Advertising on Podcasts

Advertisers seem to have some difficulty embracing certain new technologies. For instance, while they finally seem to 'get' online ads, they are still wary of advertising on Hulu, and mostly ignore podcasting entirely. Sure, there are a handful of notable exceptions- Ford Sync, Audible, Citrix, Dog House Systems, etc- most companies seem to be totally oblivious as to how to use podcasting to advertise (and help the medium). Here's a few reasons why podcasting can be an excellent medium for advertising, and in many cases, superior to other forms of media.

Podcasts feel personal.
As much as I may enjoy Lost or the Office, I don't feel any connection to the characters, so if they were to try and pitch a product, I wouldn't care so much. With podcasts, you often end up feeling very connected with the hosts. The more you listen, the more you feel like you know X host, to the point where I feel like if I met certain hosts in town, I could strike up a conversation as if I had known them for years. For this reason, when Scott Johnson or Leo Laporte recommend a product, I'm very inclined to check it out. TV commercials for GoDaddy.com are totally unappealing to me, and yet when their services are explained on Extralife Radio, I check them out, and now feel they might be the best web hosting solution for me. This sort of advertising has been done on the radio for quite a while, with X host explaining their deep love of a product, and the advertiser trying to capitalize of the audience connection to the host. As good a technique as that may have proven, nothing makes you want to buy something like a group ad on TWiT for Audible. Listening to people you enjoy hearing talk about how awesome Audible is, and hearing their various recommendations to each other really makes you want to use that product- and that's the whole goal of advertising right?

Podcasts Cater to Specific Audiences
While most popular tv shows draw very diverse groups of viewers, podcast audiences are often very niche groups. For example, AppSlappy is a show about applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There are thousands of weekly listeners of this show, and it can be reasonably assumed that the audience A) users of the 2 devices mentioned, B) have an interest in the devices mentioned, or C) have an interest in the applications for the devices, whether or not they own one of them. Sure, there are exceptions, but those 3 descriptions probably fit upwards of 90% of the audience. Therefore, while advertising for a specific application or device might not make sense during a show like the Office, the ad would be a perfect fit for a show like Appslappy. Podcast advertising is like magazine advertising- you can assume something about the audience based on what they are choosing to consume. In this way podcast advertising could prove highly useful to companies.

Its cheap!
While the biggest shows might cost you a fair amount of money to advertise on (I assume that the TWiT network charges a pretty high price), the vast majority of podcasters will likely accept a very reasonable offer. I would bet that with the same money you could use to get a weeks worth of tv commercials you could advertise on tons of podcasts, for much longer.

People don't skip the ads
TV commercials have to try and shock you into paying attention (thats the reason commercials are so loud), and web advertising has to be incredibly invasive to get noticed (I'm looking at you annoying '24' ads on Gizmodo), but Podcast advertising doesn't have to do anything. The medium is not good for skipping ads, and listeners are likely to pay attention to them. You don't want to try and skip ahead in an audio file, you'll probably just waste time trying to find the exact spot that you were looking for. In addition, unless the ad is done by a 3rd party (in which case it is unmistakably different from the show), the listener is likely to go right ahead and listen through the ad. On TWiT, every ad is plainly announced, and yet I haven't skipped through one of them.

In Conclusion
Advertise on podcasts. If advertising companies had to tailor-make a medium in which to effectively communicate with people, podcasting would be pretty close to what they would create. People choose to listen to the show, they choose to listen to ads, and they will likely respond positively to the ads presented rather than apathetically. If you'll excuse me, I need to go purchase a blogcast hosting package through GoDaddy, while listening to a book through Audible.