View on GitHub

Podcast 2.0:

Marked-up-podcasts

Enhanced content for better podcasts

Revolutionize the Podcast Ecosystem

Why is this the state of the art in podcast advertising?

Medal of Honor interview on Art of Manliness podcast. Banner ad is for non-hormonal treatment for hot flashes

Why am I shown ads for post-menopause treatment while listening to a Medal of Honor recipient on The Art of Manliness? Really?

Come on, people. We can do better than that. Together.

What if instead I had a link to CPT Bucha's page on wikipedia? Or saw a more relevant ad from the sponsor for that show? (In this case another podcast called The Art of Charm.) What if I could donate to the show right there with a single touch, and without leaving the app?

Podcasting is coming into its own, but to keep it growing it needs:

  1. better ways to engage listeners so they can go beyond listening when they want to, and
  2. a more mature revenue model to support the higher production costs of great content.
In other words, podcasting now is a lot like the internet before the web came along.

What if podcasting today is where the web was 20 years ago?

One of the first banner ads, by AT&T: 'Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL'

Something's Happening Here

We are at the dawn of a revolution in podcasting. Serial has made that very clear, with over 5 million downloads and streams. New collaborative networks like Gimlet Media led by Alex Blumberg and Radiotopia led by Roman Mars are leading a growing trend of high production value storytelling podcasts in the spirit of Ira Glass and This American Life. More traditional podcasts -- typically some combination of news, interviews, panel discussions, and ports from broadcast radio -- are reaching wider audiences thanks to word of mouth as well as new, improved, and more convenient apps like Stitcher, Overcast, Instacast, and Apple's own Podcasts app.

Advertisers are taking notice. According to a recent Slate article, CPMs for Serial and the Gimlet podcasts Startup and Reply All can range from $25 to even $100 CPM -- 2x to 6x the cost of a YouTube ad. Pitches from the trusted voice of the host rather than a canned commercial keep the listeners attention, and innovative approaches like Gimlet Media's up-front, documentary-style spots add to that effect. Add to that the difficulty of skipping past the ads (compared to, say, DVR), and it makes sense that more and more sponsors are backing the medium.

Show Me the Money

Great podcasting costs money. Sponsored audio endorsements during the podcast are one way podcasts monetize, but there are others. In general, funds come from one of the following:

Podcast apps can monetize, too. But in almost all cases they do so via banner ads that often have little relevance to the podcast content. Content producers (shows) and content presenters (apps) have almost no synchronization on advertising.

So What's the Problem?

The problem with all of these revenue streams is a lack of immediacy. A lot of podcast listeners catch up on podcasts in the car, at the gym, doing chores, etc. They're not at their computer ready to enter credit card info. They may remember a website or brand well enough to google it, but they're likely to forget the promo code or /whatever to add at the end of it. And good luck remembering to "text 'foobar' to 859236" for the 20 minutes between when you hear the number and when you get out of the car.

It Doesn't Have to Be That Way

Podcast apps could present links, images, and advertisements relevant to the podcast content, and timed to appear at the appropriate point in the show. They could even save a linked article for later reading, fill out a ready-to-send donation text message, or store a listener's credit card information for easy donations and purchases.

None of these are hard to do, either from a technology or from a production standpoint. They haven't been done because they haven't been done. To make them happen it takes a few things:

That's what this site is all about. We can talk about these issues in a wiki, but first one more thing....

Get the Incentives Right

A lot of the impetus for this project came from listening to Dubner and Levitt talk on Freakanomics about the behavioral economics of a podcast pledge drive. Given that, we would be remiss to not "Think Like a Freak" and talk about players and incentives.

Help us make the world of podcasting better for everybody!

Check out the current draft of the proposed schema, and if it's missing anything (from a technical, business, listener, or any other perspective) report an issue to let us know

.

If you're a podcast producer, podcast app developer, advertiser, or anyone else involved in the podcast ecosystem and this sounds like a good idea to you, let me know. We'll be starting a list of supporters willing to adapt this schema so we can all listen to and engage with better podcasts.

For more info, email me at nickbenes@gmail.com.