Finding Profits in Podcasting from Emerging Technology, page 47, dated August 29th 2005, and written by Laurie Sullivan. According to Ms. Sullivan podcasting has jumped onto the leading edge of pop culture, and quickly too. She goes on to say that Apple’s launching of the free software iTunes, had a lot to do with how quickly podcasting was propelled into the mainstream. Ms.Sullivan also talks about all the different businesses that are podcasting such as; Oracle, IBM, Purina, Absolut Spirits Company, KFI radio in Los Angeles, Purdue University and NASA. Paying for podcasting with advertising now rears its ugly head. Who is willing to buy spots on a podcast? How would a podcaster keep track of how many times a podcast was downloaded? The Yankee Group suggests that podcasters will charge $15 for 1000 clicks or downloads. In a European study done by Forrester Research 46% of 16- and 17-year-olds would consider paying for podcasts while only 33% of the teens surveyed said that they would accept advertising as a necessary evil to subsidize podcasting. An alternative to advertising could be banner ads on the websites where people download podcasts.
These thoughts had occurred to me also while I was reading about the new wave of podcasting that might the place of radio. Market researchers have ways of pinpointing the audience of a radio station. Some of the ways to find out if anyone is listening to a radio station include; call in contests, call in talk shows, mentioning to a business that you heard about them on the radio, and public response to a radio station’s live broadcast at a fair or a car dealership. But how would a podcaster find out who was listening so that ads could be targeted towards the listener? When it first started the Internet was free from ads, but as time went on, advertisers found ways to reach prospective buyers. Much of this is experimentation to see what works. If podcasting is to have a future, it must have advertising, there is no such thing as “free.” (344)
