• by kyle , Daisy Whitney , October 26, 2006

The industry has struggled to unlock itunes metrics, but Internet marketing firm Oneupweb says it has cracked the code. The company’s new “PodTractor” software can track all downloads of podcasts, including those from the iTunes service, says Lisa Wehr, CEO of Oneupweb. That’s a big breakthrough, since Apple is notoriously tight-lipped with data on downloads.

Wehr says her company can identify and report on iTunes activity and add the data to existing information on podcast downloads from blogs, Web sites, and other sources, providing clients a more complete picture of ROI.

“Online marketing is really driven by metrics,” Wehr says. “Everybody doing search marketing or banner ads is able to track results. Podcasting was the only thing you couldn’t do that with.”

The service launched in August. Wehr expects corporate clients to deploy it to track usage of their podcasts as marketing tools.