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Spending on podcast advertising, to reach a specific niche audience, could touch $400 million by 2011 after reaching $80 million in 2006.

Podcasting May Be Pod-Kaching In Five Years

Advertisers are slowly catching on to podcasts as marketing vehicles for their messages. Although the audience for them hasn't matched their hype, there's still an appeal for advertisers. That is due to the hyperfocus a podcast brings to its niche audience. The focus matches the audience's interest, otherwise they would not make the time investment in listening. eMarketer reported that the most heavily downloaded podcasts have an audience of under 50,000 people. Before dismissing that number, consider a business of any size that learns it can reach 50,000 people, directly, who have a specific interest in its niche. The conversion rates for a targeted message to that audience should have a chance at being greater than average. The report cited a bounding jump in podcast ad spending from 2005's $3.1 million to the 2006 $80 million figure. Looking forward from that, they optimistically forecast $400 million pouring into podcasting coffers from those marketers. But even eMarketer has some reservations about podcasting and its growth:

"Despite an incessant buzz about the medium, regular podcast users are still rare. As such, podcasting is a niche marketing channel; it may be the right niche for some marketers, but it's still a niche," says James Belcher, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Podcast Advertising report. "The fact that podcasts are supplemental ad channels for most marketers is not for lack of choice, however. Downloadable serialized short content format is increasingly available, and iPod sales are seemingly unstoppable."

That broad availability of so many options could be the barrier between podcasts and greater ad revenue. We're going to suggest the ones that do best at picking up more marketing dollars will be the ones that most successfully market themselves, to the audience, their peers, and advertisers. --- Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: