• by Jonathan Blum , April 2, 2008

As podcasters proliferate, all these casts could end up leaving the view of millions of hooks in the digital ocean looking like one crowded, over-fished pier in a polluted Asbury Park estuary. However, an innovative advertising network built to accurately measure podcasting traffic is finding out who has the best bait.

Washington D.C.-based Podtrac is shipping its new TrueTrack networking measurement tool, which tracks pre-roll audio and video connected to Podcast content. The company founder Mark McCrery, who worked in the radio, TV and print divisions of the old Grey Advertising before starting several start-ups, lets marketers know exactly who's watching what Web clip and when. And his network offers an innovative 65/35 percent revenue split with publishers, who can use the service free to start. Podtrac gathers its information by inserting tracking software that measures not only how many times a clip was viewed, but also if it was stopped and started and how long the session lasted.

"Podcasting has to really be something that is easy for advertisers to both buy and measure," says Julia Price, Podtrac's head of sales. Hey, at least she's got a hook.