The AMP Accords: What They Get Right—and What's Next

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TL;DR: The AMP Accords are a step in the right direction

• We support the AMP Accords and believe moving from downloads to consumption is the right evolution for podcast measurement.
• The long-term success of the Accords depends on broad adoption across publishers, platforms, and measurement providers.
• The framework's phased rollout gives the industry a practical path toward adoption.
• Display advertising shows that agreeing on a standard is easier than implementing it consistently.
• Standardized consumption metrics create a stronger foundation for attribution and holdout testing.

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Now that the AMP Accords are public, we wanted to share where we land on the substance: what we think the industry got right, what deserves a closer look, and what determines whether any of this actually sticks.

What are the AMP Accords?

If you’re in the podcasting industry, you likely are familiar with the AMP Accords, but a refresher never hurts. 

The AMP Accords are a new industry framework that aims to standardize podcast measurement across platforms, including common definitions for impressions, attribution, and what qualifies as a podcast. 

The framework was developed by the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP), a group of individuals representing platforms, advertisers, publishers, and creators. 

Moving from downloads to consumption is the right move

The central shift in the AMP Accords is moving the unit of measurement from downloads to consumption. That's the right call for where the medium has evolved and where it's heading.

Our take: The central move—shifting the unit of measurement from downloads to consumption—is the right one for where the medium has evolved, and where it’s heading.

Just as important is how AMP chose to introduce it. Framing the new metrics as companions to existing reporting, not replacements, is what gives this effort a realistic path through the market. The phased, non-binding rollout reflects the same discipline: it brings the industry along without disrupting how deals get transacted today. A standard nobody can actually implement isn't a standard. It's a press release.

Display advertising offers a useful precedent

Display advertising made the same move a decade ago, resetting the unit from served impressions to viewable ones—from "the ad was delivered" to "the ad had a genuine chance to be seen." Podcasting is now attempting the same reset, from downloads to plays.

Two things are worth remembering from that precedent:

• Stricter measurement didn't shrink the market. Display spend kept climbing after viewability arrived, despite fears from publishers at the time.
• Defining the standard was never the hard part. Getting vendors to measure it consistently was, and reconciling the discrepancies between them took years, not months.

Podcasting should expect the same arc: a fast yes on the definition, and a much slower grind toward everyone measuring it the same way.

The adoption strategy is well designed

One structural choice in the Accords deserves specific credit: running deliberate, parallel tracks for the bodies asked to Adopt the standard versus those asked to Cite and Endorse it.

That's a systematized way to drive cohesive change across a fragmented industry, instead of leaning on brute force or a scattershot of one-off conversations that rarely add up to anything.

One opportunity to strengthen the framework

The "if the industry gets this right" case could go further. As the reported denominator shifts from downloads toward actual exposure, podcast conversion rates should look stronger, not weaker. The number of actions stays roughly constant while the denominator shrinks—which finally puts real figures behind what the channel's largest advertisers already believe about its efficiency.

Because the size of that effect depends entirely on the download-to-play gap for any given show, we'd frame it as a direction of travel rather than a hard number. But it's a point worth making explicitly, because it's an argument in AMP's favor that the current draft leaves on the table.

Where Right Side Up stands on attribution

Why we support the attribution framework

As a buy-side practice, we back both the organic and PSA holdout methodologies, and we agree strongly that standardized consumption reporting is what makes those methods reliably possible in the first place. You can't build a credible holdout group on top of a metric nobody trusts.

On adoption more broadly, we'd offer an optimistic case and a caution in the same breath.

The biggest opportunity

Identifier pass-back should compound quickly once a single major platform moves, because buying concentrates where measurability is highest, and newer tech stacks build toward the most measurable inventory. Market forces do a lot of this work on their own—advertiser demand already drives testing and iteration inside third-party platforms like Magellan AI and Podscribe.

Our take: The most consequential outcome of the Accords would be YouTube, Spotify, and Apple sharing granular consumption data, which is what finally allows consumption and attribution to be verified in video, the fastest-growing part of the medium where the largest measurement gap currently exists.

The single most consequential outcome of the Accords would be YouTube, Spotify, and Apple sharing granular consumption data. That's what finally lets consumption and attribution get verified in video, which is both the fastest-growing part of the medium and the place with the largest measurement gap today.

The biggest risk

The real test is consistency of enforcement, not the existence of the standard. The framework's most valuable outcomes depend on platforms sharing data some of them haven't historically made available at this level. Small definitional drift between platforms—one counting "streams" differently from another's "plays"—already creates downstream noise. A standard adopted unevenly just reproduces the confusion it was built to fix.

Where we land

None of this is a reservation about the direction. It's about execution, which is where the real work now sits.

Our take: A credible standard is what the medium has been missing. Whether it is implemented depends on adoption, not authorship, and that is a choice the whole industry makes together.

A credible standard is what podcasting has been missing. Whether it gets implemented depends on adoption, not authorship—and that's a choice the whole industry makes together, one platform integration at a time.

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