The Download on Podcasting project, a collaboration of DMR/Interactive and Texas A&M University, has released two reports, one of which positions the podcast business as poised to reach $100-million dollars in revenue.
In one of the papers, Monetization — A Race to $100,000,000 — marshals insights from industry leaders and metrics from Edison Research and ZenithOptimedia to outline revenue upside. the projection is not of the type favored by finance institutions, with year-by-year forecasts, and compound annual growth rates. Instead, the four-page paper is a summary of the challenges and opportunities powering the evolution of podcasting as an advertising business.
Steve Goldstein, Founder/CEO of Amplifi Media and a frequent contributor to RAIN News, is quoted in the whitepaper emphasizing the emerging in-car listening phenomenon accelerated by smart digital dashboards: “Podcasts and on-demand audio are going to become significantly more important because they [tech companies] are going to take the smartphone interface and iterate it into the automobile. That’s going to stress linear AM/FM broadcasters and force them to come up with content designed for the on-demand environment.”
Norm Pattiz, Founder/CEO of PodcastOne, notes the inherent relationship between podcasting and traditional radio, pointing out that his company is 30% owned by the Hubbard Radio group.
Rob Kass, VP of Product Leadership Digital Audio at Nielsen, better measurement is the key to revenue growth. Of course, Kass is not alone in pinpointing audience measurement as a problem in need of a solution, and predicts that a trusted third-party measurement system would unlock the big budgets of brand advertisers.
The other report (Listen Up — A Brief History of Podcasts) is a two-page primer on how podcasts started in 2003, with Larry Winer’s first use of RSS to distribute shows, and Ben Hammersley’s coinage of “podcasts” in 2004.
Both papers are available for free downloading HERE.