Measuring audio listening: the metrics that actually matter
Play count, completion rate, conversion: which listening metrics a newsroom should track to judge its audio usefully, and which ones to ignore.
A newsroom that starts voicing its articles soon asks a fair question: is this working? The answer depends entirely on which metrics you choose to look at. And here the classic trap is to fix on the wrong number: the one that flatters rather than the one that informs. Here is an honest reading of listening metrics, from the ones that deserve your attention to the ones that steal it.
Play count: necessary, not sufficient
The number of listens started is the first figure everyone looks at, and rightly so: with no plays, there is nothing to analyse. But taken alone, it lies by omission. A play is a reader who clicked, not a reader who listened. A page can rack up plenty of starts and very few real listens if the button is badly placed, if the voice puts people off, or if audio triggers by accident. Treating a play as a success confuses the intent with the result.
Play count is therefore a starting point, not a conclusion. It tells you there is a signal to dig into, not that the game is won.
Completion rate: the metric that rules
The most telling metric is completion rate: what share of the audio is actually listened to. It is what separates a curiosity from a habit. An article started a thousand times but abandoned after twenty seconds tells you the subject attracts but the listening disappoints. An article started a hundred times and listened to at 80 percent tells you the opposite: a smaller audience, but a genuinely engaged one.
Tracking completion changes how you steer. You stop chasing click volume and start watching listening quality. And you quickly spot useful patterns: which formats hold attention when spoken, at what length people drop off, which sections listen best. It is this per-article reading, available in the WeDispatch statistics, that turns a global figure into an editorial decision.
Value metrics: conversion and monetisation
For a newsroom, listening is not an end in itself: it serves a business model. Two metrics tie audio to value. The first is registration wall conversion: how many listeners who arrived through audio leave an email or create an account. That is a direct bridge between listening and your base of known readers. The second, if you monetise with advertising, is the number of audio messages actually served and heard, which we detailed in our article on monetising audio.
These metrics move more slowly than plays, but they are the ones that answer the publisher's real question: does this investment pay off, in subscribers or in revenue.
False friends: what not to over-read
A few figures shine without proving anything. The listening spike on a big news day measures the news, not your audio setup: it falls back at once. An average listens-per-article, computed across the whole catalogue, flattens the very gaps you care about and hides as much as it reveals. And the cumulative total of listens since launch, impressive on a slide, says nothing about the recent trend. Be wary of metrics that only ever grow: they reassure without ever warning.
The right discipline is to compare comparable periods and to reason by section and by format, not in a flattering aggregate.
Building a useful dashboard
In practice, honest tracking fits in a few lines. Look at completion rate by section to know what really gets listened to. Track registration-wall conversion to connect listening to your known audience. Watch, if you monetise, the messages served. And keep play count in its proper place: an attention thermometer, useful to spot a subject, useless to conclude. This per-article data is directly accessible, including by simply asking a connected agent, without opening a report.
Reading it regularly does more than justify a cost: it feeds the audio editorial line, showing which formats to extend and which to leave as text. It is also what lets you decide calmly whether to go further, for instance by turning the site into an automatic podcast.
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