Podcast ads: silence is not golden

A few months ago, there was a lot of noise about podcast advertising.  Podtrac was auctioning commercial time; Rocketboom got $40,000 for a week's run of spots, Podbridge, and others, announced themselves in business to sell ad time.

Podtrac's sale may not be going too well. The company's not talked about it in almost three months.  Kiptronic announced its service to insert commercials into podcasts in January, too.  Since then, radio silence.  Even Rocketboom which got a bid of $40,000 for a week's worth of commercials hasn't done much more with sponsors.  There's not even a link on it's "About" page to inquire about ads. Except for Podshow's recent flight with GoDaddy.com, promoting Web domain sales, the podosphere's been mostly a commercial-free zone. 

Which is unfortunate.  Could it be big media still don't get it?

Arguably, one out of four of the millions of blog readers listens to a podcast.  This is a takeaway from Henry Copeland's unscientific survey of blog readers for his advertising company, Blogads.com. 

Almost three out of four said they "never" listen to podcasts.  But almost 25% said they do listen.  Almost 1 out of 5 said they hear as many as three podcasts a week. (A few said they listen to more than 25.)

Disappointing?  Not to Dana Gardner, a technology industry analyst.  Since it takes some effort to catch a podcast, and some time to listen to it, Gardner says these listeners are motivated and marketable.

Podcasting is a powerful and selective channel.  "You get to those with a thirst to know more.  They want to hear more.  What a great way to cut through the chaff," Gardner thinks.

Clearly the analyst is inspired by John Wanamaker, who said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." 

Gardner thinks Wannamaker would have loved podcasts.  The analyst said, "I kind of like the idea of reaching only 25% of a potential audience as long as it's the right 25%."

Comments

[Jordon Harbinger]

Agreed. It's so difficult to find interested sponsors. I host a podcast with 100,000 monthly downloads (and growing) in a very targeted demographic and I still can't seem to find too many advertisers. It's really hard to fathom.

-Jordon
pickuppodcast.com

[David]

Unfortunately as a group, podcasters, like bloggers, uploaders to youtube, and participants in other niche Internet activities, are so enamored of their own medium, they have trouble seeing the forest for the trees...

Podcasting is just one of the available media in our furiously turbulent media landscape (in which TV and and Radio are, however besieged, still the reigning champs.) It'll be a long time before podcasts, which are ostensibly the time-shifting of radio, can compete with the original for immediacy and reach.

When, if ever, podcasts become the "lean-back", or at least low-effort medium that marks mass media, maybe then you'll see some real money and real sponsors behind it.

Until then, podcasting competes with a computer's every other use, most of which, like surfing the net, reading email, playing a video game, even watching a webcast, are a lot simpler for the average bear than finding, downloading, and making time to listen to a podcast.( I have backed up pile of them myself.)

Bottom line: big medium, big money; little medium, little money.