I'm specifically talking about podvertising here. There's a natural tendency to bring what we know about radio advertising into podcasting and use that legacy information to generate expectations. It's natural, but in this case it's 100% wrong.
Brian Breslin over at WebImpresario has fallen into this line of thinking:
The basic premise of podcast advertising as I see it now is something similar to radio and tv ads, in which they are passive audiences that are reached by the thousands. Unlike radio and tv, where there is no way of selling your ads to an exact number of people (you have to hope the ads you bought months prior will reach as many as the network claims), podcasting offers precision download statistics, thus making a CPM (cost per thousand) model the ideal way to go.
Like many people, Brian recognizes that the podcast model has a distinct precision advantage over multi-directional airwaves spewing haphazardly around the nation, but the advantage goes far beyond the numbers.
Remember my three-legged dog? If I make sweaters for three-legged dogs, where am I going to get the best bang for my advertising buck? In a three-legged dog magazine, of course. Oh - there isn't one? How about a three-legged dog show? No?
How about a three-legged dog podcast?
The show might only have 200 listeners but since they're NOT passive listeners, it's a fair bet that all 200 have a vested interest in three-legged dogs and that's targetted advertising, my friend.
The real truth is that podvertising can offer precision in much more than just audience counting. It can surgically target niche markets.
Therefore it's worth much more than indiscriminant MSM advertising, no?
.jpg)
» Three Listeners. Good or Bad? from BizPodcasting
I wrote an entry a while ago about why I think podcast advertising should be worth more than main stream media advertising. Without rewriting the entry, my basic premise is that although podcast audiences are typically smaller than, say radio... [Read More]
Tracked on: May 25, 2006 8:46 AM | Permalink to Trackback