Digital Podcast 41: Advertise on an iPod
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
In Digital Podcast 41, we connect with Wizzard Media’s CEO Chris Spencer to talk about podcast based advertising. As Chris puts it, how else can you advertise on an iPod.
We cover some of the history of Wizzard and how they have brought together some of the most popular podcast hosting companies such as Libsyn and SwitchPod, and built a podcast advertising network to go with it.
The show focuses on podcast based advertising and in particular we discuss the two advertising campaigns Wizzard is running for the US Navy.
The first of those ran on 20 podcasts with wide distribution and focused on recruitment. The current campaign is much more focused and is running on 7 podcasts. It focuses on recruiting medical personnel.
We get into some good detail about how the process works, what Wizzard does and what podcasters have to do to make it all work. We talk numbers and Chris tells us how different ads support different CPMs, depending upon their placement and whether they are audio or video. Videos commands the highest CPMs running $5-7 to $20-35 depending upon whether it’s a pre-roll or a mid-roll. Audio runs at lower CPMs that range from $3-5 to $15-25 depending upon placement.
Chris explains how the revenue share works. The advertising agencies get their 15% off the top and then Wizzard and the podcasters split the rest 50-50. Wizzard pays the sales force and covers the costs of setting up and running the campaign.
Wizzard published that they supported over one billion downloads last year from the over 8,500 podcasts that use their hosting services. Some have questioned how that could be, so we ask Chris to help us verify those numbers and to understand how 8,500 podcasts produce so many downloads. Chris explains how they count downloads and filter out the spiders and bots. He says that there are some blockbuster podcasts that do really high volumes and just as in other media forms there is a long tail of podcasters, so looking at mean based average per podcast just does not make sense. It’s the old 80-20 rule once again. Chris also clarifies that some recent problems with reporting to podcasters has nothing to do with how the count their download figure.
Chris ends the show by providing some tips for podcasters - The one to remember most is that if you think you want to advertise in your podcast someday, start tagging them now so that ad inserts are easy to do and you don’t have to go back and re-edit your catalog.
It’s good to see organizations like Wizzard taking up the flag and promoting podcasting. Wizzard along with a few others is taking the risk to build the platforms that we need to scale the downloadable media business. We wish them well on their mission to help marketers advertise on an iPod (or a Zune for you Zune fans.)
Technorati Tags: Wizzard Media, podcast advertising, podcast hosting, downloadable media
I just checked Google analytics for the daily stats at Digital Podcast and I saw the biggest one time increase in daily visitors and page views. Digital Podcast’s traffic jumped up by 80% on Christmas day. I looked at the distribution of search terms for some anomaly, but it wasn’t there. Search terms remained consistent in their distribution. 
I also think that Christmas day has probably become the biggest day ever for the music industry thanks to iTunes cards. I know for sure that’s the case in my home as my daughter spent her $30 iTunes gift cards before noon and my son spent his by 4pm. That’s the first time either of them has bought music online and it didn’t take long.
