. They will interrupt your audio content and run an ad. So let's say you have a host endorsed ad with, well, let's just use my sponsor.

Speaker 0 00:09:34 Let's say I'm doing a host endorsed ad for GoDaddy. And if they come in three seconds after I get done doing the GoDaddy ad and they drop an ad for DreamHost, there's gonna be an obvi, obviously confliction there, because I have established relationship with GoDaddy. I don't want another ad run against me Now, I still risk that today by uploading my video podcast to YouTube. There's been no change there. But I also know what I'm getting into in that instance. And if you pay for premium, you won't have, so this is definitely gonna drive more people to do YouTube premium. Maybe

Speaker 3 00:10:10 That's the point.

Speaker 0 00:10:11 , maybe YouTube will still censor you if you say something that is not considered brand safe. Swearing is probably going to be penalized. Any type of adult talk will likely be penalized. There's gonna be topics that they are just going to, they will suppress your content being surfaced. And that goes the exact same instances if you have a channel. So again, the, all the rules and all the things that the patterns that happen on YouTube today are exactly the same. The platform has not changed nothing for, for, for podcasters.

Speaker 3 00:10:51 You and I got to sit through a, uh, a presentation that YouTube, the team over there with most of the podcast hosts, hosting companies. And it seemed to me that if I made a checklist of how not to do podcasting, they hit every check.

Speaker 0 00:11:12 Oh, they definitely did.

Speaker 3 00:11:14 And then I think they wanted us as podcast hosts to create a separate feed for all our customers to go to YouTube. And we've been around this before when Spotify came on. And that's just not something that's, that's practical, especially since I don't believe this is just me talking. Not, not blueberry, not this is Mike Dell. But I don't believe that this is gonna gain any traction with listeners. I just can't see that this is gonna do any good. But again, you got the choice. This is, that's the beauty of podcasting, even this, that you have the choice. So whether you want to do this or not,

Speaker 0 00:11:58 Having run a non-successful podcast channel and wait, the reason I say non-successful is maybe my top video has four or 500 views, and for how long? Maybe two minutes each or something. So the key really is there is a strategy that if I run a podcast strategy, I don't run a YouTube strategy. A YouTube strategy is posting a couple of times a week, having a short, very short content, typically 10 to 15 minutes, 20 minutes maybe at the max. There's certain things that you do as a YouTuber that will have a formula to help you grow a YouTube channel. So I think that anyone that wants to gain exposure, if this is the goal, is to gain exposure to your podcast, and you're gonna be, have a YouTube channel with it being fed by an RSS feed is just make sure all the metadata that you send that you put on your channel and put on each episode helps you build your podcast versus helping build your YouTube channel.

Speaker 0 00:13:03 And that's what I've done because I've often, I always put a link to my website. I put a link to Apple Podcast, I put links within the YouTube description area that allow someone to subscribe, follow, or subscribe to my show in the normal podcast medium. So again, I, I think you'll have to decide on your own whether you want to be over there or not. And again, it's the key to the thing to remember is no programmatic advertising that will get you banned. So no programmatic advertising. Number two, they, if you're running clips in your show, got to be careful. You could get a copyright strike over there. If you have any music in your show, you can get a copyright strike. This is one of the reasons why they're gonna make every episode that comes into YouTube set to private first, so that if you get a copyright strike content strike, whatever it means, you can deal with it without penalty before that episode goes public.

Speaker 0 00:14:06 'cause they will tell you after they process the video, oh, you played music, so you get a copyright check. Oh, you have to run a clip and you're, you've got a copyright strike. So this is the key here that the things that you're gonna have to, to, to look out for and be careful, we will give instructions when it's available on how you can submit your RSS feed with these warnings. And again, we are not going to make YouTube a distribution point within our platform, but again, you as a podcaster have the ability to do what you wanna do with your show. And ours is just to kinda give you the insights of what's gonna happen over there. Now, there is an effort to try to get YouTube to listen a little bit, but my personal feeling is that's gonna be met with major resistance.

Speaker 0 00:14:57 I asked YouTube, can you make, can you carve out an exception for podcasters so that we can continue to earn money with our shows through programmatic and, and go the pass through? And that, that answer was no, because YouTube is a video platform, not an audio platform. Hence them converting your audio file to a video file and what is played on Google music is the same. They convert your audio file to a video file and play it as if it was an audio file. This is why on many Google Music channels for professional artists where there is a, their video that goes along with the audio being played. So stats will remain 100% on Google, including Google Music. You'll get no stats back into the blueberry platform whatsoever. So nothing has changed on YouTube, just that they'll auto ingest your latest episodes, then you have to go make it public. That's really the story. It,

Speaker 3 00:15:58 It might be that we're just making a bigger deal out of it than it really is because YouTube has always been what they are. And you could always do this minus the ingestion from RS. Right, right. So it just takes out one step. Yep. So it it, this isn't the the new shiny object. This is just another way to get your stuff in there without going through the hassle of making a video version of your static audio.

Speaker 0 00:16:26 Before Google had, I mean before YouTube had YouTube live, I took my video file that I recorded and made available via open RSS and I submitted that over, I uploaded it manually for years. And then when, when I could do live on there, I just took the live video and allowed that to be my episode. Sure. So I think that's the key here for all of you to consider. And again, it's your show, but we're just, we're just telling you that, again, from our standpoint, when you start asking us for stats, you start asking us to allow your shows to run programmatic on YouTube. We can't, we don't control that. That's, that's completely on YouTube

Speaker 3 00:17:05 A anything of that sort. I mean, you know, if something's not working over there, your host us and whoever else you might be hosting with really has zero control over it. Zero.

Speaker 0 00:17:15 Yeah.

Speaker 3 00:17:15 It's 100% on Google and YouTube.

Speaker 0 00:17:19 And if they, and if your episode doesn't show up, there's nothing we can do about it. If you publish an episode and it's two, three days or hours later and it's not up, that's we, we can't, there's nothing we can push, nothing we can touch, nothing that we can tickle to say, Hey, here's a new episode that's solely on YouTube. Yeah.

Speaker 3 00:17:37 We, we, we have nothing special going on with Google at this point.

Speaker 0 00:17:43 Si similar to Spotify. .

Speaker 3 00:17:44 Yeah. And it's very similar to Spotify. That's why I'm a little gun shy about it. It . Yeah. For the first couple of years Spotify was in the game. Anything went wrong with Spotify and they were coming to the hosts coming to us and there wasn't anything we could do either. We could just, short of what we do anyway, if someone has a problem with, with distribution, we could see, oh yeah, feed looks good. I don't know, go type check with them. So we will definitely have some sort of contact information for YouTube, get ahold of them, maybe ,

Speaker 0 00:18:17 But it'd probably be support@youtube.com because they haven't given us any. Yeah, they

Speaker 3 00:18:22 Wouldn't give us anything.

Speaker 0 00:18:23 Everything's through their normal support system forms or whatever it is. But here's the thing, we're not trying to be negative, Nancy, we're just trying to give you the details. Again, I actively run a YouTube channel, not a successful one that carries the live version of my two of my podcast. And hope you have better success than I have.

Speaker 3 00:18:43 Yeah, I mean, there may be some people that this works really good for. There's nothing wrong with that. And we're not gonna discourage you from putting it on YouTube. We're just gonna let you know this is not your run of the mill podcast destination.

Speaker 0 00:18:59 No, not at all.

Speaker 3 00:19:01 This is YouTube and, and like I said, there's nothing wrong with YouTube except for you just have to know what the rules are because they are different than open podcasting.

Speaker 0 00:19:12 And please, I if they, they may present you a terms of service or some reminder or just be familiar with the advertising guidelines, that's probably the thing that's gonna get most people in the most trouble with this. And again, uh, we'll have a big warning in our, in our uh, documentation page to make sure that you are not submitting ARSS feed that has promatic advertising in it. Right. For those of you that are using Power Press, this is a simple solution for you to create a, a separate feed if you so desire. But again, they're only gonna pull that feed one time, take the file and run.

Speaker 3 00:19:46 Yep.

Speaker 0 00:19:47 Again, you don't, you're not going to get any, any stats besides a, a counter of one from YouTube.

Speaker 3 00:19:54 Right. So anyway, that we wanted to let you guys know that this is coming and like the, there are some drawbacks, there may be some upside, who knows, your mileage may vary. But again, beauty of podcasting, do what you want.

Speaker 0 00:20:10 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 00:20:10 Anyway, I think we've, uh, we've covered that. I think we'll, uh, just see what happens over the next, I don't know, six to 12 months I guess is how long this is all gonna take. Although they are starting to take RSS feeds on a limited basis now. So when we have some information, we will definitely be posting about it and show you how to do it if you wanna do it and let you know what's going on.

Speaker 0 00:20:35 Happy podcasting.

Speaker 1 00:20:37 Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime, for more information to subscribe, share or follow, check out the show notes@podcastinsider.com to check out our latest suite of services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease.