It’s Friday, October 18th. Welcome to This Week In Podcasting where we discuss this week's most exciting podcasting news and tips, all in under 10 minutes. This episode is provided by Sounder.fm, the Smarter way to Podcast. Let’s get started.

This week we cover Top Revenue-generating Podcast Genres, how 2020 election candidates are leveling up their campaign game, why downloads don’t tell the whole story of a podcast’s success (and other important metrics to measure), Amazon’s Alexa hits the road, silly terms only podcasters would understand, and today’s random podcasting thought of the day.

Voxnest Audience Network, an international marketplace for in-audio advertising inventory, recently crunched its data of over 138 million downloads and streams to reveal the top five ad revenue-generating podcast genres. Number one? Sports, which should come as no surprise considering the rich history of radio sports shows. Culture takes second place, thanks to the inclusion of everyone’s favorite true-crime storytelling. Then, history, politics, and comedy, respectively. We wouldn’t be surprised if in this next year politics jumped to an even higher spot, given how popular podcasting has been in the 2020 election. Podchaser, a podcast database, reports that democratic candidates have appeared on 1,200 podcasts this summer alone. They’re not like regular candidates, they’re cool candidates.

Next up: contrary to what you may have heard, downloads are not the only measure of a podcast’s success. There are far more meaningful insights to pay attention to when it comes to building an audience, informing new content, and scoring ad placements. Dan Misener, Head of Audience Development at the podcast agency Pacific Content, writes, “Brands care about things like awareness, perception, and favorability — and those are impossible to measure through downloads alone.” To get the whole story, he suggests measuring how long people listen to each episode, distinguishing downloads...