Technology company Auddia, developer of the faidr audio app, announced a pay-per-play beta program for podcasters and networks.
“The program will treat podcast plays and downloads similar to streaming music, where content owners receive a direct payment based on how many streams they receive,” the company said in a press release.
CEO Michael Lawless said “the economics are simply broken” for many podcasters. “Ad revenues can be inconsistent, and unlike the top shows out there, you have the vast majority of podcasts, even seemingly popular ones, making just enough to survive. Meanwhile, ad networks, ad servers and ad salespeople are taking a significant chunk of the gross revenue from podcast ads.”
Lawless said the beta program pays creators directly for each play. “They keep a much bigger portion of the revenue generated from their material.”
The program targets listeners who skip the majority of ads and don’t subscribe to exclusive or ad-free feeds at the show or network level.
“Partners in Auddia’s pay-per-play program will have their episodes downloaded in full, with ads included, but listeners will be given controls that allow them to fast forward through ad breaks automatically, requiring no technological heavy lifting on the podcaster’s end,” the company said.
“When subscribers play a partner’s episode, Auddia tracks the activity and delivers a payment based on the agreed-upon per-play rate, which is based on the podcast’s current revenue-per-play and average CPM.”
Partner podcast episodes will be delivered by Auddia’s Seamless Play technology. “Users will be treated to episodes where the app fast forwards through ad breaks automatically, rather than requiring the end user to manually fast forward. Each play or download will be logged, and partners will be compensated at an agreed-upon rate on a monthly basis.”
The company said it will also release a seek forward functionality that allows users to fast forward to the next identified segment of content. “This functionality will be launched in faidr in the next major release this year as a beta test.”
[Related: “Auddia Drops Bid to Acquire Radio FM”]
