Podcast Ads are Highly Effective, But at Whose Cost?

Podtrac, TNS and eMarketer have put together a few reports indicating the effectiveness of podcast advertising relies on its longtail, as contrasted with the instant gratification methods more prevalent in other types of Internet based advertising like Google’s AdSense or YouTube’s overlay ads for video. The companies studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television In eMarketer’s analysis of the data, Doug Keith, president of Future Research Consulting was quoted as saying: “The data suggest audiences are paying close attention to show content and the embedded ads within them which greatly increased ad effectiveness in the studies. The high unaided ad recall figures are no doubt the results of a less cluttered environment.” t’s great data, and bodes well for the producers in the podcasting world looking to make their bones and their living producing audio and video content. As James Lewin at Podcasting News notes, though, since the data comes from a company that makes their living evangelizing podcasting, the data is a bit suspect. What makes it even more suspect is the fact that it comes from PodTrac, a monetization group that unfortunately has a reputation amongst the podcasting producers’ community for a lack of responsiveness to talent inquiries, a severe shortage of advertising opportunities, and a history of slow payments.