Podcast Glossary: Understanding the language of enterprise podcast publishing

Although podcasting may seem a relatively new media, it’s actually been 15 years since the first episode premiered in iTunes in 2006. In the years since, it has continuously grown in terms of both consumption and technology, creating an entire dialect specific to the medium. Including a number of pod-prefixes such as Podpage, Podsights, Podnews, Podchaser, and more.

When you combine podcasting’s novel words with its foundational roots in the professional silos of radio/broadcasting, digital media/blogs/open web, and audio production, you have a wide and deep pool of terms, concepts, and acronyms to dive into.

The good news? You don’t need to know them all. But when it’s time to learn, we created a resource to help you get started. What follows is Omny’s take on a modern-day Enterprise Podcast Glossary for today’s publishers.

The Glossary for Enterprise Podcasting — By Omny Studio.

For glossaries by a remote recording provider, please see this one from Riverside.fm. From an attribution service, see this one from Backtracks. And from a podcasting blog, this one from The Podcast Host. There you will find dozens of different terms and their meanings.

The following glossary will focus on the terms used in hosting, measuring, managing, and monetizing podcasts.

Hosting and Managing

Bitrate | In digital multimedia, bitrate represents the amount of information, or detail, that is stored per unit of time of a recording. In Omny Studio, podcast episodes are made available in MP3 format in a 128 kbps bitrate by default.

CDN | Content Delivery Network, this is infrastructure used by podcast hosts like Omny Studio to deliver your audio to listeners, quickly and reliably, and anywhere in the world.

Clip | Omny Studio refers to any uploaded audio as a clip.

File formats | A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. Omny Studio supports MP3 uploads along with some other file formats, but only offers audio files on RSS feeds and embed players as MP3 — the podcast industry standard format.

Kbps | An acronym for kilobits per second, a measure of data transfer speed — or in audio, file size. A higher kbps values indicates that an audio file will be larger in size. Higher kbps also usually indicates higher audio quality.

Network | A network in Omny Studio is a collection of programs. Network level analytics aggregates all the stats from the programs in that network into that one page. There are also settings that can be applied at the network level that apply to all the programs under that network.

Organization | The top-level entity in Omny Studio is an Organization. Can also be called an account. Organization is the highest level for settings, analytics, and user accounts.

Playlist | Playlists live within a program and each playlist has an RSS feed for publishing to podcast apps and a playlist embed widget for publishing on a website. A program can have multiple playlists to give users the flexibility to create curated selections of content for listeners. A common example is to create a “best of” feed which is published in conjunction with the full show. Multiple playlists are optional and are only intended to be for creating curated selections of content from the same show/series.

Program | Omny Studio is organised into programs and each program represents a podcast (show/series). Within each program portal you can manage your live recordings, create a podcast feed (with multiple playlists if necessary), set user’s feature access, edit your audio and much more.

User accounts | All activity in Omny Studio is connected to a user account, which is either connected to an email address, or an API key. User accounts can be given granular, per-program access, network access, or organization access. Omny Studio supports unlimited user accounts for all Organizations.

Measurement

Analytics Filtering | Omny Studio offers a range of analytics reports for publishers to understand what, when, where, and how their audio content is being downloaded and played. The analytics system measures content downloads, podcast RSS subscribers, and content consumption over a wide range of publishing endpoints. You can read more about Omny’s filtering methodologies here.

Downloads | A retrieval from Omny’s server of published audio, by (but not limited to) podcast players, embed players, and third-party apps and websites. As an IAB-certified podcast host Omny Studio follows the IAB guidelines for what defines a podcast download and our download filtering methodology can be found here.

IAB | The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which sets standards for online and interactive advertisements.

IAB Certification | The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab provides certification to podcast hosts that implement industry standards and best practice. Read more here, or a short excerpt below:

Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, marketers, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; ad experiences and measurement; and programmatic effectiveness.

Impressions | If using Omny Campaign Manager (OCM) or Triton Ad Platform (TAP) then your number of “ads delivered” is called impressions. The IAB defines Ad Delivered (impressions) as “an ad that was delivered as determined by server logs that show either all bytes of the ad file were sent or the bytes representing the portion of the podcast file containing the ad file was downloaded.”

Third-Party Impression/Download Attribution | Third-party services (Chartable, Podtrac, Podsights, et al.) through “Prefix URLs” can provide authentication of downloads for third-parties like sponsors, offer other services like chart tracking, or pair prefix tracking with advertiser-side tracking to connect ads and purchases (attribution). Omny Studio supports these services: read more here.

Monetization

Advertiser | The vendor who is paying for the placement of an ad. Every advertiser is associated with one or more industries, which determines how the advertiser’s campaigns fit within industry-standard frequency caps.

Campaign | A campaign consists of the organized elements of a program to promote a company or its products. Campaign elements include various ad types, media channels, and run dates.

CPM | Cost per mille, also called cost per thousand, is a commonly used measurement in advertising. It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of an advertisement.

Creative | The concept, design and artwork of an ad, including the actual media files.

DAI | Dynamic Ad Insertion is a server-side ad-insertion technology that enables a seamless, personalized ad experience at scale. In Omny Studio we offer DAI through OCM, TAP, or Yield-Op for direct sold/programmatic use cases.

Direct sold | When a publisher acts as their own ad sales representation and books an advertising campaign for themselves, these ads are referred to as “direct sold”. They can then either “bake-in” those ads for delivery, or serve them through a method of DAI.

DSP | Demand-side platforms, these are usually operated by ad agencies and are where buyers of ads upload their creative, indicate their spend and targeting parameters for their podcast advertising.

Flight | A flight is the primary “container” of a campaign in Omny Campaign Manager/Triton Advertising Platform. It is the definition of when an ad or set of ads are to be used, and includes the start and end dates, the traffic method, impressions goal, and CPM value, and can also include targeting and pacing definitions. A campaign must include at least one flight.

Frequency Cap | The maximum number of times an ad, or type of ad, can be played within a given timeframe.

Make-good | In traditional advertising, a “make-good” is a free ad placement provided as a way to make up for an error in the original ad or its placement. In digital advertising, a make-good is usually done to compensate for under-delivery of ads, or a missed goal within a campaign.

OTI | OTI is the “on-track indicator” that appears in several places throughout Tap. It indicates whether or not your campaign delivery is on track (or “on schedule”).

IAB Categories | Categories for products and services for which podcast advertising is being bought for. Part of the larger IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy, which “provides a “common language” that can be used when describing content. Typical uses of the content taxonomy are contextual targeting and brand safety. Read more here.

Impressions | see Measurement above.

Inventory | The space a publisher has available for advertising. In traditional broadcasting, inventory is measured in spots; blocks of time on a broadcast schedule (typically 30 seconds) where ads can be placed. In digital advertising, inventory is measured in impressions.

Programmatic Ads/Pre-recorded Ads | Ads available from advertisers through programmatic ad exchanges. These are usually studio-produced ads from creative agencies.

SSP | Supply-side platform, like Yield-Op, where publishers can offer their inventory of content and downloads that can then receive dynamically-inserted ads.

Questions? Additions? Something else?

Contact omnystudio@tritondigital.com