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A Tool to Tally Podcast Listeners
Carl Bialik writes "The company Audible is making an effort to measure podcast audience, which could make the audio shows more attractive to advertisers. From the article: 'Currently in podcasts, "there's no measurability," says Matt Feinberg, a senior vice president for radio at Publicis Groupe SA's ZenithOptimedia. Advertisers have no idea if people are actually listening to podcasts, or if they're just downloading them and never playing them back, so there's no guidance for pricing the accompanying ads. "Prices -- people have been making them up," he says.' The service will cost podcasters: 'The company will charge three cents per downloaded podcast to report whether a downloader listened, and for how long. Audible will also offer tools that will stop the podcast from being emailed to others. It will charge five cents per download to track listening and attach the access restrictions. For half a cent per download, Audible will insert an ad relevant to the podcast.'"
Does that include spam and telemarketers, too?
I'm not entirely sure why they're not using 1 Download = 1 Listener, since Audible requires registration. The *best* thing about free podcasts to me is that they're in a format I can use on anything (MP3s). Any measuring method will require DRM and that's simply not something I'm willing to accept for free files, nor for Audible's overpriced content. The only reason I'd pay them for content is to *avoid* advertising, not so they can sell my ears.
Let me shout to the media: I'M PAYING FOR THE CONTENT I DON'T WANT ADS.
Unfortunately talk radio is missing out on this new technology entirely thanks to bumper music agreements with the RIAA and some unions. One of the few to get around it is the well known Rush Limbaugh, but he can do it largely because of his popularity.
Advertisers don't know if people look at their ads in magazines or newspapers, how many people actually look in the direction of their billboard, listen to their radio ad, or don't walk away when their TV commercial is on. Being able to see how many people download a podcast is probably more indicative of people that hear the ad compared to many other media.
They're just looking for MORE accurate data, but that's totally unnecessary. Ad agencies are very good at tracking usefulness of ad campaigns without specific numbers.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
If you want to know if people are actually paying attention to a new podcast, just reference the show notes and allow people to hit the show notes. You can then use the stats for that web page as a metric for advertisers. It is also a good place to put the logos/links for advertisers.
Another common approach would be to allow for a discount by providing a code for the discount. The code could be given during the podcast. The number of orders created with the discount code would be a good indicator of the success of the ad.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
One of the best features of reading rss feeds using your feed reader is the absence of ads. The few podcasts that I listen to are mostly about programming and virtually free of any 'product placements'. I think the popularity of the podcasts come from the fact that it allows people to share their thoughts with someone else, and maybe make a difference in the life of the listener (it may be a small difference, for example talking about a new technique for input filtering when using PHP). Very few people do podcasts to make money. If the podcasters that I listen to start putting in ads and start putting restrictions on whether I can forward it ahead or not, I will not think twice before dropping it.
ITunes fails to update the "listened to" flag if a podcast is transferred to an iPod manually. I never do an auto sync on any iPod (save the shuffle) and I'm always resetting that subscription flag on iTunes.