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Can Podcasting Do Business?
Search tools, ads, listener analysis -- the medium may be growing up too fast
Media today. They grow up so fast. Take podcasts, for instance.
Latest evidence: The beta test of Podzinger.com, which performs keyword searches through transcribed audio feeds for thousands of podcasts. Podzinger, which is expected to launch in December, ultimately seeks to be a Google of multimedia search -- and sell Google-style text ads alongside search results -- but is honing its service first with podcasts. These, a Podzinger executive argues, need some sort of organizing principle. "Without relevant search results, it's a world before Google," says Alex Laats, a divisional president at Podzinger's Boston-based parent BBN Technologies.
Podzinger, Blinkx.com, Yahoo!, AOL and Audible now measure podcast listenership.
They all show a semi-medium rapidly reaching early adolescence. An infrastructure to enable commerce -- search, networks, measurement -- is sprouting. There are two reasons for this. One is the ubiquity of the iPod (almost 30 million units sold). The other is the speed these days with which players glom onto anything that glimmers, even faintly, like the Next Big Media Thing.
Still, some basic conceptual questions about the medium remain unsettled. Podcasting is, obviously, downloaded audio. But it's not clear if listeners will ultimately regard podcasts the way they do downloaded songs, in which case an ad is unwelcome, or as a form of radio, in which case it's acceptable. This being the 21st century, it's hard to imagine that podcast advertising will be universally rejected. But some ad executives still express caution. "We are trying to test what the tolerance [for advertising] is going to be," says Eric Blankfein, a senior vice-president at New York-based media buyer Horizon Media. Podcasting "is something quote-unquote pure. How do you mess it up with branding?"
We're finding out. Full article
posted by Unknown @ Friday, November 18, 2005,
