Monetization Analytics

providing actionable insights when it comes to monetization products

Creators view monetization growth as a strong validation that their podcast is legitimate and successful, but at the time Spotify for Podcasters provided a very limited view of such data. The only data available to creators at the time on Spotify for Podcasters was limited to cashout statements which didn’t provide any sort of breakdown between the different types of earnigns. Without actionable metrics, creators felt unsure of how they could grow their earnings. Furthermore, they didn’t know how to access market or competitive data to understand how they were doing when compared to others. They saw Spotify for Podcasters and Spotify as trusted authorities that could help guide them on their growth journey.

Timeline

Jan 2023 - July 2023

What we knew

Throughout my time at Spotify, we conducted a few rounds of both evaluative and explorative research that yielded a few key insights which we used to guide this entire project. Most often, we heard that:

• Creators who had activated multiple monetization products didn’t know how their earnings from each of the products would net out

• While ad revenue was a little more straightforward in nature, creators were confused about how much money they could expect to earn from subscription-based products and had little to no knowledge on how well they were retaining subscribers.

• Creators were confused on how Ads payout models shifted over time

• Creators were confused about how to most effectively describe and promote their subscription offering

• Creators who did well with Podcast Subscriptions would publish subscription-only episodes every 4 days but this information wasn’t publicized anywhere within the Spotify for Podcasters product

• Creators have a big appetite for analytics, with analytics retention on Spotify for Podcasters sitting very high at 72%

What we still needed to learn

We hoped to answer a few questions with the launch of this project.

• Will providing improved analytics help more creators succeed with Podcast Subscriptions?

• Will providing improved analytics reduce Podcast Monetization churn?

• What are some benchmarks we can surface to help creators understand how they are doing relative to other podcasters?

Assumptions

• Creators are more likely to stick with Podcast Monetization if they understand the value the products are delivering

• Creators are more likely to succeed with Podcast Monetization if they are provided with actionable insights

Hypothesis

Creators churn from Monetization options because they don’t understand how they are performing or how they might earn more.

Solution

Optimize the monetization analytics experience for creators by:

• Helping creators understand how their earnings from subscriptions and ads contribute to their overall earnings from Spotify for Podcasters

• Sharing metrics for Podcast Subscriptions that are standard for subscription products across the web

• Indicating how a creator’s metrics are moving over time (Up or down? By how much?)

What we built

We built out three different sub-pages underneath the Analytics tab that represented Earnings, Subscriptions, and Ads data. We also included a page underneath the Audience analytics tab that contained information on subscriber demographics so that creators could get a sense of who their most loyal fans were.

Earnings

This sub-tab housed all of a creators earnings data for all of the monetization products they have enabled.