Marketers have an opportunity to feast on a new, increasing audience -- podcast listeners -- but do they have the stomach for it? The number of podcast listeners is already in the millions (nearly five million according to a 2005 Bridge Ratings report), and that number will only grow, and grow rapidly (the same report projects up to 75 million listeners by 2010). Taking advantage of this audience requires an appetite for niche marketing. And while some corporate marketers continue to consider mass media as a primary target, they will need to add podcasting to the menu even though it may be an acquired taste.
When I was growing up in Houston, we had basically three television stations: the NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates. People broke up into three groups to watch their chosen shows, and the next day they would talk about what they watched. Marketers and advertisers were able to take a shotgun approach, as each network appealed to a truly broad, mass audience. Then with the 1980’s cable explosion, audiences became more fragmented. The major networks began to lose audience to specialized stations like ESPN, MTV and channels dedicated to outdoor life, cooking and children's programming. As a result, marketers saw the opportunity to target their efforts more precisely. When people gathered the next day, the odds were that most -- if not all -- of them watched different shows the previous evening.
The growing popularity of podcasting points to groups of even more fragmented (read: smaller), but also more targeted, audiences. If 1:1 relationships are the "Holy Grail" of advertising, there are more and more of these opportunities emerging every day with podcasting. The problem is, most companies don't yet know to take advantage of it. They are blasting these audiences with the same shotgun they use for commercial television, not realizing that they are speaking to a focused group and need to focus their messages.
Podcasting offers marketers an opportunity to get extremely specific in their audience targeting. In a sense, podcasting is an a la carte buffet for marketers. They can go through their list of preferred demographics, interests, affiliations, et cetera and choose through which vehicles they might be able to reach these people. Ironically, one of the biggest obstacles is the inability of many large companies to view their marketing budget in terms of small pieces. Why spend $10,000 on a podcast, when they can spend much more to reach a broad audience through mass media?
The truth is, that hypothetical $10,000 is money well spent if, for example, you are a major athletic shoe manufacturer advertising on a podcast with an audience of 25,000 endurance runners. Multiply that investment by how many podcasts cater to your target audience-- and enlist a hot interactive ad agency that is new media-savvy to help you package your campaign. You will then have a more efficient campaign than you could ever imagine with the traditional broadcast media model.
Many advertisers and marketers who are taking advantage of podcasting are ahead of the curve, yet still struggling with the podcasting model. For example, the Geek News Central Podcast used to begin with a 90-second ad. I knew the ad was there and I'm glad they support the show, but I'd skip through it every time like many TiVo users do with television. In the end, I think the most successful marketers in podcasting are the ones who are going to help generate the content.
One of the early great examples of podcasting marketing is Disney. Surrounding the 2004 50th anniversary of Disneyland, they experimented with the still-new medium of podcasting, producing behind-the-scenes podcasts, interviews with original Mouseketeers, and other content they thought people would truly find informative or entertaining, rather than directly selling. Looking at examples such as these, one can see the days of simply inserting a traditional ad into a podcast passing quickly.
For example, look at Acura's innovative use of a sound engineer to comment on his involvement with Acura's surround sound. Talking about his past musical experiences is interesting content, with a subtle but not too-subtle pitch for the car.
Podcasts are like any other social community. People are going to gather in small like-minded groups, and these groups aren't millions and millions of people, but thousands and thousands or even dozens and dozens. But, being like-minded, these listeners of any specialized podcast might be more receptive to the same marketing message. The a la carte marketing opportunities podcasting offers are where the smart advertising dollars will be spent.
Russell Holliman is a Founder and the CEO of Podcast Ready. Holliman is a 17-year veteran of the information technology industry and a longstanding member of the podcast community. Always the experimenter, Holliman decided to turn his Treo into a podcast production device and started www.mobilepodcast.org to share his discoveries. Prior to launching Podcast Ready, Holliman served as the president of Infostructure Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in mobile device communications and enterprise integration. Previous to that, Holliman served as vice president of Devolve Corp, Inc, a firm specializing in project management and infrastructure design services.
