First, what are podcasts again?

Podcasts differ from traditional internet audio in two important ways. In the past, listeners have had to either tune in to web radio on a schedule, or they have had to actively download individual files from webpages. Podcasts are more flexible and much easier to get. They can be listened to at any time because a copy is on the listener's computer or portable music player, such as an Apple iPod and they are automatically delivered to subscribers, so no active downloading is required.

The Market

Mike Shields of MediaWeek points out that "despite some 90,000 podcasts available on the Web and close to 90 million iPods in the market, podcasting is universally thought of as a supplemental medium by advertisers. "

Growth Prospects

eMarketer analyst James Belcher suggests that much of the growth will come from Google. Yes, that's right, Google and their advertising platform.

The advertising system that Mr. Belcher predicts Google is building is in fact already in existence. It's called Google Audio Ads and has been running in 'private beta' mode for several months now.

It's reasonable to presume that the Google Audio Ads platform originally purchased from dMarc, and designed for traditional radio advertising sales can, and will evolve into an audio/video advertising platform to distribute ads to radio, television and the Internet.

The need is clear. The time is now.

For much of the past two years, many companies have made the attempt at connecting Big Business ( and their advertising agencies ) with podcasters. During that time, entire networks of podcasts to emerge, such as TWiT, PodTech on the audio side and Revision3 on the video side.

Despite advertising platforms flourishing in the blogging world, the most well-known is John Battelle's Federated Media, no one has successfully implemented a podcast ad marketplace.

What can we expect next?

Google is unlikely be remain silent on the subject forever. And like a bellwether, Google's actions will vibrate through the rest of the industry.

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