Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Podcast Advertising

I recently came a cross an interesting company/concept called Fruitcast, which is basically a web application that: 1) allows podcasters to generate revenue and 2) allows advertisers to easily advertise on podcasts. Sounds pretty cool, right?

In a nutshell, what Fruitcast does, is it automates the process of inserting ads into podcasts. They download a podcast's MP3 audio files, add the advertisements in on the fly, and then resend them to the podcast's subscribers. (This allows any advertiser to put their audio commercials on multiple podcasts within a few minutes and if you think that's cool - just wait until podcast video reaches critical mass!) Then, each time a podcast episode is downloaded by the subscriber, the advertiser is charged a predetermined amount, and a significant portion of that amount is credited to the podcaster. (Kinda reminds me of Revver for audio.) Anyway, in my humble opinion, this innovative idea is helping to make podcasting a viable medium for traditional ad campaigns by automating ad insertion, payments, and reporting for both podcasters and advertisers and I applaud them for their innovation...

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