Anchor says it’s ‘powering’ 40 percent of new podcasts

Podcasting’s greatest asset has always been its accessibility — for consumer and creator alike. But even the simplest medium requires a little know-how, and Anchor’s overarching goal has long been to further lower the barrier of entry for those looking to take the leap.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, but the service has done a pretty decent job leveling the playing field for many users. In fact, if Anchor’s self-reported numbers are to be believed, it’s been a major driving force for new podcasts.

The company tells TechCrunch it believes it’s currently “powering” 40 percent of new podcasts. That’s up from the around 33 percent it reported over the summer. The service also believes that it’s effectively doubled the number of podcasts running ads since launching its new monetization platform back in November.

The service isn’t disclosing specific numbers here, but says those estimates come through Magellan, a podcasting analytic service that works with some big names like WNYC and Gimlet. In November (just ahead of Anchor’s ad platform launch), the service reported that in the neighborhood of 7,000 podcasts were running ads.

The number seems low, but Magellan notes that expectations have been altered by uneven ad distribution. If you listen exclusively to popular podcasts, that number probably seems a lot closer to 100.

It ought to be noted that podcast analytics are far from an exact science. It’s a very fractured landscape, and while services like iTunes and Spotify are doing a better job serving up information to show hosts, aggregating data is still imperfect.

“In total, we estimate that 6,954 podcasts have ads,” Magellan notes. “Since we were only sampling podcasts, we could still be wrong — but we can say that with 90 percent confidence that between 5,914 and 7,994 podcasts have ads.”

Magellan’s analytics suggested that around 1 percent of podcasts were actually running ads at the time. Anchor’s apparently effectively doubled that number, implying that it’s brought advertisements to somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 podcasts, excluding redundancies.

Anchor’s goal of making the medium more accessible to users also finds the company launching a second New York City studio this week. From the looks of it, the lab revolves around Rode’s terrific new podcasting mixing board.