Why’s Everyone So Ga-Ga over Pod-vertising?

Riddle me this: in a new report, eMarketer expects podcast advertising (aka pod-vertising) to grow to $400-million by 2011 from $80-million in 2006. Sure, it’s a drop in the overall bucket but $400-million will still be more a bigger market than blog-vertising, which is expected to be about $300-million in 2010, according to PQ Media.

I know lots of people who read blogs but very few people who listen to podcasts so it strikes me that blog-vertising has much greater growth potential. Maybe eMarketer has become overly enamored with the iPod and the idea that the size of the market (90 million units and counting) will quickly evolve into a fertile advertising platform. Of course, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that only 1% of people in the U.S. listen to podcasts on a regular basis.

For many advertisers, blogs should be a natural extension of their online advertising budgets as they become more comfortable with the format and more familiar with the players who offer high-quality content such as b5media…:) With blogs, you can measure the effectiveness of campaigns, you can try different formats and see your advertising in action. With podcasts, this is a much more challenging process, and I find it hard to believe advertisers, who are now using radio, will flock to podcasts.

Maybe I’m missing something that folks such as Robert Scoble envision. Maybe podcasts will be a viable advertising vehicle for advertisers. That said, I think blogs have way more advertising potential but for some reason, research firms such as eMarketer and PQ Media are missing the boat.

Update: Frank Barnako writes that eMarketer believes the growth of podcast advertising will be driven by Google, which will develop a podcast version of AdSense. Chip Griffin remains skeptical about market predictions in extremely young markets. BusinessWeek weighs into the fray today (Feb. 14) with a column that does little to challenge the $400-million prediction.

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