So you’ve finally launched your business podcast to an audience of… well, you’re not completely sure. You think it’s been successful, but you don’t have hard numbers to review. There’s not much to go on other than your download numbers (and at this point, you’re not sure if that matters).
You just want to know if your podcast is reaching your goals, which means you need to tap into podcast analytics.
The good news is, they aren’t hard to implement.
This guide explains the ins and outs of podcast analytics for both beginners and experts, including how to measure ROI, set performance benchmarks, and use advanced measurement strategies to grow your show.
- What Are Podcast Analytics for Finance Services?
- Building Your Podcast Analytics Foundation
- 1. What Are the Essential Metrics for Finance Podcasts?
- Downloads: Best for General Audience Size
- Streams and Plays: Best for Audience Estimation
- Consumption Rate (Retention Rate): Best for Audience Engagement
- Chart Ratings: Best for Overall Popularity
- Audience Reviews: Best for Social Listening
- Monetization Revenue: Best for ROI
- Demographics and Geo: Best for Audience Location
- 2. Picking a Podcast Analytics Platform
- 3. Measuring ROI for Financial Podcasts
- 4. Performing a Content Performance Analysis
- 5. Taking Action on Analytics
- 1. What Are the Essential Metrics for Finance Podcasts?
- Advanced Measurement Strategies
- The Bottom Line on Podcast Analytics for Financial Services
What Are Podcast Analytics for Finance Services?
Podcast analytics refers to any type of data that tracks the performance of your show. You can analyze this data to see how your show is performing and whether you can make it better by getting closer to your goals.
Side note: Some people refer to ‘podcast analytics’ as a process, while others define it as a type of software (like a podcast analytics platform). Both definitions are technically correct, but for this guide, podcast analytics is simply data you collect from running a podcast.
Podcast analytics are particularly important for financial services brands, since podcasting is less of a hobby and more of a business decision. Your stakeholders need to know how well your podcast is performing, including how much it costs, how much it’s making, and how much of an impact it has on your business’s success.
There are a few other reasons why podcast analytics matter to financial service brands:
- Hone in on your audience. The better you know your audience, the better you can choose show topics, marketing channels, and advertising strategies to reach them. Podcast analytics help confirm what you already know, plus discover new insights that make it easier to market to them in the future. For example, you might zoom in on demographics such as income and age, as well as unique psychographics such as investing goals and life stage (like retirement).
- Find new opportunities to monetize. Many podcast sponsors and advertisers appreciate detailed analytics before investing in your show. For example, if you notice a large percentage of your listeners are interested in cryptocurrency, you might seek sponsorship opportunities from brands such as eToro or Binance. You could also look for ways to monetize beyond ads. For example, you might publish premium content, sell physical products, or set up live workshops or online courses.
- Keep an eye on your competitors. How well are other financial service podcasts performing, particularly within your specific niche? You can use podcast analytics to get a decent benchmark (as well as a baseline of how your show is performing). That way, you can look for gaps in content, make sure you’re performing as expected, and keep an eye on downturns so you can pivot as necessary.
To summarize, podcast analytics can help your show grow by keeping an eye on its performance and opportunities.
Keep reading to learn how to get started in five steps or less.
Building Your Podcast Analytics Foundation
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a statistics degree to calculate podcast analytics.
All you need is a goal, some metrics and formulas, and a clear course of action on what to do after analyzing your show.
Let’s get started.
1. What Are the Essential Metrics for Finance Podcasts?
The trickiest part of running a podcast is knowing how to measure it well.
The first step is picking a set of podcast metrics, which are individual data points within the podcast analytics process. You should select a set of metrics that relate to your podcast’s goals, which are otherwise known as key performance indicators (KPIs) for your show.
Here’s a quick breakdown of common podcast metrics, how they work, and what they make sense for:
| Metric | How It Works | Best For | Pros | Cons |
| Downloads | The number of times a podcast is downloaded or delivered to a device | Measuring show popularity and audience size | IAB standards ensure consistent measurement | Doesn’t guarantee the episode was actually played |
| Streams and Plays | How often someone plays an episode | Gauging real listening engagement | More accurate for true listenership | Definitions vary by platform |
| Consumption Rate (Retention Rate) | Average percent of an episode consumed by listeners | Optimizing episode length and pacing | Helps to customize episodes to audience preferences | Not available on all platforms |
| Chart Ratings | Podcast performance on podcast charts (like Apple’s Top 100) | Establishing credibility and discoverability | Shows traction to sponsors | Usually opaque or proprietary algorithms |
| Audience Reviews | User-submitted ratings and written reviews | Building social proof and trust | Can mine for insights | Sometimes sparse and subjective |
| Monetization Revenue | How much money your podcast earns | Tracking financial return from podcasting efforts | Precise financial data for ROI | Difficult to track without clear goals |
| Demographics and Geo | Info like location, age, or gender of listeners | Customizing content and targeting sponsors. | Sponsorship deals and audience engagement | Data depends on listener privacy settings |
Now, let’s take a closer look at these key performance indicators.
Downloads: Best for General Audience Size
As you’d expect, downloads track how often your podcast is downloaded within a given period. We recommend tracking the number of downloads received within seven days to get the fullest picture of each episode’s impact and reach.
Downloads work well for estimating audience size, but what downloads don’t track is how often people listen to your episode, which could significantly affect the data you are seeing.
It’s a good idea to pair downloads with your podcast’s streams and/or plays, as we discuss in the section below.
Streams and Plays: Best for Audience Estimation
Apple Podcasts defines a stream as “the number of times an episode was played where duration is greater than 60 seconds.” So while downloads refer to almost any podcast interaction, streams/plays look at how many people actually started your episode.
You can pair this metric with podcast downloads to obtain a more accurate estimate of your audience. But if you’re still curious about how many people stick to the end, you’ll want to lean into another metric: consumption/retention rate.
Consumption Rate (Retention Rate): Best for Audience Engagement
Consumption rate, sometimes also lumped into retention rate, is how long a person listens to an episode. You might see this measured as a general percentage or as a per-minute breakdown of a singular episode.
Retention rate is a powerful tool for tracking where interest piques (and drops off) for listeners. This allows you to customize content and establish yourself as an authority that financial leads look up to.
For example, you might publish an episode on retirement strategies and see listeners only stick around for around 50% of it. You look a little closer and see the most popular bit, a 10-minute segment on IRA rollovers, could use more content.
The more you make, the higher your consumption rate, and the longer your retention rate stretches as a result. You may also notice your chart rankings going up. This leads into our next point…
Chart Ratings: Best for Overall Popularity
Just like the Billboard Top 100, you can track podcast popularity based on listening app charts. Apple Podcasts, for example, currently has multiple charts ranking the world’s best podcasts based on listenership, ratings, follows, and completion rate (aka consumption and retention).
There are a few other platforms with top podcast charts:
- Chartable (which closed in December 2024)
- Podkite
- Spotify Podcast Charts
You can use these tools to track your podcast rankings and earmark your progress as you improve over time. Just keep in mind this metric plays well with othersit’s not necessarily meant to be a standalone marker of success.
Audience Reviews: Best for Social Listening
An audience review is precisely what you think it is: a star rating or written explanation of your podcast from an audience member. Most listening apps have built-in reviews, including popular platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
That doesn’t mean star ratings are the only way to track reviews, though. YouTube, for example, also offers comments, as well as live chat playbacks if you’re streaming your podcast. You can use all these options to look for trends and opinions regarding the length, quality, and focus of your show.
Monetization Revenue: Best for ROI
Monetization revenue speaks for itself — tracking how much money your podcast makes over a given period. While you could include numbers for lead generation, it’s usually simpler and less messy to focus on three buckets:
- Ad revenue, which is generally a set rate per number of listeners
- Sponsorships, which are typically up-front or bifurcated payments
- Subscriptions, which come from paying audience members
Most podcasting hosting platforms and subscription services offer ways to track ad and subscription revenue. You’d likely need to track sponsorships on your own, although this should be fairly easy based on the (generally) lower frequency.
⚡Side Note: Make sure you track expenses alongside your revenue. You’ll need this to calculate ROI, which we chat about extensively in section three below.
Demographics and Geo: Best for Audience Location
As the name implies, demographics and geo metrics focus on the types and locations of your listeners. Some platforms also track device and browser type, including ‘mobile phone,’ ‘desktop,’ ‘Firefox,’ and others.
Financial podcasters can use demographics and geo metrics to clarify their audience and dig deeper into their demographics. For example, you might think you’re reaching male listeners between 45 and 60 years old, but your podcast metrics show you’re actually speaking to women in their 30s. This allows you to pivot quickly and solve potential disconnects between your messaging and your audience (aka fix lead generation).
Curious to learn more about tracking lead generation? We explain this in our section covering Advanced Measurement Strategies.
2. Picking a Podcast Analytics Platform
Now that you know what metrics you need, it’s time to search for a podcast analytics platform. These will help you keep tabs on how your show is performing by gathering numbers and details from your distribution channels.
You’ll have a few different options for analytics platforms:
Podcast Hosts and Distributors
A podcast host and distributor is any platform that lets you upload, store, and distribute episodes to listeners. These typically come with their own set of analytics. Just be warned that not all tools offer the same level of quality.
You might consider platforms like:
- Blubrry: A robust app with IAB-certified analytics like listener trends, episode comparisons, audience trends, and average daily plays.
- Simplecast: Another podcast host offering IAB-certified analytics, with basic metrics (like location and players) available on the base plan and advanced metrics (like top time of day and interactive maps) available on more expensive plans.
- Captivate: Unlike most other podcast hosts, Captivate goes beyond the basics by tracking backlinks, promotional links, and performance comparisons
Podcast Listening Apps
Podcast listening apps are designed for audience members, not podcasters. As the name implies, that’s where they’ll listen to your show — and the platform will record their (anonymized) information.
A few listening apps worth considering here include:
- Spotify: Spotify is the listening arm of Spotify for Creators (which is where you’ll actually upload your podcast). It currently counts metrics such as impressions, plays, streams, followers, consumption hours, and consumption hours per person.
- YouTube: Also a suitable host and distribution platform for video podcast ventures. Collects metrics like views, watch time, average view duration, key moments, top content, and traffic sources.
- Apple Podcasts: A great place to check charts for trending information. You’ll also have access to subscriber stats, which are perfect for tracking monetization efforts for your podcast.
Third-Party Tools
Third-party tools are any podcast subscription service that integrates with an existing host or distributor. You can also utilize these tools to gain additional insights from non-podcast platforms, such as your website or social media.
Popular third-party tools for podcast analytics include:
- Google Analytics: This is best for tracking traffic on podcast websites, company websites, and other owned sources. You can also use Google Analytics to uncover how people found you, such as tracking keywords and phrases like ‘financial advice podcast.’
- Podtrac: Considered a gold standard by many podcast networks and advertisers. It also offers some of the most airtight statistics in the industry, with numbers for listeners, downloads, demographics, device type, and more.
- Podder: A dedicated platform for listener metrics, traffic measurements, weekly growth, and more. Their biggest claim to fame is free migration and exclusive features compared to platforms like Chartable.
3. Measuring ROI for Financial Podcasts
No matter what metrics you choose for your business, you need to know how to link them to tangible business results. Remember: the goal of most financial podcasts is to convert listeners into clients, which means attracting new prospects to your episodes.
As you can imagine, this is sometimes tricky to do. However, it becomes significantly easier with the right lead attribution process. This allows you to estimate the number of clients that originated from your show to begin with.
You’ll have a few different lead attribution methods depending on your show’s goals:
- Survey: Start asking prospects about how they found you via email, survey, or initial consultation. Then, take the number of people who found you via podcast and divide them by the number of clients you’ve onboarded since a set date. If you have five
- Tracking links: Some podcast hosts (including CoHost) offer tracking links that determine which customers use what platforms to tune in. You can also use tracking links to track consultant requests from your video descriptions, making it easier to attribute client conversions to specific episodes.
- Advertising pixels: This is a solid strategy for social media marketing and paid search engine ads designed to drive traffic to your show. It works by capturing actions of visitors by recording IP addresses, such as clicking a link or visiting a certain page. Now imagine this paired with boosted posts or social media ads — you might find most of your traffic comes from YouTube Shorts, or perhaps LinkedIn has more opportunity than you first thought.
Now that you know where and how many possible leads are coming in, let’s turn our attention to calculating the overall value of your podcast.
Just like with lead attribution, you have a few different methods.
The first is basic ROI, or how much you’ve spent on your podcast versus how much you’ve earned. Let’s say you’ve spent $5,000 on podcasting this year and brought in three attributed clients. These clients added a collective $1.5 million AUM to your portfolio, which amounts to ~$15,000. This would be a podcast ROI of 300%.
The next method is cost per qualified lead, which determines how much it costs to acquire a new client via podcasting. You can calculate this by dividing the cost of your podcast by the number of qualified leads that get in touch with your brand. Let’s say you’re spending $10,000 per year on your podcast and getting an average of 27 leads, seven of which were not qualified. You’d be paying $500 per qualified lead. And for reference, the average cost per client for a financial advisor via podcasting is $2,670.
The final strategy involves calculating revenue per client, which determines the value a customer (not a lead) holds based on the marketing channel used. For example, let’s say the cost of a qualified lead from search engine optimization (SEO) was $338 compared to your podcast’s $2,670. When you look at revenue per client, you realize clients added through SEO contribute just $5,000 or less to your revenue compared to podcasting clients at $15,000+ each.
💡Related: Make Your Podcast Profitable
4. Performing a Content Performance Analysis
As mentioned earlier, you can also use podcast analytics to track content performance for your show. There are three different ways to do this at scale: topic performance, engagement patterns, and competitive benchmarking.
Topic Performance Tracking
Which podcast episodes are actually performing? And which ones didn’t resonate as much?
Here’s how to find out using the podcast metrics at your disposal:
- Look at the total downloads and listens of each episode within seven days of their release. Then, isolate episodes with the highest and lowest numbers.
- Check the consumption or retention rate and find episodes with the highest/lowest numbers.
- Finally, assess performance based on audience comments or feedback. Episodes with the highest feedback, downloads, and consumption/retention rate should be replicated, while episodes with opposite metrics should be carefully re-evaluated.
You can solve any issues with topic performance by performing a content gap analysis — essentially scoping out topics your competitors haven’t covered, then searching for gaps, missing links, and possible keyword opportunities.
Engagement Patterns Analysis
Want to know how listeners are connecting with your show? Start by looking at your engagement patterns to find which parts of your podcast hold attention (and which lose it).
- Check retention and consumption rates for each episode. Where do listeners drop off? Which episodes do they finish?
- Dig into comments, shares, and direct messages to see what people loved versus what they skipped.
- Look for monetization patterns. Which episodes led to the most subscriptions, and which sponsorships or read-ads make the most revenue? Whatever the pattern may be, you can safely assume that it resonated with listeners.
Ensure that you adapt your topics, ads, and delivery style to match your audience’s (i.e., ideal client’s) preferences.
Competitive Benchmarking
Competitive benchmarking is the easiest way to see how well you’re performing compared to other financial services. It also allows you to identify growth opportunities, enabling you to refine your strategy and capture a larger market share.
Here are a few ways to benchmark your podcast:
- Number of reviews: Studies show that any podcast with four or more ratings is in the top 50% of all shows.
- Social engagement: The average financial services brand gets around 3.8% organic engagement on Instagram and 3.2% engagement on LinkedIn.
- Consumption rate: The average retention/consumption rate hovers around 63%, ranging from 75% for high-performing shows to 93% for the highest-performing ones.
- Downloads: The top 25% of podcasts get 115 downloads or more within the first week.
5. Taking Action on Analytics
Your podcast’s numbers mean nothing without a broader story attached. Your ROI isn’t where you want it to be? Then you need to make a strategy that will help improve it over time.
Of course, this sounds more complicated in theory than it is in practice.
Once you have your analytics in hand, here are some steps to reach your podcasting goals:
Strategy Optimization
- How to Diagnose: No existing strategy; Suboptimal audience and/or unqualified leads; Low engagement or downloads
Strategy optimization is all about refining your podcasting approach to align better with your audience, topic, and niche. This might require you to go back to the beginning, which isn’t ideal if you’re several years into your podcasting journey. But if your numbers are suffering, the payoff will be worth it. Remember: financial advisors with defined marketing strategies (yes, including podcasting) make 168% more than those without a plan.
Learn more about building a marketing strategy for financial services.
Content Refinement
- How to Diagnose: High bounce rates, Low consumption or retention rates, Negative feedback.
If your numbers indicate that listeners aren’t sticking around, or if your engagement appears relatively low, you may need to adjust your content to better suit your audience. This could be as simple as improving your episode intros, bringing in more dynamic guests, or choosing more relevant topics.
Depending on your financial ‘nook,’ you may need to pick a niche and go deeper into a subject to establish authority. A great way to do this is to pair topic performance tracking and listener feedback to double down on what’s working (and avoid anything that isn’t).
Improve Distribution
- How to Diagnose: Declining downloads: Low audience estimation; Low to no audience growth
It may be obvious, but it bears repeating: your podcast won’t grow if it’s not easily accessible. Fortunately, you can make simple adjustments to your distribution strategy and reconsider how you share your podcast. This may include optimizing episode titles for SEO, republishing older episodes in new formats (such as YouTube Shorts or LinkedIn posts), or submitting your show to new directories.
Don’t forget to think outside of the podcast box by treating each episode like a mini marketing campaign. For example, you can schedule social shares, create newsletters with clips, and even consider paid promotions to expand reach to hyper-specific audiences.
Boost ROI
- How to Diagnose: Low ROI; High cost per qualified lead; Many unqualified leads
A podcast that doesn’t support your business goals can (and will) drain time and money. If ROI is your sticking point, consider focusing on lead-generation tactics. You might integrate calls to action, add opt-in forms to your show notes, or learn how to recycle content to keep costs down.
Don’t forget to evaluate how your podcast fits into your bigger marketing funnel — there may be a missing piece between awareness and conversion. For example, you might need to create a stronger call to action, or maybe you simply need more affordable solutions for podcast editing and production.
Advanced Measurement Strategies
If you already have a financial podcast in place, you might be past the basics of podcast analytics. Advanced measurement strategies can help you grow your show in more sophisticated ways, especially if you’re trying to reach high-net-worth individuals.
Here’s how to take it up a notch:
Audience Qualification Metrics
Not every listener is a potential client, which is where advanced measurement comes in. These metrics dig deeper than downloads and engagement, so you can understand which listeners have actual buying power.
For example, you might roll out surveys or use qualification forms whenever a podcast listener requests a consultant with your firm. You can also use tools like LinkedIn and/or CRM data to scope out requestees, identify who’s sharing your podcast, and otherwise adjust your messaging to reach the highest-income clients.
B2B Analytics
If you’re targeting business owners or senior leaders, you’ll need to go beyond consumer data to track company-level metrics. This includes firmographic data like industry, size, and region to better identify which businesses are tuning in.
For example, you might use tools like HubSpot or Salesforce to match podcast leads with specific listening behavior. You can also use tools like Rephonic to scope out competitors and see which other podcasts might pique your subscribers’ interest.
For example, let’s search Rephonic for podcasts related to Capital Allocators:
Now we can see which podcasts resonate with that podcast’s listeners, including Invest Like the Best and Ark’s For Your Innovation (FYI).
Social Media Metrics
Social shares, mentions, and post interactions can reveal what topics resonate most. They can also show how well your podcast drives broader brand conversations, including shows where you were featured but did not host.
One idea is to use UTM links to see exactly how your podcast drives traffic and engagement across platforms. Another option is to implement podcast-to-podcast metrics, which can track reach and overlap between podcasts.
Thought Leadership Impact
Thought leadership impact is the ultimate financial podcasting metric — and also the hardest to quantify. The ultimate goal is to see how your podcast influences your reputation as a trusted advisor and financial authority in the space.
Of course, this can’t be measured by downloads alone, so you might want to track backlinks, speaking invites, and high-value collaborations stemming from your show. You can track these ‘halo effects’ alongside traditional podcast metrics (like downloads, plays, and podcast chart numbers) to see how your show boosts your brand.
The Bottom Line on Podcast Analytics for Financial Services
Podcast analytics might sound complicated on the surface, but the truth is that podcast data is relatively easy to come by. The trick is finding a repeatable system to synthesize data and decide how to take action.
Start by picking a business goal and choosing podcast metrics that will help you measure success. Then, pick a podcast platform that can help you collect data, whether that’s a host, a listening app, or a third-party provider.
Next, collect this data into a set of action steps so you can optimize your podcast for listeners going forward. For example, you might conduct a podcast audit, delve deeper into social media, or outsource your podcast production process to focus more on your audience.
Looking for even more ways to optimize your show?
One of the following may be of use: