Perplexed Podcasters Join Forces to Compete for a Slice of the Pie

We’ve long been perplexed on the problem of online video content – who will buy, and for how much. (Answer: no one, and nothing.) Coming to terms with the fact that advertising is going to have to be the sugar daddy for streaming video, and it now looks like audio is in the same boat. No one will pay to receive podcasts. But marketers are thwarted from embracing podcasts because they have no way of tracking how many times their messages are being heard or changing outdated ads.

However, like a hungry herd of raptors from Jurassic Park, industry executives are reported to “have closed in on a solution in recent months” and may soon be able to provide consumers with “a much wider array of free audio (and video) content…if they can stand a little advertising to go along with it.”

Sure, why not? But the question now is not what and when, but where and how? iMediaConnection offered up some advice last year what was the best way to do it, but Susan Bratton has her own ideas: the mid-roll. “I have the ability to not just have a single ad in front and end, but a series of them that’ll tell the story.” Ooh. Ahh.

With technology that keeps the podcasts connected to the publishers’ site for better tracking, and the formation of a new industry group, the Association for Downloadable Media – with about 15 companies involved, from Apple to NPR – the future looks fairly good. Projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 154.4 percent to $327 million in 2010 by PQ Media’s Alternative Media Research, and to $400 million by 2011 by eMarketer, we’ll certainly be seeing more on this.

With search, video, social networks, blogs and streaming TV so prominent these days, though, we’re wondering along with RawVoice if “podcast advertising [is] doomed to play fifth fiddle online”.

In an attempt to crank up its popularity, we’ve done our own podcast. Check out CEO Bruce Carlisle’s podcast with Lisa Morgan on The Future of Advertising, in anticipation of his appearance at Online Market World in October. No-Ad!