Videoblogger Ze Frank is in what he calls a nerd fight with Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron. Frank says that Baron’s numbers are inflated and make it difficult for he and other video bloggers to sell advertisements with much lower numbers to offer. I spoke with both of them on the phone, looked at Rocketboom’s traffic logs and ran my understanding of what I saw past several podcasting industry experts who confirmed my analysis.
I think that if Baron is exaggerating, it’s not by very much. I think his rough numbers are more or less accurate. I also think that’s just the beginning of the story.
Baron says that episodes of Rocketboom are downloaded about 300,000 times each. Frank says his show (called “The Show”) has about 30,000 viewers. Rocketboom delivers its show from four different servers, Tivo, iTunes, Hellio mobile phones and all over the web. Viewer numbers and ad impressions are impossible to quantify absolutely, but it appears to me that each show is getting downloaded through verifiable channels between 150 and 200 thousand times.
Are other, non verified by me distribution channels, bringing those numbers close to Baron’s 300,000 claim? I think they are probably coming close enough that Baron’s number can be accepted as generally accurate with a large grain of salt. Ze Frank himself emphasizes that good analytics are just not available in this brand new industry.
In other words, Baron’s show may only be downloaded 7 or 8 times as much often as Frank’s, not ten, but his claims appear to be in the ball park. Heather Green of Business Week’s Blogspotting just posted on this as well and came to just the opposite conclusion of mine but based on the same numbers. The issue here, though, is the ability to sell ads. Whether Rocketboom has 250k downloads or 300k isn’t the issue if Frank has 30k. The point is that Rocketboom may not be strong in some metrics (like pageviews) but when it comes to downloads the show is scoring high. As Green points out, it also shows that the loss of Amanda Congdon did not cause great pain to the number of downloads.
Big Issues
Numbers and money are obviously what pays the rent and thus they are important, but there are many things that matter more than these numbers. The number of downloads does not equal the number of people who actually view the show. The number of people who press play does not equal the number of people who watch long enough to view an ad. Tacked on ads like Revver serves up for Ze Frank are very different from innovative ads like the one based in Second Life that Rocketboom recently did for a rechargeable battery recycling company.
Pageviews are very difficult to track and are close to meaningless anyway, particularly when it comes to multimedia. See this Alexaholic graph, for example, that makes it look like Ze Frank is beating Rocketboom handily and that TechCrunch is much larger than both of them combined. I’ve seen Rocketboom numbers, the show is of general interest and it is everywhere. In fact there is little reason to come to the site if you like watching the show. I believe that they have a larger number of downloaders than we have subscribers and page visitors. Of course we’re a very topic specific site.
What people get out of watching is an other key question. Jeneane Sessum says there needs to be a likability metric and Robert Scoble says we need a way to measure engagement.
Ze Frank viewers leave hundreds of comments, participate in contests, send in clips of themselves and donate money. Comments are far sparser at Rocketboom. My girlfriend once spent all her free time for a week watching every Ze Frank show that’s been made and I laughed out loud after most of them. If I never saw another episode of Rocketboom again that would be ok with me. I like Ze Frank’s content much better.
The fact remains however, that Rocketboom’s content is being downloaded nearly 10 times as often as Frank’s. I accept Andrew Baron’s explanation of that, too. Rocketboom exercises almost zero control over distribution of their show – other than to push it into as many channels as possible. Frank prominently asks his viewers to keep his videos out of sites like YouTube, presumably so he can track the numbers closely. Rocketboom also has first mover’s advantage, is work safe and, as unfair as this may be, plays the attractive woman card.
Ze Frank and many other video podcasters ought to be able to make a living doing what they are doing. The question of numbers is probably one part of what’s slowing advertising spending in the space. The fact that Rocketboom is as well known as it is shouldn’t lead advertisers to believe that every other video blogger’s audience is insignificant. It’s a changed game and it continues to change.
To see more top video blogs, check out the site of the upcoming Vloggies awards.
The scariest part of the debate has been buried in the details. Ze looks like he could be Scobleizer’s brother.
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And there is yet another thing lurking behind the curtains I think, as for Ze Frank’s shows are indeed great, Rocketboom might be in it for a bigger than expected penetration, i.e. mainstream TV, or there might be a secret deal with the revenue producing individuals that conform those numbers they base their viewership on. I agree that there should be a more scientific or accurate way of measuring but in cyberspace, it’s not about numbers for numbers sake as the article states, it’s about getting it on with the mighty buck while innovating and getting yourself known which is a good enough fight. Can we acknowledge the rattle Adam curry made a while back on the very same issue… numbers have to bring bucks! and that’s the ticket.
There is also one high difference, Rocketboom has piracy, actual physical piracy, after they came to mexico last year for a conference (amada was still the show and she came with baron), there now pirated subtitled DVD compilations of Rocketboom, Rockertboom has appeared in interrnational news all over the world in primetime tv, and even in C.S.I!!.
How can that even compare to Ze Frank? that has the way i see it even less that the estimated 10% by baron if you put it in real worldwide numbers and not just sectionalized north american (that includes mexico) numbers. there are various other way baron must be meassuring Rocketboom impact.
Get many splinters from sitting on that fence?
Ze’s got a point. Downloads count for nothing when it comes to audio ads, video ads or RSS ads. It matters whether someone saw the ad (or watched the show). You wouldn’t buy a newspaper ad on the basis of how many copies they print, but on how many people read it. If the two numbers start to diverge wildly, you only look at the number that matters.
That Baron’s moving his own goalposts so regularly doesn’t really help his case.
Plugging “total downloads” irrespective of how many of those downloads are deleted, unwatched… well, when was the last time someone told you about ‘hits’ and you didn’t point and laugh?
10 times as many people in a largely male audience want to watch a pretty girl, wow, what a surprise.
see? the thing is – this was a lot more fun before people started trying to pay their rent from it
I remember the day I heard about Podshow for the first time – it was like I felt the future change for the worse somehow. A gut feeling.
I think both Rocketboom and Ze Frank rock. That Frank seems like an incredibly talented bloke. Andrew is smart too. I haven’t met Frank.
Everyone (producers and advertisers AND listerner/viewers) is still on a huge learning curve with all this – people shouldn’t be throwing rocks at eachother — yet ;p
Sounds like Ze is crying about the fact that he’s losing *his* pissing contest.
the difference between the two is as great as the difference between TV and video blogging to me. RB is basicaly spam. It’s like the evening news that everyone watches but doesn’t really care about and will turn the channel to whatever suits them better at the time. Dan Rather or whoever it is at the moment, didn’t get famous because of their qality news reporting, but because they’re the default head for a network that is carried on almost every TV in the country.
Ze is like Dennis Miller or Bill Maher. Someone that you seek out and follow for whatever it is that they put out, not just because they’re the default video for every new video download client that hits the market.
Of course, we all know who’ll get rich and who won’t even make a living at it, but, again, that’s the difference between mass media and engaging your audience.
It strikes me that RocketBoom has an early movers advantage w.r.t. current download rates… but Ze Franks show should move up in line after another 12 months of effort.
An advertiser would do well to enjoy that growth in audience and be associated with Ze’s goodwill. I persoannly think RocketBoom jumped the shark after Amanda left… Amanda’s new efforts are more compelling to may taste but Ze is without peer in this new medium. The format seems perfect for his comedic and communication skills. He’s breaking real ground and bring the audience back into his web site. Someone should see the value of that combination to leverage that attention for their needs.
Now I need to go find out why Ze’s Show is “over in march”…
On the note of QUALITY, I have to agree. I would say that Andrew doesn’t know when to say NO. I have seen at least a dozen Rocketbooms in the last few months that I thought did not deserve to see the light of my monitor, whereas I have not seen an installment of The Show that was sub-par. Rocketboom practially BEGGED users for a handout a few weeks ago with Joann’s plea of “PLEASE send us some content, you guys!”
All Ze has to do is drop a subtle hint every so often, and his viewers respond in droves. Take a look at the vaccuum cleaner dress-ups or the “Good Morning Sports Racers” intros. Not only does that let us know there are people watching, the means for requesting and distributing the content is all done through the vlog, and it adds to the quality of the content as well.
Long live Ze!
it’s unlikely that rocketboom would end up on mainstream tv, in my opinion.
Are some of their downloads being pushed out by automated means?
I don’t think rocketboom is 300,000 downloads a day engaging.
Other than on blogs I have never heard a human utter the phrase rocketboom.
Yeah, Ze Nerd needs to suck it up and produce some content. Thanks for giving us the raw facts Marshall.
Posted this on the BusinessWeek article. But thought this is relevant here. Read the BW article to access the spreadsheet I’m talking about here: http://blogs.bu...rank_right.html
Are you sure the number of files downloaded in the spreadsheet is from one server and not from all four? Let’s take the Oct 2nd numbers are an example. According to your spreadsheet, 37,988 files were downloaded and each file was 31.66 MBs. That means the daily bandwidth required to serve these files would be 1.2 Terrabytes. Even if they had a 100 Mbps pipeline to the server, their maximum theoritical throughput would be 1.08 Terrabytes per day. I doubt they were coming so close to their max capacity as this could introduce huge latencies to the service.
Either I’m missing something – or the 37K+ downloads number is for al four servers, not just one.
Rocketboom deserves some serious props. It led me to Ze’s far better written and more polished show several months ago. I haven’t missed an episode since.
SomeGuy, each server is a gigabit server (each is equal to 10x 100MBps)
To others, there are plenty of people that enjoy Rocketboom too. Its a red vs. blue issue.
We have good intentions and I dont think its harming anyone even if its not what you like.
The big question is: which one will still be around in 2 years?
Wonder how many of those downloads are full downloads, and not partials? I know in the world of podcasting, there’s a whole lot of downloads that are partials – sometimes less than 10% of the file – logged as “downloads.” iTunes samples, byte-range requests…. I suspect video is the same way. Lots of samplers.
Actually -gary, Dan Rather was known for his quality reporting long before he was the anchor.
Drew – Thnx for the response.
Just to clarify – So you’ve got a 1 Gbps pipeline into each of these servers?
Also 100 MBps (Mega Bytes per sec) is NOT the same as 100 mbps (Mega bits per sec). (see: http://sawai.bl...s-and-mbps.html)
I agree with gary #8 – Ze is very ‘longtail’ with respect to content. Rocketboom is far more mainstream big box. Respectively I stopped watching Rocketboom after I found Ze, and support his onscreen sponsors…
Just one point– please don’t ever bring Alexa’s numbers into any serious debate about anything.
Techcrunch is ranked #637 in Alexa and has a paltry 61k visitors per day according to Sitemeter.
I know of sites which get 5-10x that amount of visitors and ranked in the mid 2000’s.
Alexa is a joke. Don’t bring it up if you want to be taken seriously.
Actually Ken, the big question is “which one will I miss if it’s not around in 2 years?”
Or, if I pretend to be magnanimous: “which one will people miss most if it’s not around in 2 years.”
I’m pretty sure The Show won’t be around in 2 years considering that Ze himself stated that it will go off the air on March 7th.
I’ve only seen RocketBoom a couple times, mostly pre-AmandaUnboom, the episodes since have been really hard to watch but all of them (with and without Amanda) paled in comparison to Ze’s production.
it’s 2 totally different shows. when i say “rocketboom”, my mom knows what i mean, my friends have all heard of it. thats powerful. but then when i explain what ze does, i say to them “you know rocketboom right? it’s like that in a way”. both of these shows are important, and i watch both daily and love em.
With all the talk of traffic numbers (total views or downloads) I have yet to hear anything about CPM or CPC rates for either of these shows. Anyone know what kind of ad revenue these shows are producing or if its consistent?
BTW I enjoy watching both shows and dont think its possible to compare these shows based on content as they are very different. As for popularity, i think the profiling of zefrank on TC will greatly increase “the shows” reach and it will be interesting to see where things go.
Someone with facts please break down CPM and CPC rates!
Keep up the good work Rocketboom and Ze frank…. btw Someone Please tell LG15 to never make another worthless video ever again, i want those minutes of my life back!….
from ze’s blog:
“For all its flaws, Revver provides one very useful statistic: complete views. Not downloads, not hits, but views. Because they serve a custom ad at the end of each video playback, they know how many people watch each video all the way to the end.”
The difference between Ze’s numbers and Rocketbooms are that Ze’s are exact. He knows *exactly* how many people watch his show all the way through. Rocketboom doesn’t have a clue.
Rocketboom knows only how many times the file is downloaded, and many of those are downloaded automatically and never watched.
Ze mentions at the end of his post that he gets 6 times as many downloads as views, and it’s the views that advertisers care about. It’s most certainly possible that Rocketboom, with all of their distribution channels, has a higher multiplier than 6.
Regardless, there’s certainly no way to tell unless/until there’s a more consistent way to track video views instead of downloads/hits/pageviews/alexa.
Does anybody know what these guys actually make a month in ad revenues?
What’s the bottom line here? Thanks.
Dave makes a key point here in mentioning that downloads don’t translate to who is actually watching. At the same time, it’s safe to bet that the same percentage of people aren’t watching ZeFrank or Rocketboom. Cut their numbers in half and Rocketboom is still destroying ZeFrank on volume. Does that make Rocketboom better? Not necessarily. And both of them could be making a living on ads if they position what they are doing correctly.
The point is that a computer or a tivo or a phone requesting a file from a server doesn’t really mean anyone’s watching it.
Especially when rocketboom comes pre-subscribed on many devices and clients, and autoplay=on for all their webpages.
You’re (very dishonestly) comparing two different metrics in your headline. Ze’s show gets downloaded ~150k/day. Rocketboom (with auto play and unasked for subscriptions) gets downloaded ~300k/day. Ze Frank’s gets watched (where the client is still there at the end of the video they CHOSE to start playing) ~30k/day. That’s on top of people who subscribe to it (by choice again).
So if you’re going to misrepresent the story in the headline, at least use comparable stats. 150k vs. 300k. 30k vs. 300k shows either blatant incompetence at reading comprehension or dishonesty.
Rocketboom doesn’t provide the stats of how many people are still around at the end of their show (and my guess is it wouldn’t be nearly the % of the original audience that Ze maintains). Ze’s audience all intended to watch it, they’re sticking around. A sizable chunk of Rocketboom’s audience just loaded the page and had the video “downloaded” before they even knew what they were looking at, or just haven’t realized that they can unsubscribe from a podcast that came preloaded on their client. And then you throw in the fact that not many people can actually stomach a full episode of rocketboom… my impression is that 30k would be a very generous estimate as to how many people actually watch an entire rocketboom.
~BS
Brendan wins the “what’s wrong with this picture” award with this:
“The point is that a computer or a tivo or a phone requesting a file from a server doesn’t really mean anyone’s watching it. Especially when rocketboom comes pre-subscribed on many devices and clients, and autoplay=on for all their webpages.
“You’re (very dishonestly) comparing two different metrics in your headline. Ze’s show gets downloaded ~150k/day. Rocketboom (with auto play and unasked for subscriptions) gets downloaded ~300k/day. Ze Frank’s gets watched (where the client is still there at the end of the video they CHOSE to start playing) ~30k/day. That’s on top of people who subscribe to it (by choice again).”
Precisely. And it’s JENEANE Sessum, not Jeane.
thx!
Has anyone ever thought to point out that Rocketboom has their video play automatically on the HOME page while ZeFrank’s video is buried two clicks away from the his home page? That alone should account for the difference in video views.
it’s ze, not frank
Rocketboom (but not The Show) is included by default in the Democracy Player channel list. Thats how I found RB, but who knows how big Democracy subscriptions are in RB’s 300K download world…
This debate makes you want to find a third alternative.
I’m sorry, am I missing something, or the whole “proof” presented here for ZeFrank’s show being much smaller than Rocketboom this sentence:
“Viewer numbers and ad impressions are impossible to quantify absolutely, but it appears to me that each show is getting downloaded through verifiable channels between 150 and 200 thousand times.”
It appears? Verifiable channels? How did you come to this exact range? Where’s the numbers? I have not found them in the linked Ms. Green’s article — she uses the equally vague and even more suspicious argument of “It turns out” — as Bill Hicks used to say, turns out suggests authority without actually saying anything specific.
Thanks to people like the author of this article, each day I become more and more paranoid.
I have rocktboom auto-downloading to my tivo and itunes everyday. The last episode I actually watched was one with mini flags of the President stuck into dog droppings. Tasteless and juvinille. Anyway, you can count me as a “verified” 2 downloads and 0 views every day.
lol Andy, that’s hilarious…. perhaps someone should go around collecting this information?
I like both shows but find that every time I download Rocketboom it times out, freezes, restarts and I usually give up on it (this happens on both my work and home computer) – I’m sure this must be inflating the figures too. I’ve never had this problem with Ze Frank and watch it first thing every morning – I love his random thoughts and strange presentation styles.
wow :-O
Video bloggers need to take responsibility for their own distribution – but there are a lot of alternative opening up for them.
Take for example http://www.infe...tiousvideos.com which is a specialised video blogging service which has a 50-50 revenue sharing system. Video bloggers can use a service like this to gain a greater distribution net – and find new audiences.