Articles on: Integrations

Why are my Transistor download numbers different to my third-party analytics?

Why are my Transistor download numbers different to my third-party analytics?



Transistor integrates with the following third-party analytics services:

Gumball
Chartable
Podtrac
Podsights
Podcorn
Podkite
Backtracks
Podder

Transistor follows podcast best practice for measuring podcast downloads. We follow IAB guidelines, as do many other podcast hosts and third-party podcast analytics services. However the way those guidelines are interpreted by each provider can differ greatly, leading to significant differences in download numbers.

It's unlikely that download numbers between platforms will ever match exactly.

When numbers are being calculated by two separate platforms, each having their own rules, formulae and filtering methods, it's inevitable that differences will occur.

Depending on the discrepancies that you are seeing, here are some common reasons that can cause an analytics difference between podcast host and analytics service.

Numbers are lower in your analytics service:


Time: Your third-party analytics provider can only track your analytics from when the prefix was been added to your RSS feed. This means your third party analytics provider will have not captured all downloads that your host has. Don't compare days where the prefix has been added, edited or (even temporarily) removed. Don't compare episodes that were released before the prefix was added.

Numbers are lower in Transistor:


Time: We can only record the analytics of your podcast for the duration it has been hosted with us. You may have been using your analytics prefix with a previous host, which would lead to having historical data in your analytics provider and only recent analytics numbers with us.

Filtering: Each platform defines a 'unique download' in slightly different ways. Following IAB guidelines we filter out duplicate listens from the same IP address and device each day. If your third party analytics provider only partially removes duplicates or does not filter duplicates at all, then Transistor numbers will look significantly lower.

Time Zones: The duplicate downloads we remove within a 24 hour window are based on the UTC time zone. If your analytics provider uses a different time zone then Transistor numbers will likely show as being lower, or off-set slightly.

Blocklists: As part of the IAB guidelines we filter out downloads from known bots, crawlers, user agents, services and IP addresses that are known to be automated, spam or fake. These rules for filtering can vary greatly between analytics services and some may not use a blocklist at all. Again, this causes our numbers to be lower but we aim to show you analytics that are closest to your genuine listening numbers.


If you have any other questions about your analytics, please let us know on Live Chat or by email support@transistor.fm

Updated on: 01/11/2022

Was this article helpful?

Share your feedback

Cancel

Thank you!