As of October 1st, Apple Watch downloads from Apple Podcasts are no longer included in IABv2 stats.

Prior to October, when a new episode of your podcast was published, and your listeners had not changed any settings on their phone related to the default Apple Podcasts app behavior, then their watch would automatically download the latest episode the next time it charges, even though it was already fully downloaded on their iPhone.

When your listeners charged their phone and watch overnight and received an episode update, your media hosting platform (and thus, your analytics) would see two device user agents from the listeners’ IP address trying to download the episode.

If your media hosting company follows IABv2 suggestions to target just the download user agent, realistically you’ll see most of your podcast’s Apple Watch inventory start to go down, possibly up to 3%. Still confused?

Need to talk some strategy? Contact me and let’s talk about what this means for your podcast.