Companies Offer Ways to Monetize Podcasts, RSS

By: Jay DeFoore The latest innovations in content delivery usually arrive well before any easy way to monetize them materializes. But new companies are looking to bridge that gap when it comes to podcasts and RSS, two of the fastest-growing forms of new media this year.

Mediaweek's Mike Shields reports on Podtrac, a brand new company offering third-party audience measurement as well as an ad-sales infrastructure for podcasts.

Podtrac CEO Mark McCrery tells Shields, "We want to be able to provide the same information [planners] use for media planning in podcasting."

The company's Web-based measurement tool allows individual podcasters to collect demographic and behavioral data from their listeners. "To help lend legitimacy to the product," Shields writes, "McCrery has partnered with media research leaders Mediamark Research Inc. and Taylor Nelson Sofres to develop an online survey that will allow podcasters to create a virtual media kit.

"Podtrac will even index its data against MRI's Survey of the American Consumer, expanding the amount of profile information available. But perhaps even more important than audience profiles will be Podtrac's ability to track hard usage numbers."

(For more on podcasts, see Wired's report on the recent Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference.)

Meanwhile, in what MediaPost calls a "further sign of momentum in the RSS advertising space," blog and RSS ad network Pheedo has launched an RSS analytics service.

"Similar to e-mail analytics, Pheedo's service looks at open and click-through rates for articles and ads that publishers send to online users via RSS," writes MediaPost's Wendy Davis.

Just last week, two other companies specializing in RSS unveiled new products. FeedBurner, which also offers RSS analytics, unveiled a new RSS ad network and signed a deal with the Houston Chronicle. And RSS ad network operator Feedster automated its sign-up process for publishers.