Apple Podcasts provider pages: a built-in cross-promo opportunity
There’s an underused feature of Apple Podcasts that more people should know about: provider pages.
According to Apple:
If you have multiple shows listed in Apple Podcasts, we can create a single page, called a “provider page,” to list all of your podcasts in one place.
You’ve likely seen these in the wild. For example, at the bottom of every show on the Frequency Podcast Network, you’ll see a “More on…” section near the bottom:
These “More on…” sections are valuable real estate, and they appear prominently in the iOS Podcasts app.
Provider pages for brands
Obviously, provider pages make sense for established media brands like The New York Times or the BBC.
But they make a lot of sense for non-traditional media brands, too.
For example, Dell Technologies publishes a number of podcasts, including Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson and their newest series AI: Hype vs. Reality. When AI: Hype vs. Reality launched, Dell actively promoted the new series to Trailblazers listeners with an episode drop, and also made sure to add the new series to the Dell Technologies provider page:
This means Trailblazers listeners who use Apple Podcasts have a simple, one-tap way to discover other shows from Dell.
How many podcasts are associated with a provider page?
If you publish multiple shows, a provider page seems like a no-brainer. But I started to wonder: are podcasters actually using them?
To find out, I grabbed a sample of ~300,000 shows from the Apple Podcasts directory. Of those, 42,955 (14%) were associated with a podcast provider page.
It’s difficult to know for certain how many shows could be part of a provider page but aren’t. But we can make an educated guess.
Of the ~300,000 shows I sampled, I found ~230,000 unique artist names (e.g. “ABC Radio” or “The Metropolitan Museum of Art”). That means ~70,000 shows (23%) share an artist name with at least one other series, which is a useful signal that they come from the same publisher.
Given that artist names don’t need to be identical for two shows to be part of the same provider page, we can conservatively estimate that there are tens of thousands of podcasts that could take advantage of an Apple Podcasts provider page, but haven’t yet.
How do I get a provider page?
You request one. Visit the Contact Us page in your Podcasts Connect account, and choose the appropriate entry from the drop-down menu:
You can also request a vanity URL for your provider page (e.g. ApplePodcasts.com/NPR). Write to podcastsmarketing@apple.com
and make sure to include a link to your provider page and justification for the vanity URL, including how you’ll use it.
Remember
- Apple Podcasts provider pages list all of your podcasts in one place
- Shows that belong to the same provider page appear prominently in Apple’s Podcasts app, and are an easy built-in way to cross-promote series within the same network
- Publishers can request a provider page directly from Apple
Do you have a provider page for your shows?
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