Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.
[00:00:00] Jeff Umbro: Welcome to Podcast Perspectives, a show about the podcast industry and the people behind it. I’m your host, Jeff Umbro. This week on the show, in celebration of the impending midterm elections in the US, we are going to be sharing a webinar that we recorded on September 30th, 2026, called What Audio Producers Really Need to Know About Video Podcasting in 2026: Politics and News Edition.
[00:00:24] Jeff Umbro: I moderated this panel with an all-star cast of guests, including YouTube Podcast Strategic Partner Manager for Civics, Nick Castner; The Lever’s Director of Podcast Production, Ron Doyle; and the Supervising Producer at The Daily Beast, Rachel Passer. This webinar was actually a part two from a highly recommended 2025 webinar that we put on about video podcasting that included, among many others, Yi Li, one of the representatives of podcasts at Spotify.
[00:00:52] Jeff Umbro: This webinar focused on video podcasting for politics and news ahead of the 2026 midterms. You’ll hear all the context of why we had this conversation once we dig in. I hope you all really enjoy it. This was our most attended webinar ever, so there’s definitely an appetite for this conversation. Hope you all enjoy it, and let us know what you think, and we’ll do another one if you want So to introduce our esteemed guests today, we have Nick Castner, who is YouTube’s strategic partner manager for civics and formerly a podcast marketing expert with shops like Glassbox Media and Condé Nast.
[00:01:30] Jeff Umbro: We have Ron Doyle, who’s the director of podcast production at The Lever, which is the award-winning, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported news outlet founded by David Sirota, who some of you may know as the former speechwriter for Ban- Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election, or 2020 presidential campaign, and the co-creator of the film Don’t Look Up, which had Leonardo DiCaprio in it.
[00:01:51] Jeff Umbro: And we have Rachel Passer, who is the supervising producer at The Daily Beast, leading the development strategy and end-to-end production of podcasts and video content, and formerly the executive producer of The Julia Show. And Janna, this is going to be a more generalist conversation with the lens of political podcasts.
[00:02:10] Jeff Umbro: S- but this will be applicable to anybody who’s listening. So with that said, let’s get to it. Could each of you please introduce yourself and talk a little bit about, like, your organization and, and why you’re relevant to this conversation? And, and we’ll start with Nick.
[00:02:26] Nick Castner: Yes. Thank you, Jeff. As Jeff cued up, my name is Nick Castner.
[00:02:29] Nick Castner: I work at YouTube as a strategic partner manager. That means I’m assigned to our top political creators and help them in three categories, the first being strategy, the second is any product-related issues, questions, new features, and then third is our policies. So as Jeff mentioned, I come from the, the audio-first world of podcasting and, a- a- and have had to myself pivot into video and really understand how video podcasting works.
[00:02:59] Nick Castner: Some of the creators I work with at YouTube include The Daily Beast, Jubilee Media, and yes, sort of the wild, at times chaotic political world that we all live in. So I’m excited to, to, uh, I’m excited to be here, and yeah, I’m eager to get this conversation started.
[00:03:18] Jeff Umbro: Great. And let’s go with Rachel next.
[00:03:23] Rachel Passer: Thank you. So yeah, I’m really excited to be here. My name’s Rachel. I’m the supervising producer of all the podcasting that we here do at The Daily Beast. So we have four different podcasts that we have here. Before I got this position, I was actually the executive producer for a radio show called “The Julia Show.”
[00:03:43] Rachel Passer: It was a nationally syndicated radio show, um, in 13 different markets, which was a lot of fun. But yeah, I’ve pivoted over here into The Daily Beast, and I think working here at The Daily Beast and being an overseeing factor in all these different podcasts has been really cool, specifically in this political climate, just because we have a hands-on every single aspect of it.
[00:04:05] Rachel Passer: We have two different shows that are politics related. One is called “Inside Trump’s Head,” and the other one is called “The Daily Beast Podcast.” So yeah, really excited to touch on all these different topics, and again, like Nick said, get this conversation started.
[00:04:19] Jeff Umbro: Cool. And over to you, Ron.
[00:04:21] Ron Doyle: Hey, everyone. My name is Ron.
[00:04:23] Ron Doyle: I am the director of podcast production at The Lever. We’re an independent media organization. We focus on politics, news in the accountability journalism space. So if you have a corporation or a politician who’s behaving badly and playing with money in a way that is not great for the world, we’re probably chasing them around.
[00:04:42] Ron Doyle: We have two different podcasts. One is a, an audio series that at the moment remains, uh, audio only, “Master Plan,” limited series, where we take deep dives, 50-year history of the legalization of corruption in the United States, the, the history of how activists and oligarchs have pushed presidential power into what we have today.
[00:05:05] Ron Doyle: Uh, and then we also have a news podcast, a weekly podcast called “Lever Time,” where we really dive into talking to politicians and experts and other individuals about politics. And then we do live streams and short-form video and all the other things that a tiny little scrappy independent news organization does with a, a very small team.
[00:05:26] Ron Doyle: I’ve been making podcasts for 15 years, and this is my first time doing it as a– When I was brought into this job, it was my first time doing it as it’s the only thing I do. I was a freelancer before this. And my very first charge was, “Let’s go video. Let’s get everything that we have that’s audio only, let’s turn it into video instead.”
[00:05:46] Ron Doyle: Um, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last year, and it’s working. So I’m glad to, uh, glad to be here so I can share some of the things that I’ve learned along the way.
[00:05:56] Jeff Umbro: Love it. So everybody I know is coming from a different background on this call. But the idea here is really like if you have historically been an audio producer, how do you move to video?
[00:06:08] Jeff Umbro: If you’ve been a video producer, how do you think about podcasts? Apple, Spotify, and YouTube have all moved into the video space, and they’re all doing it a little bit differently. Obviously, we have Nick here today, who’s an amazing resource, so we’re gonna focus almost entirely on YouTube today. We’re gonna skip the Apple and Spotify conversation.
[00:06:26] Jeff Umbro: Although we did have a webinar a while back with Yi Li from Spotify, so you can get some deeper info on that. Still working on the Apple piece. But Nick, I wanted to ask you, by some accounts, YouTube has been in the podcast game longer than basically anybody.
[00:06:45] Jeff Umbro: By some accounts, you guys just entered the space last year. It is clear that YouTube is putting more resources into podcasting in the last couple years. So can you, like, walk through a little bit as to, like, why?
[00:06:56] Nick Castner: Yeah. Yes. I would say, um, w- YouTube almost accidentally found itself in- into podcasting, um, where we– And it was primarily comedians would upload their, their, their video p- podcast, and we saw crazy success.
[00:07:12] Nick Castner: And I would say about three years ago is when we started investing heavily in, into the format. We integrated RSS with platform overall, um, and then worked to develop a podcast listening experience within YouTube Music. And that evolution continues, and it, it, it has sort of, um, you know, like the, the, the million-dollar question in the podcast industry today is what is a podcast?
[00:07:33] Nick Castner: And I think of it more of as just a show that is nimble and can be a lot of different things at once. And, you know, we’re continuing to roll out new features that are relevant to podcasting and, and, you know, continue to invest in resources to help podcasts grow and, and be, be successful on, on the platform.
[00:07:55] Jeff Umbro: Ron, you have a, a kind of an interesting background with the Lever and video because you told us the other day that Lever Time, which is, like, your weekly news show, it started as video, and then you moved to audio only, and now you’re back to video. Can you walk through a little bit of why?
[00:08:12] Ron Doyle: Yeah, that’s correct.
[00:08:13] Ron Doyle: We started out in 2022 as a video podcast, video first. We saw where the landscape was going and predicted that that was probably going to be a thing, and tried it, and it didn’t go great. Uh, middling performance, didn’t really move the needle, extremely complicated. Our webcams looked bad. The guests had all sorts of tech trouble.
[00:08:38] Ron Doyle: We were just coming out of the pandemic at that point, and people had become accustomed to this, the, the world of being on Zoom. But the production level was not there. And then just in general, people were not really consuming them. So there was a decision made after about a year to switch back to audio only.
[00:08:57] Ron Doyle: That worked well for a while, and now we’re back, and it’s just remarkable to see how much the industry has changed in those, in that short span of time to where now video really is. It’s our first priority. It is the thing where we’re seeing the most growth, and it is … It’s really working for us, and people are responding.
[00:09:16] Ron Doyle: So yeah, we, we started– We were a little ahead of the game, and now we, and then we had to come back and catch back up.
[00:09:23] Jeff Umbro: We’re gonna talk a little bit about how you did that shortly. But Rachel, I wanted to ask about The Daily Beast as well. How long have you all been operating on YouTube? And, and would you say that podcasting has become kind of a central strategy to that?
[00:09:36] Jeff Umbro: And if so, like, when did you start, and why?
[00:09:39] Rachel Passer: Yeah. So I actually began here at The Daily Beast back in January, so I pulled up some notes from a previous coworker. Um, but yeah, so I guess we started in 2009 on YouTube. Wow. And then that kind of, similar to Ron, went away, and we revived the channel back in September of 2024, and it’s been doing really well.
[00:09:59] Rachel Passer: We actually inherited over 40,000 subscribers from our previous channel, and have been able to kind of launch and continue to launch great podcasts that are attributed to The Daily Beast channel. So yeah, we went away, and then we came back, and now we’re doing really well.
[00:10:15] Jeff Umbro: Love it. Time is a flat circle.
[00:10:18] Jeff Umbro: So Nick, I, I’m curious in, from your vantage point, if a show is doing really well on audio, what is a sign that it’s ready to move into video? And, and also, like, what are the easy ways that some shows can do that if they don’t have a lot of resources?
[00:10:34] Nick Castner: Yeah. Good, good question. I would say in general, just being intentional of why you’re, you’re launching video, and have ensure it’s not a box set checking exercise, and there’s a real reason that you’re making the pivots.
[00:10:47] Nick Castner: And there’s also the– there’s certain shows that, uh, the, the cost to launch the s- full show on video is, w- would be crazy high, that not every show, not, not every audio-first podcast needs to be video. I do think in th- this day and age and how media is consumed both on YouTube and everywhere else, having some element of video can help the overall ecosystem of the show.
[00:11:11] Nick Castner: And I think a good example of that is I have long loved “This American Life”. I- Ira Glass is a, a, a, a GOAT in this fa- or i- in, in this space. Um, the– To make that show a full video show w- would require a, a documentary-like budget. Uh, th- and that i- is outside of the scope of their, you know, o- of, of their current focus.
[00:11:34] Nick Castner: However, I’ve noticed Ira has started making short, like, uh, short-form video that promotes the long-form, uh, long-form audio first episode. I think that is a great starting point of, you know, it, it takes a lot less time for him to make one, one 30-second video that promotes, that promotes an episode, that you’re still able to capture that audience on video while driving back to the, the long-form episode.
[00:11:57] Jeff Umbro: So I, I wanna ask all three of you this question, and, and I’d love to just get a one-sentence answer. Why move to video? What’s the benefit? Ron, do you wanna go first?
[00:12:07] Ron Doyle: For, for the Lever, we just identified it as an additional platform where we can get out the news. It’s just another place where we can go and share what we’re doing in a format that people want.
[00:12:18] Ron Doyle: Uh, we– Just like you have a, a book and an audiobook, we, we decided the same thing should be true for audio and video.
[00:12:25] Jeff Umbro: Nick?
[00:12:26] Nick Castner: Similar sentiment, but incremental reach and an incremental mo-mo-monetization as well.
[00:12:32] Jeff Umbro: And Rachel?
[00:12:34] Rachel Passer: I would say primarily for accessibility. The way that a lot of people are consuming media now is related to social media, is related to, I mean, TikTok, Instagram, all of those things.
[00:12:46] Rachel Passer: And so I think in general, if you have the video component, it makes it easier to consume that, and it’s more accessible. Not only monetize related, because it is helpful for monetization, but I think that in general, if you film everything and just only use the things that are really key to put on social or put on as, like, YouTube clips, it’s really helpful in making it more accessible.
[00:13:11] Ron Doyle: I gotta piggyback on what Rachel said because the accessibility thing is huge. We do have an ol-older audience, uh, of news consumers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we’ve noticed a drop in requests for transcripts since going to video. Fewer people are asking for it ’cause now they can watch it, and there are captions already included in the video as well.
[00:13:30] Jeff Umbro: So I’m, I’m curious because something that stuck with me that somebody said to me a while ago is that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google, which YouTube also– which Google owns YouTube, and then that’s not even accounting for, like, TikTok, Instagram, and everything else.
[00:13:45] Jeff Umbro: So in terms of it being a discovery vehicle, I think it’s very powerful. And then there’s the question which we’re not gonna get into today of, like, you know, what constitutes a podcast, and if somebody watches a clip on TikTok, does it count kind of thing. People are seeing the show and hearing the show, so, like, it’s, it’s a, a net win for whoever’s trying to get that content disseminated.
[00:14:06] Jeff Umbro: I, I guess my question, and, and we’ll start with Nick on this, is, like, if you have to prioritize one aspect of, like, how to utilize your resources to get your show onto video, would that be production quality? Would it be, like, the packaging of the video? Would it be the editing style? Like, do you have any feedback for that?
[00:14:25] Nick Castner: Yes. The, uh, well, the short answer is everything you just li- uh, y- you just listed is something to consider. I would say the production quality, getting that to the highest quality with the resources available, that is a very important thing to, to get on lock. And then when, when you start posting videos, the, um…
[00:14:43] Nick Castner: Like, in, in essence, the algorithm is, is looking at two factors. Are people clicking on the video? Which would be the title and thumbnail, and then once they click on the video, do they stay and watch the video? Which is, uh, the topic, storytelling, and production quality. So I, I, I, I think if you’re looking, if you’re starting and looking at two factors, it is those, those two.
[00:15:04] Nick Castner: Are people clicking, and then when they do click, are they, are they watching?
[00:15:08] Jeff Umbro: Okay. Ron and Rachel, I’m gonna assume you agree with that, but let me know if you don’t
[00:15:14] Ron Doyle: Yep, sure do. Okay, great. Uh, I spend almost as, I spend almost as much time thinking about the cover art and the title as I do editing the actual episode.
[00:15:23] Jeff Umbro: Okay. So we’re gonna start with Nick here, because Nick has, like, a lot more data and first-hand experience with this. And then we’re gonna go to Rachel and Ron to ask about, like, how they’ve actually executed on these things. But Nick, I’m gonna list a handful of things, uh, a handful of items, and I would love for you to provide your top tips on how people can think about this when they’re producing video for YouTube.
[00:15:48] Jeff Umbro: So let’s start with episode titles. Like, what, what are the things that people should be thinking about there?
[00:15:53] Nick Castner: We have a feature called, uh, A/B testing, where you can ha- you can upload multiple titles, and then the, the system shows those titles to your core audience, and then opinion engagement, it surfaces the most, the most engaging title.
[00:16:07] Nick Castner: Uh, use that tool.
[00:16:09] Jeff Umbro: Okay. So A/B testing, which is great. A/B
[00:16:11] Nick Castner: testing, yes.
[00:16:12] Jeff Umbro: And do– And this is something we point out to a lot of our clients, but do, does your title on YouTube need to be th- identical to your title on Apple and Spotify?
[00:16:22] Nick Castner: Uh, no. I, I would say it maybe even shouldn’t. Like, they are very different ecosystems, and as I’m sure you know, Jeff, like, the, the Spotify and, like, the traditional RSS audio audience is a lot more habitual, where people plan that into their, their, you know, weekly schedule.
[00:16:39] Nick Castner: YouTube, there’s more variance in, in listenership. But if, i- if you can, if you can really get the content to new audiences, there’s that, there is a stronger d- discoverability metric on, on YouTube. So the thinking through the titling of, like, the new audience as well. Like, if people, like, it– We will show your title and the thumbnail to people who have never heard about y- your show or your video, and, and looking at the content through that lens is important as well.
[00:17:10] Jeff Umbro: So it’s almost like trying to anticipate what people are gonna ask and, like, answering that question in some ways?
[00:17:15] Nick Castner: Yes, that’s the, that is, like, the best, best advice of, like, there, there should be a, uh, a promise made in the title and thumbnail that’s delivered very early on in the video.
[00:17:26] Jeff Umbro: What about episode descriptions a- and just general metadata?
[00:17:29] Jeff Umbro: How should people think about that? What are the top tips?
[00:17:31] Nick Castner: Emma Sweet, my colleague, y- recently appeared on Jeff’s podcast, Pos- Podcast Perspectives, and, um, she flagged, um… We have a, a Google search ch- search trends, and you can filter that with, uh, just YouTube data. I think that’s an interest… And that, that, that tip is what, what Emma shared o- uh, o- on your podcast.
[00:17:49] Nick Castner: I think that is interesting when it comes to optimizing of, like, what search terms are people using. In news, we see traffic from search is a lot less than a l- than many other verticals. Like, if you think of shopping, for example, like if you’re a shopping creator, search is a huge, huge factor of like, “What camera should I buy?”
[00:18:08] Nick Castner: Um, in news, that, that percentage is a lot less, like five to 10%. However, that search traffic can be an indication of audience interest, which interest of audience on certain topics ebbs and flows greatly over time. So j- just using tools such as, as Google Trends to see what, what story people care about, and then producing content a- around that in the lens of your editorial voice.
[00:18:39] Jeff Umbro: So, so that, and I’m sure Rachel and Ron have a lot of opinions on this, but like some people are going to be creating content that’s more evergreen that will be like something that is searchable in five years, and some people may be, like, creating content that talks about Graham Plattner or Abdul El-Sayed or something that’s, like, more zeitgeisty in the moment, and you wanna capture that, those two avenues in different ways.
[00:19:04] Jeff Umbro: What about thumbnails, Nick? How should people think about that?
[00:19:08] Nick Castner: Yeah, similar and, like, m- the, the sentiment that is sh- shared throughout all of these is, like, the, the creators who have the best success on the platform are constantly testing and iterating, and I, I, I think that advice goes with thumbnails.
[00:19:20] Nick Castner: I’m, I’m not a designer myself, but really, really, like, letting your design, the best designer on your team cook with the thumbnail and just, like, let them have at it and then understanding what’s working and then trying to lean in to do more of, of what’s working.
[00:19:37] Jeff Umbro: And you can also A/B test thumbnails on YouTube, right?
[00:19:39] Nick Castner: Correct.
[00:19:41] Jeff Umbro: So I wanna open that one up to, to Rachel and then to Ron as well. Like, how do you guys think about your thumbnails?
[00:19:47] Rachel Passer: Yeah, so we’ve recently pivoted from originally creating, like, original artwork that’s relevant to the podcast episode to having, like, a screen grab of our talent on side by side.
[00:19:59] Rachel Passer: And we did some data that showed that that did really, really well with our audience, just because our talent is more well-known now. And so when people see them on the screen, and then we have our image text underneath that sounds very grabby, people have a more of a tendency to click on it rather than an illustration that we’ve created by hand.
[00:20:18] Rachel Passer: However, we did a lot of A/B testing, as Nick said, and that’s what proved that that did really well. Now, like I said, we’ve had– we have four different podcasts, and the screen grab side by side doesn’t necessarily work well for all of them. However, this is kind of the, the way that we’ve decided to go about it as of right now, but that can always change.
[00:20:36] Rachel Passer: It’s, it’s constantly evolving. I think in general, back to what Nick was touching on, when you’re thinking about your headline and your image text, we always start all of our episodes with a cold open, not only from an audio standpoint, but from a video standpoint. And that should be the thing that promises two different things to your, to your audience, which is, one, you’re gonna learn something from this, this episode, and two, you’re gonna be entertained.
[00:21:00] Rachel Passer: And so that’s the most compelling component that should work hand-in-hand with whatever your headline and your image text is, no matter if it’s A/B tested or not. So yeah, that’s just my take.
[00:21:12] Jeff Umbro: A- And Rachel, before we move on to Ron, what do you think, what do you think about when you’re– You have an episode title.
[00:21:19] Jeff Umbro: Does that need to go on the thumbnail?
[00:21:22] Rachel Passer: No. Um, it, it in fact shouldn’t. It should be completely different wording that works coincide. So for example, we had this really great episode for The Royalist yesterday, and we kind of workshopped it a little bit, but it ended up being called Harry… If you guys aren’t understanding what I’m talking about, it’s, uh, the royal family is what this whole podcast is about.
[00:21:45] Rachel Passer: So our image text says, “Attention-Seeking Disorder,” and it’s one side of it is our main talent, Tom, and the other side is Prince Harry. And then the actual title of the headline of the video is called Harry Humiliated By Boneheaded Blunder. Um, so they should not, they should not be the same, but they should work together to kind of give somebody an idea of, I really need to tune into this, especially because this sounds like Harry’s up to something absolutely insane.
[00:22:17] Jeff Umbro: And for anybody who’s wondering, like why, uh, just imagine that you are on YouTube yourself. And, and I tell everybody this, if you don’t watch videos on YouTube and you’re thinking about producing videos for YouTube, go watch the videos of, like, just any show that’s on there to, like, see how other people are doing this and to learn from them.
[00:22:36] Jeff Umbro: But, uh, you’ll very quickly realize if you do that, that the title of the episode is going to appear right next to the thumbnail. So you don’t wanna have, like, the language duplicated there. Uh, Nick, I think you raised your hand.
[00:22:48] Nick Castner: Uh, yes, I was actually clapping to what, what Rachel said. Oh. The one thing to add that, um-
[00:22:52] Ron Doyle: Me too.
[00:22:53] Nick Castner: Me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the one thing I’ll add there that I think, like, the, the next level of thumbnail creation is when you can create a cohesive design amongst all of your thumbnails. And I think the best of– One of many good examples of this is The Daily Beast, that if you go to their YouTube channel, you can tell that it’s a Daily Beast thumbnail without seeing the channel name of just, like, just stylistically you know that, that it’s a Daily Beast thumbnail.
[00:23:17] Nick Castner: And as you develop your returning audience of the, you know, your car- your hardcore fans that, that wanna come back episode to episode, I think that cohesive feel can help just establish that, that relationship the audience has with your channel.
[00:23:31] Jeff Umbro: That’s branding, baby Ron, what do you think about thumbnails?
[00:23:36] Ron Doyle: Everything Rachel said and what Nick said is so validating for me right now. I’m feeling very good. We’re like a tiny little organization, and we’re, like, trying to figure this thing out, and everything you described is the things that I think about all day long. The one thing that I will add in addition to what everyone said, I think about the thumbnail as the very first thing that people see.
[00:23:54] Ron Doyle: So I’m always looking for some sort of whatever it is in the story, whatever it is in the episode that is gonna be most recognizable to a listener first, so it, it triggers their, like, reaction. Something that is in– It, it inspires some sort of curiosity to get them to then look at the title, and then hopefully from there, it’s like first the thumbnail, they look at the thumbnail, then they look at the title, and the title leads them into the episode and gets them to click play.
[00:24:17] Ron Doyle: That’s always how I’m trying to think about the path that people are taking visually. Totally agree about finding, like, figuring out what your cohesive style is and trying to stick to it for a while. Sometimes we do side-by-side folks, depending on whether those people are recognizable. Sometimes, uh, we’re doing other things.
[00:24:34] Ron Doyle: Most often, we’re using faces. We’ve just found that people respond to faces. We are human, and they tend to work better than if we do some sort of abstract image. The other thing I was gonna add that other folks haven’t already said is you were talking about evergreen versus newsy content. We are frequently changing our cover art and our titles over time.
[00:24:58] Ron Doyle: So we’ll start out with something that is very hit– that is hitting the news in the moment. Even our v- the tense of our verbs will be present tense, and then a week later, we’ll go and change, change things to make it … We’ll give it a more evergreen title. That way, it can keep dragging out listen- uh, dragging out views, uh, in the long tail.
[00:25:18] Jeff Umbro: That’s very smart. I hadn’t even thought of that. We have a lot of questions, and we don’t have a lot of time to get through them, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna speed up through a few of these things. But I do wanna make sure we touch on both clips and chapters before we move on. So Nick, we’ll come back to clips ’cause we have a whole section on that later.
[00:25:37] Jeff Umbro: So I’ll move just to chapters. How should people think about chapters on YouTube, Nick? What are, what are your top tips?
[00:25:43] Nick Castner: Uh, yes. Chapters, uh, in the meta description you can put a timestamp and then specific topics to allow viewers to skip to certain parts of the episode. That overall helps with engagement of if viewers only care about, you know, the, the, the interview on Block C, they, they can jump to that, and they’re li- they’re likely to watch more of the video.
[00:26:01] Nick Castner: As well as those chapters are ingested into SEO, so that, that is, i- is, is another thing to think through of just, like, in- incorporating high-visibility search terms into those chapters.
[00:26:14] Jeff Umbro: Dan Misner from Bumper, who many of you may know, had a really interesting article a long time ago, which you can, you can Google and find it.
[00:26:20] Jeff Umbro: It’s at wearebumper.com, where he talked about the consumption rates of videos changing pretty dramatically because of chapters. So people might find a video and then immediately jump to, like, 25 minutes into the video because of, like, a chapter link on the YouTube description, which I found fascinating.
[00:26:37] Jeff Umbro: And some of you may care a lot about that, and some of you may not. But just something to keep in mind. Like, if you add these chapters in, it, it kind of adds an index for people to move around the video a, a little bit more freely. I next want to chat with Rachel and Ron, who are the two people on this chat who are doing this more than anyone.
[00:26:56] Jeff Umbro: What are the biggest pitfalls? Like, what are the things that, like, you– the issues you’ve run into trying to move a show from audio to video that, like, you didn’t necessarily anticipate? Let’s start with Rachel.
[00:27:06] Rachel Passer: We record everything through Riverside, and it’s a really, really great platform. Same. Um, the only– Yeah.
[00:27:12] Rachel Passer: I love Riverside, cannot get enough of it. With that being said, the only thing is, um, and Ron, I’m sure that you’ve noticed this too, that when you are recording with a guest who either doesn’t have headphones, I don’t know how that’s possible, doesn’t have headphones or isn’t able to use any, then it does take away from the audio when they are interrupting other people.
[00:27:34] Rachel Passer: So that’s been a really difficult thing for our team specifically because if you’re taking away the audio, because we’re human and we interrupt each other when we get excited, then it causes a lot of technical issues for us to have to go back and chop things up to make it sound cohesive and not sound like somebody’s audio is being completely turned down.
[00:27:53] Rachel Passer: So that’s been one of the biggest pitfalls, as well as, like, booking talent. Bookings fall through all the time. And especially when you’re in a news-related podcast, you have to make sure that you’re doing things in a timely manner. And if somebody falls through, having to pivot to the next person as soon as possible is really imperative.
[00:28:10] Rachel Passer: So we have our team. We’re not only doing all of the producing, we’re also doing the booking, we’re doing the editing, and we’re doing the posting. So it’s a lot. It’s definitely a lot to have to manage. But I’d say the biggest pitfalls are from a technological standpoint of our guests, ’cause we don’t have any control of that sometimes.
[00:28:28] Rachel Passer: And then also just making sure you have enough time to get it all done.
[00:28:32] Jeff Umbro: We do this with audio clients as well, but, um, we have tech checks with most of our guests ahead of time. The difference with audio versus video is that you have to make sure that somebody looks good as well as sounds good. Yeah. And, and that often requires, like, potentially uncomfortable conversations.
[00:28:49] Jeff Umbro: Like, “Hey, maybe you can move your hair away from, like, your microphone,” or, like, telling people ahead of time that they’re gonna be on camera so that they can get camera ready. And there’s certainly, like, some people who require more time than others, so they have to plan for that ahead of time. So these are all things that, like, uh, become concerns that are not concerns when it’s audio only.
[00:29:10] Jeff Umbro: Ron, what about you?
[00:29:12] Ron Doyle: Again, echoing everything that Rachel said. Echo cancellation is a challenge. Um, we have to train our host to be very cautious to not interrupt folks, let them speak all the way through, try … to try and avoid that We definitely, we, in our booking emails, we always try and remind folks and make it very clear that they’re gonna be on camera, and we do always try to leave a little bit of time beforehand to help them get set up correctly and figure it out.
[00:29:38] Ron Doyle: A, a little trick I can give, we just ask people to put a bunch of books underneath their laptop to raise the camera up just a little higher. It’s a very easy and cheap way that you can get a guest who you care about but who hasn’t, doesn’t have a great setup to look a little bit better. We’ve been working, we’re working on trying to do what I’m, I’ve been referring to as pre-mixing.
[00:29:58] Ron Doyle: So whenever we get to the editing stage, we get all our recording, and Rachel’s talking about having bad video or bad audio from another guest. We’re actually taking that raw footage and that raw audio, and we’re mixing it and trying to make it sound good before we ever pull it into whatever editing software we’re gonna use.
[00:30:15] Ron Doyle: We’re finding that that saves us a little bit of time instead of, instead of trying to do the mix afterwards. And then the other thing that we’re doing a lot of is deciding … The biggest challenge for us is really deciding how much to edit. We come from, I know audio folks, we come from this place where we want to cut out every single um.
[00:30:33] Ron Doyle: Uh, we want to get everything to sound, uh, audio perfect, and you just can’t always do that. It doesn’t look right when you get 1,000 jump cuts in a single video. If you’ve got someone who stammers, it becomes very difficult to make it look right. We have to, like, let that, that precision go in a way that’s kind of painful.
[00:30:52] Ron Doyle: But, uh, but we’re finding that it, uh, you know, we’re actually trying to embrace it because it saves us a little bit of time on the back end. And then the other thing we’re, we’re trying to really challenge, I know we said we’re gonna mostly talk about YouTube, but one of the other challenges we’re dealing with is Spotify and A- uh, Apple have decided to roll out their video products as the same thing as their audio product.
[00:31:15] Ron Doyle: We used to, when we first were shifting into video, we had an audio podcast, and then we had a video version that we would put on YouTube. On Apple and Spotify, you have to choose one file that you upload, and it has to be identical. So we’re trying to find that balance of what works well for audio and well for video so people can switch back and forth seamlessly, and it’s been very challenging.
[00:31:36] Ron Doyle: But we, we did have a meeting with Lowell Bergman, uh, one of the OG producers from 60 Minutes. He’s the guy, if you’ve ever seen the movie The Insider with Al Pacino, he– That, that movie is about him. He gave us the tip. He said that 60 Minutes was originally from radio. It came from the radio world. So if you watch 60 Minutes now, they don’t have anything on screen that is not also spoken.
[00:31:58] Ron Doyle: So we’ve sort of taken that as an inspiration for how we do things as well. We want to make sure that whatever’s being shown on screen is also being explained to a listener. And again, that’s, that’s so you can seamlessly go back and forth, but it’s also the accessibility thing that, uh, Rachel was talking about.
[00:32:13] Jeff Umbro: So you guys just spoke a lot about guests on the show and how to prepare for, like, having a great guest on video. What about the host? We, we’ve had many instances where a host is just, like, not up to snuff when it comes to performing on video. What are some tips that you have to help them feel a little bit more comfortable on video if they’re gonna be doing this more frequently?
[00:32:39] Rachel Passer: Ron, do you wanna start?
[00:32:40] Ron Doyle: Sure, sure. We did a total overhaul of our host’s home office and turned it into a studio space. He got himself a good camera, he got lighting, and that just making it look good made a huge difference on how he presents himself as well. Just turning that light on. I have a, I have, like, a big light in front of me right now.
[00:33:00] Ron Doyle: I actually have key lights behi- I have little halo lights behind me. I don’t look great ’cause I don’t normally have to be on camera, but I- You look amazing … even just, even just for this, I’m trying to, like, I try to do those things. And I’ve noticed when he turns that light on, it turns him on in a way that he wasn’t doing before when it was just, like, a little webcam.
[00:33:22] Ron Doyle: It gets him to shift into that mindset. Doing those little things that help people remind themselves that they’re on camera, that makes a big difference. Learning to look at the camera. We also, he also now has a teleprompter that plugs into his computer. He puts the Riverside screen inside the teleprompter so he can just look directly at his guests, and it makes a huge difference as far as the way things work.
[00:33:43] Jeff Umbro: I’ll also interject. This isn’t accessible to many because it’s on the enterprise version of Riverside, but they do have a built-in teleprompter, which we find to be really helpful sometimes
[00:33:55] Ron Doyle: Yeah. Having, having teleprompter or something comparable to a teleprompter really makes a big difference. Right now, I actually have my webcam is on a weird gooseneck, and I sit it in front of my screen so I can look at least a little bit more towards the cam- uh, towards the screen whenever I’m talking.
[00:34:11] Jeff Umbro: Fair.
[00:34:11] Ron Doyle: Sure. It’s, it, uh, it’s-
[00:34:13] Jeff Umbro: So you’re not looking
[00:34:13] Jeff Umbro: above the,
[00:34:14] Ron Doyle: above the screen. Okay … I’m not, I’m not looking above, I’m not staring down. It makes a little bit of a difference. Finding– You can do a little tabletop tripod and put that in front of your screen. That’s an easy way to make it look like you have a teleprompter.
[00:34:26] Ron Doyle: But yeah, it’s tricky. I’m very lucky. I have a great host who spent years on radio, and he has experience on television, so he has no problem performing for the camera. He’s very good at it, and he’s very gracious to his guests. He helps bring them along. I’m spoiled in that regard, but it is a, it’s a big challenge.
[00:34:42] Ron Doyle: It can be a big challenge ’cause some people just don’t– I’m sure we’re talking to, to an air audience right now. I’m sure lots of you are like, “I don’t wanna be on camera right now.”
[00:34:51] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. ”
[00:34:52] Ron Doyle: I don’t wanna have to do this.” So it can, it can be really hard to get people to, to accept that they can do, they can be on camera and it can be fine.
[00:35:00] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Rachel, what do you think?
[00:35:01] Rachel Passer: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve had to coach quite a few people on the talent, and it’s always interesting ’cause everybody has their different things that they bring to the table. Um, I will say working with people from radio has been– Those are some of the best talent just because it’s on air.
[00:35:18] Rachel Passer: You know? Like, you don’t have time to redo it. You gotta make sure it sounds great. You gotta project. You gotta make sure you’re concise. I think some of the things that I’ve struggled with with talent that I’ve worked with at The Daily Beast, not that they’re bad, but, like, you know, I think in terms of having them improve is everybody has their little niche things that they do.
[00:35:37] Rachel Passer: So Joanna, who is the, um, host of The Daily Beast and Inside Trump’s Head, who is wonderful, I noticed she was, like, taking notes during the recordings, and we were kind of– She would just be doing that while she was talking, and that’s not really helpful when I’m trying to get video footage of you and, like, posting it.
[00:35:56] Rachel Passer: So I said to her, I was like, “What are you writing?” And she was like, “Head- headline ideas.” And I’m like, “Okay, stop doing that.” Like, “We will figure it out after. Instead, what I would rather you do is if you are able to have your talent, if they have something that’s top of mind,” because Ron and I have been saying it’s really difficult with Riverside to get your talent to stop interrupting.
[00:36:16] Rachel Passer: It’s a normal thing for us humans to wanna do when we get excited. “So instead, just write down what you wanna say in response to what the other person is saying, and that way you know it’s sitting in the back of your mind before you start talking. And you are more than welcome to pause. We can cut that out with some AutoPod.”
[00:36:33] Rachel Passer: But, like, yeah, I, I just– That was one of the biggest tips and tricks that I’ve given her, and since then, it’s really helped improve Another thing too is giving your talent the mindset of, “This is your show. Make us feel like it.” Dominate the conversation, but not in a way that is, like, abrasive, and not in a way that’s interrupting.
[00:36:53] Rachel Passer: Make sure that you are leading the conversation, because if you have a talent that comes on that’s leading the conversation, you’ve lost control. So those have been my biggest tips and tricks in terms of working with different talent. As well as, like, we’ve … Being here and not in radio anymore, I’ve worked with quite a few people here that come from a news background.
[00:37:11] Rachel Passer: And so they have this tendency to kind of, like, “And coming up now,” like, you know, having this voice. That’s not what we wanna do. Yeah. There’s enough of that. You can go to CNN, you can go to Fox News, you could go wherever you want. But for a podcast, that doesn’t … That’s not helpful. So talk like a person.
[00:37:27] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Ra- Rachel, you mentioned AutoPod.
[00:37:29] Rachel Passer: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:29] Jeff Umbro: What is that? How much does it cost? How can people use it?
[00:37:32] Rachel Passer: I’m not in charge of the prices. Uh, but I do know that- It, it’s
[00:37:35] Jeff Umbro: not that expensive, for anybody who’s wondering.
[00:37:37] Rachel Passer: Yeah. But AutoPod is a great, great system, a great tool. It is a plug-in attachment for Rever- or for Premiere, and basically it can detect who is speaking when, because it
[00:37:50] Rachel Passer: You put in the video, you put in the audio of whoever you have on, and then it can detect when a person is speaking. So it really chops out a lot of time, as editors, as producers, that we don’t have to do, of just like, “Okay, now I have to go to video one, video two, to see who’s talking here and when.” So it saves a lot of time.
[00:38:09] Rachel Passer: Really, really would encourage anybody who can purchase it to do so. It’s worth it. The other main thing that I like to use is called, um, Adobe Podcast. If, Ron, I’m sure you’ve had some- Yeah … guests come on who do not sound very good, and that’s just, not everybody can afford a microphone, not everybody has AirPods.
[00:38:25] Rachel Passer: And it basically is an AI tool that detects a person’s voice and can enhance it, and can take out any kind of background noise. So it’s very helpful, and I think it’s a part of Adobe, if I’m not mistaken. But yeah, it’s-
[00:38:39] Ron Doyle: It’s part of Cre- it’s included in Creative Cloud.
[00:38:41] Rachel Passer: Yes.
[00:38:42] Jeff Umbro: We’re not gonna have enough time to get through everything that we wanna talk about.
[00:38:45] Jeff Umbro: Maybe we’ll do a part two if everybody’s down. Um, but Nick, I want to ask you, what are some benchmarking metrics that people should really pay attention to? And, and make sure please to speak a little bit about click-through rates as well.
[00:39:00] Nick Castner: Yes. Um, so as I said earlier, I think li- um, like, uh, the, are people clicking on the video, and when they do click, are they watching?
[00:39:07] Nick Castner: So that would be click-through rate captures both title and thumbnail, which is … And the click-through rate is of the people shown the title and thumbnail, how many people clicked on the video? So that’s what that, that metric captures. And then six-
[00:39:19] Jeff Umbro: What, what’s a, what’s a good click-through rate?
[00:39:21] Nick Castner: Oh my gosh.
[00:39:22] Nick Castner: I would say it, it ranges greatly from, from video to video, channel to channel. I would say 4% kind of starts to get you in that average. I have seen videos as high as 12. 12 would be an outlier, but I would say, like, four, four to eight. Which- Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, uh, I, I would say four to eight is what to shoot for, with four being a good, just like, you know,
[00:39:43] Nick Castner: benchmark.
[00:39:43] Jeff Umbro: That, and, and for anybody wondering, that means that if the video’s shown to 100 people, four of them will click play.
[00:39:48] Nick Castner: And then on the, like, are people watching, uh, we look at both average view duration, which is on average how long did people watch, and then also average percentage viewed, which is of the total video, how, like, how, how far did they get through it?
[00:40:03] Nick Castner: And, uh, but, so both of those, like, it ch- uh, it changes with the length of video. So, like, for example, if, if your average view duration is four minutes on a four-minute-long video, that, you know, 100% completion rate, that is great. Um, but if it’s a four- if it’s a four-minute average on an hour-long video, that is something to improve.
[00:40:21] Nick Castner: And then on the back end of Studio, you can see where your audience tends to drop off, which is just a good metric to cue in on. Like, say you, uh, you introduced a new segment, or, you know, like, uh, uh, just look at the trends of, like, when people are, are, are dropping off from the video and, and think through why, of like, why, why was it at that point where you saw that sharp drop-off?
[00:40:44] Jeff Umbro: We could spend a literal day talking about these metrics. But the short version is that the better you perform at these metrics, the more people YouTube’s algorithm is going to show the video to, which means you will get a bigger audience because of it.
[00:41:05] Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much for joining us. You can find Nick Castner, Ron Doyle, and Rachel Passer, and myself all
[00:41:10] Jeff Umbro: on LinkedIn by searching their name. Really appreciate you all taking the time to listen, and thank you again to our guests for joining us. Thank you so much to our co-sponsor, AIR. If you wanna learn more about AIR, head to airmedia.org to see their upcoming events and learn more about their membership benefits.
