Annual Study on Podcasting Use in the US

A few weeks ago we reported the first results of the annual Arbitron-Edison Media Research study on Podcasting use in the US. More results have now been published and are available here (pdf).

Its principle findings:

- Awareness of podcasting has stabilized. 37% had ever heard of podcasting, the same percentage as in 2007.

- The audience for both audio and video podcasts has grown considerably since last year. Americans indicating that they have ever downloaded and listened to an audio podcast grew from 13% to 18%, while video podcast consumption grew from 11% to 16%.

- Podcast listeners enjoy additional listening opportunities. The time spent listening to all forms of online audio for podcast listeners is approximately 90 minutes longer per week than it is for other online audio consumers. The portability of podcasts has enabled new contexts and environments for listening to downloadable audio.

- Podcast consumers are extremely attractive advertising targets, though difficult to reach via traditional interruption models. Podcast users are far more likely to have attained at least a college degree, and are also more likely to live in households earning in excess of $75,000 per year, than Americans who have not consumed podcasts. Furthermore, Americans who have watched or listened to a podcast are more frequent online shoppers and spend more money online than other Americans. Podcast listeners and viewers are also far more likely to block pop-up ads, SPAM, and use non-traditional means to view television.

- Podcast consumers are heavily involved with social networking. Over a quarter of persons 12+ who have ever consumed an audio/video podcast have a profile on MySpace, and the percentage of podcast consumers with profiles on other social networking sites is significantly higher than the percentage of non-podcast consumers. Podcast consumers also spend markedly more time on the Internet every day than the average American.

Studies: Podcast Ad Recall Rates Impressive

Advertising during podcasts has been thrust into the limelight, thanks to recently released data from a series of ad effectiveness studies.

Podcast audiences are loyal to their regular hosts and pay attention to the advertisers that support their favorite shows, according to online and podcast show network, Podtrac and TNS.

Podcasts attract niche audiences that are more receptive to the carefully targeted brands being advertised or that are sponsoring their favorite shows. So much so, the average unaided ad recall among Podtrac’s respondents was 68%. Podtrac’s CEO Mark McCrery says this is “considerably higher… than in other offline and online media.” He’s not wrong. Industry benchmarks currently put unaided recall for ads in streaming video at just 21%, mobile ads 20% and television 10%.

Some experts believe that ad recall might not be such a viable measurement of an ad's effectiveness. However, Podtrac's studies showed a "73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product which is an indication of successful targeting, the unique relationship audience members have with the hosts of today’s online shows, and their ability to quickly move audiences from awareness to consideration to purchase,” said Velvet Beard, Podtrac’s vice president of products.

So what of the future of podcasting? According to eMarketer analyst Paul Verna in his report “Podcast Audience: Seeking Riches in Niches”, the podcasting audience is set to rise 251% to 65 million in 2012. The same goes for spending which will he predicts will rise from last year’s $165 million to $435 million in the next four years.


Courtesy of Helen Leggatt - Bizreport.com

From the Pentagon to the Weather Bureau, the U.S. Government is podcasting

Don’t have time to catch the morning weather forecast? If you live in the United States. the National Weather Service might have a solution. Get your weather to go in a podcast. People living in the Baltimore-Washington region can already do that. The Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington regional office in Sterling, Va., started making daily forecasts available about a year ago as a way to experiment with the technology, said Steve Listemaa, an information technology officer in the regional office. “It’s an easier way to get our information out there,” he said.

So far, only three Weather Service offices — Sterling; El Paso, Texas; and Anchorage, Alaska —make weather podcasts available, but those examples are indicative of various agencies’ efforts to explore how they can adapt podcast technology to disseminate information about services or events.

USA.gov lists a range of government podcast topics here. One of the first agencies to move into podcasting was the Defense Department. It began offering audio downloads of programs on the Pentagon Channel — in spring 2005. The channel offers news and documentaries, among other programs. Since then, more than 7.1 million podcasts have been downloaded, said Michael Winnaker, a marketing coordinator for the channel.

Brian Natwick, general manager of the Pentagon Channel, said he got the idea during a trip to Afghanistan in 2005 with the military. As he boarded an aircraft, he noticed about 80 percent of the soldiers on board had whipped out their iPods. “It just kind of hit me that this is another distribution technique that we have to add to our model,” Natwick said.

The podcasts are an easy and inexpensive way to reach deployed troops, Natwick said. “We’re pushing voting right now,” Natwick said. “Overseas voting is really important to us.”

There are about a dozen Pentagon Channel video and audio programs available as podcasts. Among the most popular are daily news roundups and “RECON,” a monthly documentary series on topics such as operations and military history.

This month’s series is about preparing for war at the Joint Readiness Training Center. Also popular is “Fit for Duty,” a half-hour exercise program that offers resistance and strength training and pilates.

The Agriculture Department’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) will launch its first podcast this week and is planning two series: One is targeted to consumers; and another, with information about safety inspections, is meant to reach plant owners, managers and employees. “Different people receive information in different ways,” FSIS spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said. “It’s kind of a no-hassle approach to getting information out there.”

The Federal Aviation Administration is also exploring podcasts as a way to communicate with air traffic controllers, FAA spokeswoman Tammy Jones said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relies on podcasts to reach some public health professionals and health care providers with updates about vaccination issues and news such as E. coli outbreaks, said Fred Smith, a senior technologist with CDC’s Division of e-Health Marketing. He also has discussed the idea of cooperating with the State Department to provide podcasts targeted at overseas travelers. “The idea is to get this set up [so] that if there is a pandemic flu,” the government can more easily deliver vital information, Smith said.

The Coast Guard’s District 13 headquartered in Seattle is eyeing podcasting as a possible recruiting tool.

The office started to offer video podcasts on its Web site in January and has purchased helmet cameras for boat crew members to wear during missions and catch some of the action for later upload, said Paul Roszkowski, an assistant public affairs officer who helped coordinate the project. “What it allows them to do is to show a recruit, or a possible recruit, the different aspects of the job,” Roszkowski said. “It’s new ground for the government.”

Podcasting as Language Learning Tool for Children

A report on Apple's website looks at the use of podcasting in language teaching at ACS Egham International School in London. It teaches English as a foreign language to seven and eight year-old children.

“Learning a new language can be very frightening for a young child”, says Wendy Brandse, 2nd Grade Class Teacher at ACS Egham. “Making a podcast is something they can be successful at straight away. They can record and listen to themselves, and delete and re-record if there is a mistake. The child has control, and doesn’t feel exposed to the whole class, while the teacher can monitor more effectively how each child is doing”

The school has found that using podcasts as part of the teaching process has significantly boosted learning on the part of the pupils.

UNESCO Video Podcast Series

UNESCO just released a series of 9 video podcasts on "human rights, peace, tolerance and the fight against discrimination".

The videos were selected out of more than one hundred proposals from fifty countries submitted under a project on so called 'ICT-enhanced Public Service Broadcasting'. The podcasts have been released on DVD and through podcasting platforms.

This project aimed at putting ICTs, particularly new formats, at the service of content development on major societal and development issues.

“Public service content is not limited to news formats; it can be provided to people/users through different genres: documentary, fiction, TV magazines, animation, etc. In addition to these traditional audiovisual genres, the last few years have witnessed the emergence of new online formats and mobile distribution platforms that have had a tremendous impact on the type of content being generated and the profile of those generating it. Content produced for small mobile devices - commonly called podcasting - will entail different audiovisual choices than those we may apply to images conceived for a big screen”, said Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Communication and Information.

For more United Nations related issues, check out the Unicef and
'United Nations Yak' podcasts.

Podcasting Industry News

The podcasting network Wizzard Media announced that it has signed a content licensing and advertising agreement with YouTube.

As a YouTube content partner, Wizzard will have its own brand channel that will enable users to access video podcasts from the Wizzard Media Network. Through this agreement, YouTube will run ads against the shows in Wizzard’s YouTube channel. YouTube will share with Wizzard any ad revenue generated by the streamed Wizzard podcasts.

In addition to the ad revenue generated by increased audiences and advertising opportunities, the agreement with YouTube will also allow for content from the Wizzard Media Network to be incorporated into the Google AdSense Network. Wizzard will receive a share of revenues for certain ads displayed in connection with the playback of Wizzard Videos on the Google AdSense Network. Wizzard has opted to share a percentage of these revenues collected with the show’s creators.

In other news, Data Call Technologies, known for its Digital Signage technology, is acquiring Podcast Ready. Both companies are based in Houston.

Data Call said the acquisition will strengthen its business strategy focusing on emerging new markets for audio and video content. Podcast Ready has an existing infrastructure through which it can provide advertisers with content verification, enabling those advertisers to match their ads with content that is custom-tailored to specific demographics.

Podcast's technological capabilities integrate easily into Data Call's technology, products and services, said Jim Ammons, Data Call's chief executive officer. "Crossing the two technologies of Data Call's Digital Signage with PRI's podcasts technology and services contributes significantly to both entities ability to grow significantly. In the world of marketing, it's all about exposure," he said.

Podcast.com Announces the Top 10 Podcasts of 2007

Treedia Labs, a leading media aggregation and distribution company, announced today its Podcast.com "Top 10 Podcasts of the Year" Award for 2007. Podcast.com is the premier podcast destination that provides access to a growing list of over 43,000 curated and updated podcasts representing more than 175,000 hours of audio and video content. Podcast.com's unique solution for content consumers also presents an unsurpassed way for content providers to reach an audience that consumes podcasts via the Web, mobile phones and other multimedia devices.

Each year, Podcast.com tallies the total number of times a program has been accessed by consumers. In 2007, Podcast.com tracked over one million podcast access connections via the Podcast.com portal. The top 10 Podcasts represent those items that were accessed the most in 2007.

Podcast.com's Top 10 Podcasts of the Year Award recipients are:

1. World Soccer Daily Podcast - independent
2. CNN News Update - mainstream
3. ESPN Radio Daily Podcast - mainstream
4. Geek News Central Podcast - independent
5. BBC's Best of Today - mainstream
6. NOVA - PBS - mainstream
7. Slate Magazine Daily Podcast - mainstream
8. 60 Minutes Podcast - The Full Broadcast - mainstream
9. Face the Nation Podcast - mainstream
10. CNET News.com Daily Tech News Podcast - independent

This year's winners are enjoying the sizeable and growing audiences of downloadable media consumption. According to Edison Media Research data from 2007, more than 37 million podcasts were accessed by consumers in the US. According to Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR), a group dedicated to measuring radio audiences in the UK, podcast listening increased 40-percent, to 2.7 million people throughout the UK in 2007.

Podcasting as Recruiting Tool

A growing number of employers are beginning to use podcasts as recruitment advertising in an effort to standout and connect with the iPod generation now entering the workforce.

'Jobcasting' as it's called is a fairly new tool among corporate recruiters. Companies like Microsoft and Accenture were among the first to recognize the media as a marketing tool. Microsoft began theirs in March of 2005. You can hear several of them on the Microsoft Jobs Blog. Now a new service called 'Jobs in Pods' has become the most prominent site to hear jobcasts from employers in the US and Canada. In existence since March of 2007, the site now claims several prominent companies such as Intel Corporation, ZoomInfo.com, AT&T, Verizon Wireless among its clients.

What's unique about the service is that employers don't have to have any knowledge about actual podcasting. "We do all the work," says Chris Russell the founder of Jobs in Pods. "All the employer has to do is pick up the phone and answer the questions," he adds. Once the call is finished, the audio file is then published on Jobinpods.com and sites like Podcast.com, Blogorama and Podcast Alley. They even make their way onto a YouTube channel as videos where the audio is teamed with an image placeholder that details the topic of the podcast.

Jobcasts are also available for employers to place directly on their own corporate career site via the use of a widget or RSS feed.

Each jobcast is about 8-10 minutes long and typically discusses one job in detail or a particular career path within a department. Employers are given the questions ahead of time so they may prepare. Russell believes that podcasting is part of online recruiting's future. "Social media is taking over and employers can either embrace it or hide. Blogs, podcasts, video and social networks will soon become the candidates preferred choice of contact", he adds.

Courtesy of pr-usa.net

A Bottle of Red. A Bottle of White. And Podcasting.

The Australian wine industry has taken the hi-tech route in its communications strategy by taking the podcast path in order to educate people about its wines. And it seems to have worked. The first podcasts describing Australia's wine regions have been downloaded more than 10,000 times since being launched in April this year.

The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (Wine Australia) has benefited from this new media with 15 per cent of website traffic visiting the podcasts, claimed Lucy Anderson, Manager of International Marketing and Communications with the Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation (AWBC).

"Narrated by Australian wine writer Max Allen from his book Crush, Wine Australia's first series of podcasts have proved a popular addition to our marketing efforts," said Lucy, "There's nothing intimidating about it” she continued, “the use of technology in wine education makes it easy and fun for anyone that has an interest in wine and wants to learn. This is an innovation that will benefit all of the Australian wine industry as it quickly and easily facilitates knowledge transfer. "By enabling people to simply download a host of regional information and listen to it on their computer or iPod we've taken Australia's wine regions to the world. The popularity of the podcasts and flexibility of the medium has prompted us to launch a new varietal series and additional episodes of Crush. "There are now 47 episodes available with a new series of vodcasts showcasing the diversity of varietal wines from across Australia. Presented by Ben Glaetzer - one of Australia's own 'Regional Heroes' - Ben comments on how the region dictates the style of wine that ends up in your glass and then talks through the variation you might expect to find between enjoying a Coonawarra, Limestone Coast, Riverland or Margaret River Cabernet, for example."

To access the Wine Australia podcasts or multimedia files visit www.wineaustralia.com (Resources) or go to the iTunes music store and search for 'Wine Australia' or 'Regional Heroes' and subscribe for free

You Pull. I'll Push

In analyzing why users have failed to adopt mobile data applications, as well as what must happen for such adoption to take place, three factors get cited the most:

- The user experience must be simple

- Content must be compelling

- Low cost

This article argues that the common methods of delivering data services – mainly WAP Portal Pull - fail on all three counts and are the main factor behind low user uptake. Background download solutions, similar to RSS podcast push in the iPod/PC domain, address these factors by delivering full-length commercial-quality content directly to the handset without requiring any user activity, such as overnight. Content consumption is offline and immediate. Finally, as background delivery can take place when the network is empty, the cost of data delivery is zero allowing operators to launch affordable rich-media services.

It is common knowledge that the Pull mode of content discovery and consumption has failed for all but the die-hard users. Only the most committed users will spend five minute browsing countless WAP menus to download a ringtone or short video clip. Those that do will do so infrequently, when they have a sudden urge. For many, that urge will be a one time affair, ending after they see the bill – a few Euro, dollars or Pounds per transaction. When compelling content is easily available via the wireline internet for free, why should one have to struggle to find mediocre content, and pay dearly for it? Indeed, most people do not and will not.

Background download offers an alternative.

What is background download? Background download is the automatic delivery of content to the phone that occurs without the user having to do anything. The content is delivered to the user while the user is asleep (for example), and the content is ready to be consumed when and where the user wants, even in areas without network connectivity (such as in the subway on the way to work).

Podcasting on the iPod is a background download service. Users subscribe to specific podcasts, and each new episode is pushed to the user, to be listened to at the user's convenience on the PC or iPod.

Background download in the mobile world resolves the three major problems that WAP pull services suffer from. First, the user experience is compelling and in fact better than the iPod experience. With iPod, users must transfer each new podcast from the PC to the iPod, not a trivial thing to do each morning before heading off to work. With mobile background download, the user wakes up each morning with the latest content already on the mobile phone ready to be consumed without the need to connect to the network.

Second, the content delivered via background download can be full length podcasts or TV episodes, unlike the short content available in WAP portals. Why? Unlike background download, WAP pull has three problems: (1) content pulled by the user off a portal is delivered and consumed in real time. The user will not wait an hour or two to consume content while a large file is downloading. Satisfaction must be immediate. (2) Users want to consume content during the day, usually in congested areas. Mobile data networks are inefficient and the network cost of downloading large files in peak hours in congested areas is huge. The operator/carrier must charge high prices for such downloads. (3) The chances of a poor data connection during a large download is high, rendering the user experience poor.

These problems vanish with background download. Large files can be delivered overnight (or when the phone is in the user's pocket) with the user receiving a notification when the content is available. Consumption is immediate. Second, networks are empty at night so the network transmission cost is zero. Third, with the phone stationary, the chance of transmission interrupts are reduced, and with build-in retry mechanisms when failures occur, delivery can be assured.

Finally, given the efficiency of delivering data overnight on empty networks, the cost of background push services can be drastically reduced. Compare paying 2 Euro to download a one minute clip to paying five Euro a month for subscribing to five daily full-length podcasts as a major multi-national carrier/operator has just launched. Which would you prefer?

Apple has proven time and again that it can identify and capitalize on consumer trends with cool user-friendly goods. The iPod, which gave birth to podcasting, is just one example. The iPod has succeeded where all operators have failed, and that is in proving that people do want to carry their digital entertainment with them. Background delivery addresses the problems characteristic of most mobile services and has to potential in enabling rich-media services that are easy to use and inexpensive to enjoy.