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The recent success of Ricky Gervais’s weekly “podcast” for the Guardian Unlimited and subsequent advertising by Channel 4 has shown that “podcasting” is more than just a passing fad. According to a national survey from independent research agency, BMRB, latest figures suggest that over 10% of the adult population have downloaded a podcast in the last 6 months and figures will continue to grow.
ADVERTISING
Many popular audio podcasts now sell advertising. Usually the podcast producer uses these adverts to create effective breaks between different segments of the podcast.
Adverts are usually short and similar in style to local radio advertising.
Selling advertising is a good way to fund or partly fund the podcast production.
With respect to video advertising, you should be aware that advertisers would view this with a certain degree of scepticism. Like Tivo and Sky+, it is possible to fast forward the adverts so they will have limited value to advertisers.
It is possible to overlay corporate identities and branding on a video presentation however, this will never generate as much revenue as a traditional advert.
Like any form of audio or video advertising, the revenue is generated is directly related to the popularity of the podcast and who is consuming it so; it may take some time to build any meaningful advertising revenue.
It is worth remembering that podcasts will raise the profile of an organisation and generate greater traffic to the website. There are also ways to use the podcast activity to increase search engine rankings for the web site.
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