Ausha follows the IAB 2.2 international standard to calculate podcast downloads — the industry benchmark for measuring your show’s audience.
In this article:
What counts as a download (or listen)?
Which platforms are included in your stats?
✅ What Counts as a Download (or Listen)?
Since June 2025, Ausha has been certified as compliant with IAB 2.2.
Before that, we applied the IAB 2.1 standard (since November 2, 2022), and prior to that, the ACPM methodology.
With IAB 2.2, the rules for measuring downloads remain the same — this new certification simply reinforces our compliance with the latest official guidelines.
A download (or listen) is counted only when all four IAB criteria are met:
⏱ At least 60 seconds of the episode have been streamed or downloaded
📆 One per 24-hour window: only one download is counted per listener, per episode, every 24 hours
🔧 A valid User Agent (bots and unknown devices are excluded)
🌍 A human IP address (automated or server-based traffic is filtered out)
💡 “Download” is the term used by IAB, even when episodes are streamed. It refers to how listens are technically measured.
💡 This 24-hour rule is called “windowing”: if the same listener plays an episode multiple times within 24 hours, it only counts once.
📡 Which Platforms Are Included in My Statistics?
Ausha’s statistics are based exclusively on platforms that distribute your podcast using your RSS feed. This includes:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Deezer
Amazon Music
Overcast
And many others
💡 Not included:
SoundCloud: this platform hosts and plays audio files independently of your Ausha RSS feed
YouTube: even if your episodes are published to YouTube from Ausha, plays on YouTube are not delivered via your RSS feed. As a result, they are not counted in your download statistics