Podnews has found out errors within the coding of Facebook Podcasts which is turning in wildly flawed bring together knowledge to some podcasters.

Gary Arndt, from the Every thing All over the set podcast, logged into his podcast host to observe that his total downloads had increased by five instances on Dec 25. 5 instances as tremendous!

His podcast is hosted on Libsyn, which presents a necessity of stats. It defaults on “Routine”, the legacy stats that Libsyn give all podcast publishers. Since Gary is a better publisher, he’s also opted for “IAB” stats – calculated the identical reach as most tremendous podcast hosts produce – and on clicking “IAB”, the elevate in numbers merely disappeared.

On taking a study the “downloads per person agent” checklist, Facebook was as soon as #1 – by a long way – in Libsyn’s legacy stats; but Facebook had largely disappeared when viewing the IAB stats.

Something strange is going down with Facebook.

What was as soon as occurring?

We went to our own podcast logfiles to observe; and whereas we’re now not seeing quite lots of traffic from Facebook, a few entries did stand out.

Above, are two partial downloads from Facebook – a 556KB bring together of our Dec 22 portray (which was as soon as 3.5MB) from an iPhone, and a 489KB bring together of our Dec 23 portray (which was as soon as 2.8MB) from an Android phone.

These downloads aren’t tremendous sufficient to own a minute’s worth of audio. (Our Dec 22 portray has 56KB of ID3 ticket, and at 112Kb/s, the file downloaded would cling absolute most sensible played audio for 35 seconds.)

The IAB specification says (web sigh 11) that “to count as a expedient bring together, the ID3 ticket plus sufficient of the podcast sigh material to play for 1 minute” must be downloaded. These downloads aren’t enormous sufficient for that.

Briefly, these aren’t “real” downloads.

Libsyn’s IAB statistics cling properly eradicated these bogus downloads: but Libsyn’s legacy stats haven’t.

Facebook Podcasts is making many bogus partial downloads

If it’s going down with Libsyn, and going down with our own hosted podcast, we wondered if it was as soon as going down with others.

So, we checked with Buzzsprout, one of many largest podcast hosts, to observe if Facebook was as soon as doing this on its platform, too. They urged us:

After digging, extra than 47% of our partial downloads within the closing 24 hours cling come from “FB4A/Facebook” and “iOS/Facebook”. I took a deep dive staunch into among the most accepted episodes on Facebook and in fact behold a pattern where those episodes cling a disproportionate sequence of partial plays from Facebook expecting completion. In a single case, Facebook accounted for nearly 18% of the episode downloads, but 99% of the partial downloads for that identical episode: and the sequence of partial downloads was as soon as extra than 100% of your total episode downloads!

Buzzsprout is IAB licensed, so its customers wouldn’t behold these partial plays in their stats.

Alternatively, as soon as you occur to’re now not with an IAB-compliant podcast host, or you don’t bag IAB-compliant numbers, you are going to behold vastly increased numbers than you’d seek data from from Facebook – and those numbers aren’t real.

What we reflect is inflicting this

As you scroll down your Facebook feed, the app is continually loading extra knowledge, including posts, photography, video and audio.

We reflect that must you behold a podcast for your timeline, the Facebook app is pre-downloading a puny little bit of the audio file to work out how long the audio is, and to make sure that it’s got 30 seconds of audio spirited so that that you just might per chance well well presumably presumably hit the play button and staunch now hear to it. That is against IAB pointers.

Testing here’s complex, since Facebook hasn’t launched the podcasts product in Australia, where we’re basically based. Alternatively, we ran a local proxy on our iPod Contact, and watched community requests as we tried sharing a podcast that we own (which that you just might per chance well well presumably presumably behold wherever within the sphere). As we shared it, the Facebook app downloaded something from Buzzsprout, the podcast’s audio host with out taking part within the relaxation (and with out us pressing the play button).

Facebook already grabs a duplicate of every episode’s audio for its own programs as rapidly as they are printed, so it is going to moreover work out the podcast’s size at that time, rather than bring together the birth of the file to present so. That wouldn’t aid with the buffering of the audio itself, then again – and perchance its engineers cling prioritised speed-to-play within the interface, with out sparkling what considerations that causes.

On this case, we reflect that this topical episode about Frankincense and Myrrh was as soon as shared by a series of people inner Facebook, so it regarded on thousands of peoples’ timelines – inflicting thousands of partial downloads of audio.

That doesn’t imply that this podcast was as soon as played, then again. It goes to’t were: the partial bring together was as soon as absolute most sensible tremendous sufficient to play support round 30 seconds of audio.

That is a trek engineering possibility by Facebook – this can motive pointless bandwidth spend by its app, and can tag podcast web hosting firms notable earnings in wasted traffic. It’d be absolute most sensible if they’d verify to the IAB frequent, and absolute most sensible request audio recordsdata when an particular person as requested for them.

Your podcast’s numbers, then again, are unaffected by this if your podcast host makes spend of IAB licensed numbers.

But absolute most sensible if.

The perils of using non-IAB numbers

Libsyn is distinctive in absolute most sensible providing IAB 2.0 stats to customers that pay for them; and consistently default to its own legacy stats on the Libsyn dashboard.

Libsyn legend on its bring together numbers in its podcast The Feed. Alternatively, for The Feed’s numbers, Libsyn makes spend of its ‘uniques’ legacy statistics, now not IAB licensed knowledge. Libsyn urged us in 2020 that “the motive we legend uniques is because we’re telling folk to ascertain these numbers to theirs; and heaps customers produce now not cling IAB numbers.”

Libsyn’s Select Walch has nowadays historical these legacy statistics to discuss Facebook’s issue on the platform: issue that, we are in a position to now behold, appears virtually fully bogus: per partial, incomplete downloads that don’t cling the relaxation to present with plays.

“I produce behold by the cease of Q1 2022 Facebook being within the tip five of apps,” Walch is quoted as having mentioned. That might per chance per chance well moreover merely be: but absolute most sensible as soon as you occur to’re taking a study the sinful numbers. Possibly it’s time for Libsyn to present IAB numbers to all its customers: real savor all people else.