I’ve long believed in the potential power of podcasting as a medium and as consumption currently stands at around 18% in the US, it’s starting to cross from niche to mainstream.
I’d predict that this is just the start of things though and the big leap will happen when our mobiles have integrated MP3 players that make subscribing simple and painless. Obviously, the iPhone does this already and other mobiles will follow. All this means the emergence of a major new medium accessible over the mobile, in addition to the mobile web.
What’s missing at the moment is an obvious solution to the business model. I’d be pretty confident in expecting this to be an ad-funded medium in the main, but from an advertiser perspective, it’s too hard to do at scale. The market is highly fragmented, meaning that hundreds of podcasters need to be contacted to create a potential campaign. And a further problem is geographic diversity – most advertisers aren’t interested in reaching the world, but specific markets. Even in cases where we have companies that are truly global, ad budgets are still normally held, and decisions made, locally. This makes it hard for podcasters to sell their wares.
So if you want to do for podcasting what AdMob has done for the mobile web and applications, this surely is a nice opportunity.
One of my favourite podcasters is Cameron Reilly, host of the great G’Day World and founder of The Podcast Network. He announced recently that he’s decided to make himself available to create corporate podcasts and I’d strongly suggest that you think about how you could make this work for your company – either for internal communication or to talk to customers or partners.
Of course, not everyone you need to speak to will want to hear from you via this medium, anymore than everyone will read emails you send them. But there’s plenty who will have a preference for audio comms and it could be a very strong addition to the other media you currently use.
So if you’re interested in the idea, I’d strongly recommend talking it over with Cam, who is not only one of the best podcasters in the business, but is an experienced business person and who, as an ex-Microsoftie, understands the tech world too.
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