In many ways, podcasting has been the bastard-child of the user-generated content world – talked about but mostly unloved by the masses – while blogging and video-blogging have hogged the spotlight.

eMarketer, however, believes podcast advertising is poised to explode (relatively speaking). The research firm, which seems to be bullish about an awful lot of online markets (the New Forrester Research?) suggests U.S. podcasting ad spending will nearly triple to $435-million by 2012 from $165-million in 2007.

All things considered, it’s pretty impressive growth. Perhaps I should revive the Talking Tech podcast given this bullish environment.

eMarketer suggests advertisers will be seduced attracted by the growth of the podcasting audience to 65 million by 2012 – with 25 million being active users who listen to a podcast at least once a week. The audience growth will be driven by:

- Greater ease of consumption for podcast content
– Growing awareness of podcasting
– Terrestrial radio’s use and promotion of podcasting
– Increased penetration of portable players
– The evolution of smart phones and proliferation of affordable mobile data plans

Frankly, I don’t see (or hear) this kind of growth in the size of the ad market or audience. To me, podcasting will remain a second-tier UGC activity for a niche audience – mostly geeks – as opposed to a mainstream medium. Then again, I spent considerable time driving on the weekend, and commercial radio is mostly crap so perhaps podcasting could thrive if MP3 connectors become standard in new cars.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Podcasting

In theory, podcasts are an excellent idea. It’s like radio but better because they’re lots of content out there and it’s pretty easy to access what you want.

And while everyone loves the idea of a podcast and lots of people enthusiastically talk about making podcasts, it’s actually difficult to find a lot of people who admit to listening to them. Hands up, how many people out there listen to podcasts on a regular basis. I’d be surprised if more than a few people raised their hands.

If the paucity of podcast listeners is true, why is that? Podcasts should be popular because they’re easy to produce, which means they’re a huge variety of content available; they’re pretty easy to find and download, and listening to them on your computer or MP3 player is user-friendly. Hit play, and you’re good to go.

But in the scheme of things, podcasts have such a low profile. While podcasts struggle to gain momentum, blogs continue to boom, video-casts are becoming more popular as they get easier to make and access through places such as YouTube, and photo-sharing still has plenty of traction. You could argue that podcasts are the ugly-duckling on the user-generated content family.

Even though few people want to admit listening to podcasts, there are apparently lots of people apparently downloading them. According to ReadWriteWeb, Wizzard Media (which owns Libsyn, Switchpod and Blast Podcast) passed the one billion download barrier in 2007.

But as RWW points out, getting an accurate read on what this accomplishment really means given it’s difficult to tell how people consume podcasts after they are downloaded. For example, I’ve got a bunch of podcasts in my iTunes but only listening a very small number.

The other podcasting mystery if whether there is a business to be had. In other words, are advertisers gravitating to the medium at a time when they’re still, at best, dabbling with putting ads on blogs? While there are podcasts that attract sponsors, my sense is the vast majority of podcasts never even get a sniff of advertising revenue – and it’s not like there’s AdSense for podcasting if you are looking to make a few bucks on the side each month.

So, Leesa Barnes (one of Canada’s leading podcasters), what do you think? Is podcasting, in fact, alive and well?

Technorati Tags: Podcasting