Commentary

Like Two Peas in a Podcast

Eighteen months ago, if I'd asked you what an iPod is, like most people, you'd fumble around with a few guesses, perhaps cleverly thinking that the 'i' indicated something to do with the Internet, remembering that the 'i' prefix was once the ubiquitous indicator for all things Web.

Finally, though, you'd be forced to concede that you didn't know, maybe mumbling to yourself, but loud enough for me to hear, something about how you think you've heard of it but just can't remember.

Today, the iPod has entered the public consciousness to such a degree that it has become a proprietary eponym, like Xerox or Kleenex... or TiVo.

According to Apple Inc., there were 4.4 million iPods sold in 2004. Today, there are between 9 million and 10 million iPods on the streets.

Needless to say, the growing prevalence of the iPod and other forms of portable entertainment is causing both concern and excitement in the entertainment and media industries. The concern is more general, about what the portability and digital distribution of cultural content might portent for the industries that have traditionally controlled it, and excitement over what can be done with portable, digital content.

advertisement

advertisement

The latest enthusiasm for the bleeding edge set has been Podcasting. I don't think I need to explain what Podcasting is to this audience, but, briefly, Podcasts are essentially downloadable radio programs distributed through RSS that can be put onto a digital media music player. Some have equated them with blogs, which stands to reason if one is seeking to demonstrate that he, too, can slice his own fingers on the cutting edge.

But Podcasting is catching on, it seems. Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted a recent survey that, extrapolated, found that 6 million people say they have downloaded a podcast.

The growing podcast phenomenon has led some within the halls of advertising to start considering ways for advertisers to take advantage of it. Some of the possibilities advanced have been things like: audio spots, akin to radio; sponsorship and underwriting of programming; and podcasts created specifically by marketers (the equivalent, it seems, of branded entertainment.)

If any of this seems familiar to you, it should. These are the same things that have been proposed for streaming audio programming over the years (and look strangely like what has been advanced as possible blogvertising opportunities).

But streaming audio, as an advertising vehicle, is still in its nascent stage. Though podcasting is qualitatively different than streaming audio - streaming audio still has many of the same characteristics of radio - the challenges that face marketers in trying to make use of podcasting as an advertising vehicle are much the same.

What are those challenges? The form a message should take is certainly chief among them. Do you repurpose a radio spot, or do you snipe the programming with bookends? And how about audience verification? How does an advertiser know what audience is being reached? What about measurement? How do I determine the communication delivery in such a way that I can place a podcast advertising component in the context of the rest of my marketing effort?

These are questions that can be answered, but when I see that those questions have also been asked of streaming audio, a format that gets much wider use now than podcasting does, and yet they remain largely unanswered, I wonder: Are we prepared to divert our attentions to the next next thing already?

I'd love to hear from anyone out there with experience placing ads within streaming audio content, and am even more interested to learn of anything done in the way of making a marketing opportunity out of the podcast.

Though I think the podcast is a trend, I wonder if it will eventually become a fad.

Next story loading loading..