Listen & Watch Time

Listen & Watch Time is a Bumper-defined metric that represents the total time your audience has spent listening to or watching your show.

For example, one thousand people listening to any episode of your show for thirty minutes each would give you an All-Time Listen & Watch Time of 30,000 minutes, or 500 hours.

Listen & Watch time helps our clients understand how much time and attention they've earned from their audience.

Note that Spotify data is not available before January 1, 2024.

Average Listen & Watch Time

The Listen & Watch Time Average (simply "Listen Time Average" if your show isn't on YouTube) aggregates the total average amount of time per episode spent listening or watching by your audience on each platform.

• Apple Podcasts Connect refers to this as "average consumption"
• Spotify for Creators reports consumption hours, which Bumper uses to calculate an average. Note that data is not available before January 1, 2024.
• YouTube Studio refers to this as "average view duration"

Bumper's clients use this metric to answer the question: on average, how long is my audience listening to this episode?

Why does my episode have >100% average listen time?

Often we see this for two reasons:

1. A system error by the player platform, or
2. Your audience is listening to your episode over and over again

In the case of the latter, typically we see this with kids' podcasts--especially bedtime story shows--where families will listen to the same episode multiple times a week or month. We also sometimes see this with educational podcasts, which teachers might be recommending to their classes.

If one of your episodes has an average listen time over 100%, it could be a strong indication that your audience is highly engaged with the show, or that your show has become an educational resource.