Play analytics
What Pod Promo counts as a play, how duplicates are filtered, and what the numbers mean.
Last updated
Every show and episode has a play count, visible from your dashboard in real time.
What counts as a play
A play is recorded when a listener starts playback on a public episode page or through your RSS feed.
Counts are deduplicated: one play per listener per episode per rolling 24-hour window. Starting the same episode five times in an afternoon counts once.
Deduplication uses a hashed IP address. The raw address is never stored, so counts work without tracking individual listeners.
Reading the numbers
Compare like-for-like windows. Lifetime totals drift upward forever, which makes old episodes look better than new ones. Downloads in the first seven days is the comparable metric.
Watch the trend, not the day. Daily counts are noisy. Weekly totals are where a real pattern shows up.
Expect a long tail. A meaningful share of downloads for any episode arrive weeks after publication, as new subscribers work backward through your catalogue.
What Pod Promo does not track
- Individual listener identity
- Cross-site behaviour
- Third-party advertising profiles
Podcast measurement is inherently approximate — apps pre-download episodes people never play, and nothing in RSS reports back. Treat every number as a directional signal, not a headcount.