Sponsored by Magellan AI. With Magellan AI, Rhapsody Voices sold 80%+ of its ad inventory on two shows in back-to-back quarters. See how they did it A week after YouTube altered the numbers you need before you start making money, YouTube's visible definition of a "play" (or "view") is also to change. From August 24, a public view will be counted "the moment a video begins to play from the very first frame". Creators still have access to "engaged views", which YouTube publicly says is "how many times viewers stayed to watch past the first frame and initial seconds". This is the previous definition of a play/view, believed by many to be at least 30 seconds (though YouTube doesn't publicly say). If that's true, the "engaged view" roughly aligns to the AMP Accords definition of a play. So, what is a podcast play? We've written up a full article, with our own stats, to explain and compare the different platforms. Most - but not all - give a roughly consistent number. What will be the effect of YouTube's new "view" metric? The public numbers will be significantly bigger, we'd guess - but also, significantly less meaningful, since a play for one second will still count. However, the more comparable "engaged views" metric will, as far as we can see, become entirely private to the creator: it won't be seen on public pages, and it will not be available through the YouTube Public Data API. It remains accessible in YouTube Studio, and through the Analytics and Reporting APIs, for creators; but third-party rankers or data companies will no longer have access, unless they're specifically given that. After we published a video of a podcast ad that was unskippable in Spotify yesterday, Spotify contacted us to say: "Spotify does not make podcast ads unskippable. A bug caused the 15-second skip to not be visible in the example, and it was fixed. The 15-second skip works for both Free and Premium users. Skip Ahead is a separate feature we are testing with a subset of Premium subscribers." They've not commented on what their terms for creators could allow them to do. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereThe Wrong Agency Is Expensive — A bad fit costs you momentum, quality, and months of rebuilding. This structured evaluation framework helps financial services firms choose a podcast partner they won't regret. Free.The recording tool designed for studios — No more chasing files. Every client session comes to you automatically. SureTake just records reliably, that's it.Ask a Marketer: How Advertisers Read the Research — John Right Side Up and Sounds Profitable as they walk through the latest podcast research to show you