OK - So where are you at?

[DaNutz]

I just recently stumbled on this forum and thought maybe I would see where you are at.

First, I am not the usual type of denizen of this forum.

I don't have a podcast :D

I don't have any desire to have a podcast :wink:

I do have an intrest in podcasts though and their future.

Why :?:

I am an advertiser 8)

I buy ads for various sites I own in all the usual places and have been branching out to the "un" usual places. Podcasting is 1 of those areas that is still so new, there are no real guidelines to go by.

I will tell you something. I see posts about how do I, where do I, ahat do I in regards to getting ads for your podcasts. Stealing a line from Nike(r) JUST DO IT>

You make it so hard for me and people like me to spend our money. You want to know how to get ads? Do what works. Visit banners sales site, text ads sales sites, media sales sites.

How to sell hasn't changed a bit. Where is the new, not the how.

The how is easy. Just tell us what we need to know to make an informed decision.

What WE (the UNIVERSAL we) need to know:

Market demographics - who is your audience. Age/income/geo target/politics/

Market Share - In this case, how many listeners, subscibers, downloads, etc.

Niche - Yes? No? If so what, if not what general category do you fit in.

Frequency - How often is a new cast put out. How long does the average cast last.

Legs - Is your cast time sensitive or will it have an audience 3 months from now.

Ad saturation - How much time and how many ads are your planning on injecting into your cast.

Cost - The BIGGIE. YOU have to price yourself according to the market and what you feel you need ( note: NEED, not WANT ). This is a new and for the most part untested and unproven market. You are not NBC (yet) so keep that in mind. I have seen (limited) podcast ad pricing that is insane.


Now take all that information that you created and make a nice little web page and put it on your site or create a .pdf file with all the information and make it available to us.

It's simple really. I spend hours every week looking for new ad venues and you would be surprised how hard people make it to buy what they are trying to sell.

I have recently bought a podcast sponsorship. Where? Ebay :shock:

Trust me, I don't want to have to shop ebay for ad space :roll:

But until you guys and gals get with it and make it easier for me and my ilke, we may have to.

There are more points that I am sure I overlooked but this was just meant to be a quickie post and I just thought I would toss my .025 cents in and try to give you a bit of insight from one of the people you are spending so much (wasted) time trying to find :)

[mesoed]

Awesome post here with some great information! Thanks for the pointers! :wink:

Cost - The BIGGIE. YOU have to price yourself according to the market and what you feel you need ( note: NEED, not WANT ). This is a new and for the most part untested and unproven market. You are not NBC (yet) so keep that in mind. I have seen (limited) podcast ad pricing that is insane.
I think this is the biggest issue many of us have with even starting to seek advertisers. Where do we start at? Very few people that do podcasting have even the slightest idea where to start with rates. $.001/listener? $.01/listener? $.10? $1? NO CLUE! I know a lot of it has to do with demographics, market share, etc. I was involved in broadcasting for 5 years and had no clue what we charged for advertising in our shows. Difference between the sales folks and production folks, I guess...

What would you expect to pay for a 15 sec spot in a daily, short-fuse, highly local and loyal group of listeners like mine? What is the typical rate in the blog realm? Other web sites? I have yet to see anyone offer even a ball-park idea of expected rates. Anyone care to share?

[jeffoest]

The other thing that advertisers will probably have to help podcasters with (and ultimately themselves) are better and more consistent tools to gather demographics and volume information. It absolutely makes NO sense to a single advertiser to get this information (all of it non-standard from podcast to podcast) from multiple, potentially hundreds of individual podcasts.

Advertising will come of age in podcasting when and only when a common architecture is developed that captures common numbers in a consistent way. Otherwise your just talking about onesy's and twosy's in a small volume world. That makes no economic sense what-so-ever and I have to be honest. Your 'advertising cred' is questionable to me as a result.

The only truly interesting question right now vis-a-vis the advertising/podcast world is what player in the chain will supply this architecture and what business model will drive it. Unless you are helping answer these questions, I think you are missing the boat.

All that said Jeff and Pat will never have advertising in our podcasts. It stands against the reasons we podcast and hopefully someday WILL become a marketing edge for us.

[Will-Casel]

Check out Coverville's media kit for a beautiful example of everything that you should supply to potential advertisers.

It includes everything mentioned above plus he clearly states what price he is charging.

http://www.tncmedia.com/CovervilleMediaKit.pdf

Will

[Will-Casel]

You can bid on the "World's #1 Podcast" on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5992102771&ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:US:1

Seems to be working for him.

[docsnavely]

I wonder how that media kit has done for him...... nice layout!

[bigee]

Apparently, pretty well. He is sponsored by iPodderX, Tower Records, and is part of a Yahoo! program of some sort.

When my show grows up, I want it to be just like Coverville.

[DaNutz]

What would you expect to pay for a 15 sec spot in a daily, short-fuse, highly local and loyal group of listeners like mine? What is the typical rate in the blog realm?

I wouldn't even hazard a guess. Sorry.

But it appears from the Coverville media kit they value each listener at just under 3 cents.

For an established podcast this seems reasonable, although on the high end of the scale, and on par with other forms of net ads when compared to the CPM model. It would depend on the time and coverage that was given.

I did get another media kit in my email. Very targeted to the market but also very new. They are probably pricing themselves to high for having no track record at $500 per exlusive show sponsorship but are more reasonable asking $15 for a 15 second voice over ad spot either leading the show or during. They are banking on the fact that they are going maybe a bit backwards in that they are already an established commercial radio show on the airwaves and are moving into podcasting to try to expand their markets.

[Fil]

Hi, first post here. New podcaster too, but to an already established fan base.

I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on our plan for advertising in our podcast. Instead of just selling exclusive sponsorship for each individual episode my current thoughts are offering a batch of four episodes in a package including:

- first mention of sponsorship in the initial welcome track.
- 15 second audio promo to be supplied by advertiser, or created by us for a one-off fee of $100 (promo recorded only to be used on our podcast) to be played approximately half way through podcast
- mention of sponsorship towards end of podcast during informal chat segment

There would be no other paid advertising within the podcast, thereby creating the exclusive element.

By extending the sponsorship to four episodes it gives the advertiser a chance to connect with the listeners and I believe four episodes is just the right amount to get the name known for the advertiser but short enough so that listeners don't get complacent in knowing who the advertiser will be.

Think of it like this. You see a 30 second advert on TV. You forget it about it when the next advert comes on if it's not a spectacular advert. Then think about a programme on TV that is sponsored. Football on Sky Sports (UK) for example. Sponsored by Ford. Everyone remembers that, but no-one can remember the adverts between the breaks at half-time.

I'm interested in hearing peoples thoughts (and if you fancy have a listen to the test feed on the website or in iTunes library) on the ad policy. First episode goes live first or second week in September.

(I'll knock up a pdf and webpage based on the criteria you asked for at the top of this topic!)

[dc]

Interesting topic...

Let's not lie, we would all like to make some money from Podcasting if it was offered.

We professionally produce our podcast and obviously want to make money but the integrity of the show must remain. There are so many ways this can be done without pissing off your audience. However podcast producers must be realistic in their pricing. There is a real oppotunity for everyone as podcasting is still new and a great way for advertisers to hit specific demos.

The trouble that alot of us have is figuring out the subscriber system. I have my Feedburner chicklet but don't quite understand how it works (I've checked the site FAQs). I know I get people listening and many leave feedback but how do I work out exactly how many subscribers I have?

Can someone help me?

Thanks

dc
_____________________________________________
www.thenewstyle.net
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNewStyle

[Will-Casel]

Fil,
GrapeRadio.com uses a very similar model. They start of the show saying "Welcome to Grape Radio..." yada, yada, yada. "The sponsor for this show is..."
They then talk about the sponsor for 30 seconds or so. They won't mention the sponsor again until the end of the show. No flashy music or professional voiceover. Just the hosts mentioning the sponsor. I really like the way they do it. It seems less intrusive than a "commercial" spot.


dc,
Here is how I understand the subscriber stats:
The subscriber number is the total number of people that have checked your feed in the 24hr period from the moment you are looking at your stat page. The "chicklet" is only updated once a day at the end/beginning of a day, but gets its info from the same data.

For example, say for a fact I just started my podcast and I have 3 friends that subscribe to my feed. Two of my friends set their reader to check for a new show daily and the other sets his to check for new shows once every Sunday night. Then my Feedburner stats will show me with two subscribers on Monday-Saturday, but the number will go up to 3 on Sunday when my third friend checks the feed.

So, unfortunately, there is no way, currently, to accurately tell how many actual subscribers you have, but Feedburner does allow you to see how many readers check your feed.

Will

[jeffoest]

A simple clean way to guess-timate your subscribers from Feedburner (and, again, nobody's numbers are PERFECT but the advertiser can compare your feecburner numbers with others if they wish for a direct comparison) is to simply put your daily numbers into a spreadsheet and add a column for 'moving 7-day maximum'. 7 days works because internet volume cycles weekly (and some shows are weekly too). Maximum works best because of scenarios like the one Will-Casel shows above.

[Craig]

GrapeRadio.com uses a very similar model. They start of the show saying "Welcome to Grape Radio..." yada, yada, yada. "The sponsor for this show is..."
They then talk about the sponsor for 30 seconds or so. They won't mention the sponsor again until the end of the show. No flashy music or professional voiceover. Just the hosts mentioning the sponsor. I really like the way they do it. It seems less intrusive than a "commercial" spot.
And they're getting $0.25/listener per show (according to a recent Podcast Brothers show).

Craig

[DaNutz]

Well, the thread lives again ;)


And they're getting $0.25/listener per show (according to a recent Podcast Brothers show).

Well if this is the case:

#1 They have found an advertiser with far more $$$ than sense.
#2 The information is not accurate.
#3 See 1 and 2.

The Information Week article posted in a thread above is far more accurate and closer to what is currently being realized. I know that for a fact because it's what I am paying in many cases or less in others.


- 15 second audio promo to be supplied by advertiser, or created by us for a one-off fee of $100 (promo recorded only to be used on our podcast) to be played approximately half way through podcast

You may want to look at that, and the current market again.

I just paid far less than that for 30 second spots I own and can use forever and was provided 6 different music background mixes of each one.

A 60 second spot approached but did not reach that much. Scripting is adding another $20-50 for each. Again with all rights.

[Fil]

Cheers for the advice DaNutz. I've taken it on board.