• by Shankar Gupta , February 21, 2006

Advertising on blogs and in podcasts is beginning to take off. Both formats have proliferated in the past year, but while there are a few analytics tools available for blogs, there was nothing comparable for podcasts, until now. Podtrac, which launched late last year, is providing third-party audience measurement and ad sales services for advertisers and publishers of podcasts.

Podtrac positions itself as a one-stop analytics shop for publishers of podcasts and advertisers. "We let advertisers know who's listening to which podcasts, and help them make media buys in those podcasts," says Podtrac CEO Mark McCrery. "One of the goals of Podtrac is to grow podcasts as a medium and connect advertisers and podcasters."

To get the relevant data, Podtrac uses software that sits on podcast publisher sites to track downloads and a survey, developed in conjunction with MediaMark, which queries podcast downloaders on their demographics and psychographics. By presstime, Podtrac said 20,000 surveys had been completed.

In addition to the survey and tracking system, Podtrac also created a rating system for podcasts, similar to the movie industry's content rating system. Podtrac's rating scale runs from "A" for all audiences to "X" for pornographic content.