I love a good metric formula. So even though I don’t have a podcast (yet?), I’m here for Bumper’s listener lifetime value metric.

a podcast’s lifetime value score measures the average number of distinct calendar days each listener spends with the show

How to calculate:

For each platform, sum the daily-resolution unique audience members, then divide that total by the all-time deduplicated number. The result is the average number of “listener days” per unique audience member, AKA average lifetime value.

As with many metrics, the value is provided over time as you build your own trendline and history.

Generally, podcasters should aim for an ever-increasing average lifetime value score, except when overall audience size is trending down (that’s a trap)