RawVoice Statistics White Paper
RawVoice has been collecting and analyzing media statistics since the beginning of the introduction of downloadable media (AKA Podcasts) into the media space.
History
That Audio/Video media statistics analytic methodology has been highly refined over the past three years. Since early 2005, Todd Cochrane and the RawVoice team executed the very first multi-show advertising buys and have been the executors/administrators of various podcasting advertising deals ever since. Execution and management of those campaigns required highly accurate reporting to media buyers on various types of media buys. Analysis in the early days was done through a log analysis application that required manual processing of raw log files. This manual processing gave RawVoice unparalleled access to various datasets to develop accurate filtering and insights into media consumption that is unique in the space.
Through those many months of analysis of media consumption trends, we developed some simple ironclad rule sets that have been applied to our automated media analytic service. These rule sets developed over three years guarantee that our vendors are billed accurately and that our media creators have the best accounting and reporting of how and where their media is being consumed.
RawVoice's management philosophy plays a defining role in our statistic service; that philosophy has resulted in RawVoice having the longest running ad campaigns of any company in the podcast media space. From the beginning we have been conservative yet fair in our data reporting which has resulted in happy media buyers. It should be noted while other companies will come up with fancy equations on how they decide how many downloads to bill a vendor, we use logic that is easy to understand. As part of our process if a media producer's ratio of unique IP downloads to number of actual downloads increases beyond a set threshold level we flag the account for review. This keeps us aware of possible new consumption methods and is one of our antifraud measures.
We challenge you to ask other companies in the space if they have had continuous renewals of media buys by the same companies for three consecutive years.
Methodology
The RawVoice Statistics system reports both unique downloads and analyzed downloads for each episode over a given month. Unique downloads are calculated by counting the original requests for a given episode. Original requests are detected by examining the time stamp for the first recorded download request for a given episode from a specific IP address. Analyzed downloads are calculated by counting the additional requests for a given episode adjusting for the detected IP address's network. By default, we allow for at most 2 additional download requests from a specific IP address to be counted in the Analyzed download count for a given episode. If the IP address is determined to be from a large network such as a business or University, the maximum number of counted download requests are increased through a white listing rule.
Our download formula was devised from our experience analyzing downloaded log files for reporting to ad agencies. Our formula more accurately measures media download statistics by detecting differences that other statistics reporting systems do not. In one example, we discovered an iTunes user was blocked from downloading audio and video content by a corporate firewall. Through analyzing the download requests, we found the same IP address would try to download the same media daily. As it turned out, the media was being blocked by the company's firewall and was never downloaded. In another example, we found many requests come from a series of 8 IP addresses. After further analysis, we found the requests were occurring for a set of media files from the same podcast, the user agent was from an uncommon Internet Explorer variant, and the requests were occurring each morning at 8 am. We determined the requests were coming from dedicated web servers, most likely from scheduled scripts.
Other media download measurement statistics such as FeedBurner use a time frame of 24 hours to determine if a request should be counted. As you can see from the examples above, the RawVoice Statistics system more accurately calculates these statistics by looking deeper at the download requests, analyzing them over the course of an entire month and applying the same rule sets over for the lifetime of the file.
Proven Success
RawVoice's reputation of accurate reporting keeps our media buyers renewing each quarter, while giving the media creators access to unparalleled data that is the most comprehensive in the new media space.
The management of RawVoice has strong opinions in the space about fairness in media statistics reporting, and feel that some companies are taking advantage of media buyers by their liberal filtering techniques or complete disregard for filtering. If the method to determine reporting data does not make sense in simple terms, or the company is unwilling to provide in-depth details of their counting procedures then one needs to be highly suspect! Our statistics method has been in use for three years and has stood the test of time and 100's of thousands of dollars in advertising delivered and billed fairly.
Todd CochraneCEO RawVoice
808-741-4923
ceo@rawvoice.com