Understanding the key terms in your POST Analytics dashboard will help you evaluate the impact your content is having across your audience.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Key Terms
- FAQs
- What is the difference between "Unique Users" and "Users Reached"?
- Why are downloads and unique users often the same at the episode level?
- Why are downloads and unique users often different at the show level?
- Why is there a difference in the number of unique users when viewed by show versus by episode?
Key Terms
POST analytics align with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards. For more information on IAB podcast measurement guidelines, click here
FAQs
What is the difference between "Unique Users" and "Users Reached"?
Unique Users represents the number of distinct listeners for a specific episode or piece of content, based on a combination of the listener’s IP address and User-Agent (such as the browser or app they used) within a 24-hour period (measured in UTC). The same listener may appear as a unique user on multiple episodes if they listened to each one.
Users Reached represents the total, de-duplicated number of listeners across the selected time period. Even if a listener engages with multiple episodes, they are only counted once in the overall total of users reached.
In short, Unique Users shows engagement at the episode or show level, while Users Reached shows the total size of your audience without double-counting listeners who return or listen to multiple episodes during the selected time period.
Why are downloads and unique users often the same at the episode level?
This is expected behavior, especially for episodes with fewer than ~500 downloads.
Under the IAB 2.2 standards, a download is only counted when a listener consumes at least 60 seconds of an episode within a 24-hour UTC window. If the same listener plays the episode multiple times in that same day, it still counts as one download.
Because of this:
One listener typically equals one download for an episode in a given day.
If listeners don’t return to the same episode on different days (which is common), the total downloads and unique users remain the same over time.
This overlap is most noticeable for shows with lower overall download volume. As an episode or show grows and listeners begin replaying episodes on different days or across devices, you’ll start to see differences between downloads and unique users.
Why are downloads and unique users often different at the show level?
At the show level, downloads and unique users measure two different things, so it’s normal for the numbers not to match.
- Downloads represent the total number of qualifying listens across all episodes in the show. Each time a listener consumes 60 seconds or more of an episode within a 24-hour UTC window, it counts as one download. If the same listener listens to multiple episodes, each episode listened to is counted as a separate download.
- Unique users represent the total number of distinct listeners for the show during the selected time period. A listener is only counted once per show, even if they listen to several episodes.
Example:
One listener plays three different episodes of the same show.
Downloads (Show): 3
Unique Users (Show): 1
Because downloads count listening activity and unique users count people, downloads at the show level are usually higher. The more episodes a listener engages with, the larger the gap between downloads and unique users becomes.
In short:
Downloads indicate the amount of content consumed.
Unique users indicate the number of individual listeners reached.
Why is there a difference in the number of unique users when viewed by show versus by episode?
The difference comes down to how listeners are counted when data is aggregated.
By Episode
Each episode is treated as its own data point. If the same person listens to multiple episodes, they are counted once per episode. When you add up unique users across episodes, that listener is counted multiple times.
Example:
User A listens to Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3.
- Unique Users (Episode 1): 1
- Unique Users (Episode 2): 1
- Unique Users (Episode 3): 1
Total when summed by episode: 3
By Show
When viewed by show, unique users are de-duplicated across all episodes in the reporting period. The system recognizes that the same person listened to multiple episodes and counts them only once for the entire show.
Example:
- User A listens to Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3.
Unique Users (Show): 1
Why this matters
Unique Users by Show is the most accurate measure of the number of distinct individuals who engaged with a podcast during the specified period.
Unique Users by Episode will almost always be higher because it includes duplicate counts of listeners who played more than one episode.
Both views are useful—episode-level data shows engagement per episode, while show-level data shows overall audience reach.