Podtrac rankings for October 2018; iHeartRadio/Stuff leaps upward with slimmer show profile

Podtrac released its podcast publisher ranking for October 2018. The chart reflected some recent developments in the podcast space, with iHeartRadio moving up to the second spot following its acquisition of HowStuffWorks. In September, iHeartRadio placed fourth and HowStuffWorks took eighth. iHeartRadio’s strong Podtrac performance is represented by fewer shows as a joint entity than it had alone the previous month.

NPR remained in the top spot for yet another month, while This American Life/Serial took third. Daily Wire edged into the number nine spot.

Total global downloads for the top 10 publishers rose 26% between October and September and posted a 73% increase for the month year-over-year. (See chart below.)

The change in number of shows representing iHeartRadio led us to consider the Podtrac metrics through a different lens. The Podtrac chart is organized with US Unique Monthly Audience (in other words, Audience) as the governing metric. The secondary metric is global Unique Streams & Downloads (in other words, Plays). We tried re-sorting the list by average Audience per show, and average Plays per show. (See below the Podtrac chart.)

Podtrac ranking for October:

Average Audience, and average Plays, per Active Show for each publisher:

 

Anna Washenko