Disruptive Conversations

 Yesterday, Business Week posted "The Next Big Ad Medium: Podcasts", with the subtitle "Advertisers will spend more than $400 million on podcasting by 2011, but they're still not sure who will be listening to them". It reports on research out of eMarketer about the growing amount of money to be spent on podcasts...  and provides some speculation about potential audio advertising services to be provided by Google.  It also references the launch of Podtrac, a service to connect podcasters and advertisers.  I don't know how real the numbers may or may not be, but certainly the reality is that more and more folks are moving to listening to podcasts versus commercial radio, so naturally the advertising will follow.  I have to think advertising will morph a bit to fit the medium, though.  Many people, myself included, turn to podcasts because they are sick of the amount of ads in commercial programs.  Certainly there will be some podcasts that replicate the traditional radio model... and some that have ads at the beginning and end... but I wonder how they'll work.  It may be that "sponsorships" work better.  We'll see.  Odds are that there will be many different models just as right now there are many different kinds of podcasts.  The fun part about the medium...