Podcast ads 3 : pay to download 0 - NMA
Published by on October 19th, 2006
News | Consumers unwilling to pay for podcasts - NMA
Yet another survey confirming that pay-to-download podcast services may be focusing on the minoity audience. These results are pretty much aligned with other surveys done earlier this year in both the US and Canada and should be carefully considered by anyone deciding how to monetise their podcast programme.
Personally I’ve never believed that pay-per-download for podcasts will work out. Even the Gervais podcast, now defunct, only pulled in around 180k downloads for the entire paid subscription, 12 episode series (as revealed by Mr. Gervais in a recent BBC Radio London interview). This compares to the reported half a million downloads per episode of the free first series. Whack my Bush, a UK, high quality satirical sketch show quoted in a recent issue of Podcast User Magazine (pdf) that it went from well in excess of 10k downloads when free, to well under 4k once it went to a subscription model. If even the Gervais-deity cannot manage it, then who can..?
As the choice and quality of freely available content grows, the perceived value of even the highest quality product available through paid subscription or per download, is inevitably going to be diluted. For paid podcasts to retain an audience, the content will need to be of a substantially higher quality and value to float to the top of the global audiences’ combined awareness. This may be possible with highly defined and niche business advice content (guru seminars etc.) or perhaps in subscription-only consumer areas with existing established and trusted brand identities, where there is already an accepting pay-for-information mentality (Which? magazine, for example).
So if you are playing the odds, an advertising-supported model looks like the better bet right now. But with so many listeners claiming to be leaving commercial radio because of the advertising saturation, how far can a podcast go with ad placement? The answer could be in endorsements. Endorsements can be injected into the show much more seamlessly compared to distinct advertisements. The higher the integration into the programme, the higher the acceptance of the audience. Combine this with careful choice of which brands to associate your product with - careful brand association will increase perception value of your brand too - and you just might be giving up that day job after all.
[tags]podcasting, subscription, advertising, endorsement, podshow[/tags]
