• by Ken Liebeskind , March 26, 2002

TechTarget, an IT media company, reaches the enterprise Windows community with two websites, 10 email newsletters and a major conference. Last week it added Win2000Talk, a Web audio program modeled after public TV's Car Talk.

The show, which runs Thursdays at 1 p.m. for one hour at win2000talk.com, is a talk show for Windows geeks hosted by noted author and technical expert Roger Pence. Pence discusses Windows issues, interviews industry gurus and fields email questions from the audience. "We think they'll tune in every week because they're going to learn something about a subject they love, and they're going to have fun doing it," he says.

For TechTarget, the show represents another advertising opportunity. The audience will be drawn from a base of 200,000 registered users at Techtarget.com, its main site. There are 100 advertisers now, including Microsoft, Oracle and Sun, according to CEO Greg Strakosch. The first two advertisers for Win2000Talk are Net iQ and Commvault.

The advertisers will run 30-second radio spots, buying different sections of the show, including news and interviews.

The one-hour show will include 12 minutes of commercials, Strakosch says.

Since the show just started, the audience is small, about 5,000. But Strakosch expects it to attract 50,000 listeners within a year. That will make it more valuable for advertisers, who already buy online and email advertising from TechTarget. The company is promoting the show as a cross-media platform, helping advertisers reach Windows professionals at all phases of the buying cycle.

"This is the first time we've done an audio Web cast," he says, meaning it's the first time TechTarget has sold online radio ads.