Who's Listening?
Auto advertisers are really jumping on the podcast advertising bandwagon. Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Volvo and more are testing the podcasting waters.
A majority of podcasts aren't going to be able to gain these kinds of advertisers. What you can do instead is target those who may listen to your podcast.
By evaluating the type of podcast you're releasing, you're able to know who your potential advertisers are at the same time. You'll also want to know how many listeners your podcast has. Advertisers will want to know how many people their ad could potentially reach before buying the space.
Podcasting Ad Rates
The value of a podcast is hard for both podcasters and advertisers to gage this early in the game. Audible's WordCast is providing a service that allows podcasters to see how many people are downloading your podcast to help you establish an advertising rate card.
The service charges the podcaster up to five and a half cents per podcast download. The info WordCast gathers helps the podcaster determine exactly who the listeners are and what's they're downloading.
Sponsorships Over Advertising
An alternative to podcast advertising is to find a sponsor for your podcast. Georgia-Pacific entered into a six-figure deal with a parenting podcast called Mommycast. A 15-year-old girl in Texas has sponsors for her EmoGirlTalk podcast that include an acne treatment product called Nature's Cure and the domain name provider GoDaddy.com.
Sponsorships generally have the podcaster mentioning the sponsor within the podcast. Don't underestimate the value of a sponsor. Many podcasters have found more success by getting a solid sponsor than selling podcast advertising space on a regular basis.
No matter how you pursue advertising for your podcast, just make sure your content doesn't suffer. Otherwise, you won't gain any new listeners and you'll lose the following you had, ultimately losing your advertisers in the process.