• by kyle , Daisy Whitney , September 30, 2008

Susan Bratton kept hearing the same thing from advertisers when she pitched them on buying spots in her network of audio podcasts: Marketers wanted to carry the podcasts on their sites, too. "They wanted sticky, episodic content for their sites," she said.

So the CEO of podcast publisher Personal Life Media worked with technology provider Gigya to create a customizable widget that can include her company's podcasts. The widget lives on the advertiser's Web site, blog or social network.

Bratton rolled out the widgets in August with five marketers on board as initial partners. They include AccuQuote, CardScan, Oceanus Naturals, Sinclair Institute and Zen By Design. They are all advertisers on Personal Life Media podcasts and are each carrying a handful of Personal Life Media podcasts on their sites via the widgets. For those marketers, Personal Life Media strips out other ads, essentially creating a tailored feed of the podcasts. The brands pay an additional fee for this service.

But Bratton expects the greatest ROI from the widget program to come from distribution of her shows beyond the core iTunes subscribers. The 25 shows on her network garner more than 400,000 listeners each month. What's more, any Web user can grab and customize the widget code from Personal Life Media's site and include any podcasts they want in it.