Eric Schwartzman | New Media and Social Media Communications

This is the speech that I gave at the ad:tech San Francisco conference today at 11:45am:

The introduction of radio transformed a global audience of readers into a global audience of listeners. Next, television became the dominant media channel, because it’s easier to watch, then it is to listen, and easier to listen then it is to read. Today, audiovisual communications are known to elicit increased retention and cognition among adult viewers, and ADD among children under the age of 2.

Prior to the release of RSS 2.0, which allows for the inclusion of an enclosure file such as an MP3 or MP4, over an RSS feed, distributing electronic media was restricted to those who could afford to buy time. To put the impact of this technology in context, consider the product of media as your attention. The more attention the media collects, the more inventory it has to sell to advertisers, which made the objective about reaching the widest audience.

As the media landscape fragmented, electronic media increased their revenues not by reaching the widest audience, but by reaching the most qualified or targeted audience. Outlets like The Golf Channel, the Food Network and Fox News cater to a niche audience.

But since the economics of broadcast media necessitate reaching the largest possible audience, electronic media — radio and television – were restricted almost exclusively to advertiser supported media.

Now, for the first time, practical, easy-to-use technologies, applications and services make it possible for anyone to leverage the power of the audio and video without a broadcast network infrastructure, and without buying a single minute of satellite time. A print publisher like the San Francisco Chronicle can extend their reach through itunes and yahoo! podcasts, citizen journalists can weigh in on the news of the day and educators can transcend time and space by making their lectures available in cyberspace.

With the introduction of audio and video podcasting, the distribution of electronic media becomes a cost-effective and efficient channel for individuals and organizations to engage and communicate with qualified audiences.

And as we witnessed earlier this year, Rocketboom, a popular video podcast that spoofs the news was able to sell its ad time for $40,000 for a one-week buy and according to a report by PQ Media that was just released this week, spending on Podcast advertising is projected to grow from $3.1 million in 2005 to $327 million by 2010. The pro-podcast viewpoint is backed up by an American Association of Advertising Agencies poll conducted late last year that found that marketing executives anticipate spending more on podcast than blog advertising in the future.

Feedburner, a service that distributes podcast feeds online recently announced that they are now managing feeds for 47,000 podcasts and facilitating delivery of 1.5 million episodes a day. Eighteen months ago, it was managing 6,000 feeds. Libsyn, another podcast hosting service, said 45 million people listened to and watched podcasts off the Libsyn network in the first quarter of 2006, a 200% increase from the same period in the previous year.

We promised we’d open up our podcasting playbooks here today and give you some real insight into how we’re all using podcasts to reach niche audience, so I’ll give you a brief over view of how I got into this area.

At iPressroom, we introduced integrated podcast hosting and RSS feed generation into our service in January 2005. But we needed a podcast program of some sort to demonstrate that functionality. So I decided I’d take responsibility for creating a podcast with the objective of (1) demonstrating our podcast hosting and syndication capabilities and (2) to attract listeners who might have I need for iPressroom through a lively, compelling discussion about the issues and challenges marketers and advertisers face, largely as a result of technological innovation.

So rather then develop creative and buy ads, we decided to try our hand producing and distributing our own editorial content. We’d incorporate our brand into the podcast through a 30-second sponsorship announcement placed at the intro of each new episode, but beyond that, the editorial content would be driven by the issues facing our industry, not our products or services.

To attract the right demographic, we decided we’d interview big name journalists from the mainstream media about their predictions for where we’re headed. After all, journalists talk to experts daily, so they’re in the know. But since people trust authority figures less than ever today, I’d also throw in interviews with influential bloggers and podcasters, to put regular people like you and me on the same playing field, to give listeners access to their peers who are embracing new media and putting it to work successfully for themselves, since the research says people trust their peers most of all.

The idea was to engage listeners in a compelling dialogue about the impact of new media on old media, and through that discourse, subtly introduce them to iPressroom, which can be used to solve many of the challenges discussed in the podcast.

To date, I have been fortunate enough to interview with Walt Mossberg, Heather Green, David Pogue, Ken Auletta, and many more, but oddly enough, it’s often those podcasts featuring other bloggers and podcasters that are the most downloaded. In fact, my episode featuring an interview with PodShow CEO Ron Bloom is among the most downloaded episodes.

Our podcast, titled On the Record…Online is without a doubt the single most effective and efficient advertising, marketing and PR program iPressroom has in place, and as a result we are currently engaged with brands and agencies to help them develop original podcast marketing initiatives.

And this is actually nothing new in the practice of PR, because we specialize in creating and distributing informative content. In fact, one common tactic for generating broadcast news coverage is to go out and produce a news segment, package it up, and send it directly to broadcasters nationwide. It’s called a video news release, or VNR for short, and they recently caused a ruckus because stations use them in their news casts without disclosing their source.

Two years ago dozens of TV stations aired an unedited VNR about Medicare commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services, with a publicist posing as a reporter, which sparked an outcry at the time, and prompted the Senate to take up legislation that would require government-produced news segments to carry disclaimers. But the watchdog’s attempt were unsuccessful. According to a story that ran yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, “TV Stations Still Can’t Resist Pre-Packaged Video News.”

Along comes the podcast, and now advertisers, marketers and PR professionals have a chance to straddle the fence that has long divided editorial from advertising content. Why produce and distribute a VNR to broadcasters when you can RSS enable it and send it directly to the public? In this case, you wear your bias on your sleeve, and are judged strictly by the value of your content. And believe me, if people don’t like what they see, you’ll know about it very quickly. But what’s interesting is the podcast effectively disintermediates the mainstream media by allowing you to connect directly with audiences with no third party editorial oversight.

In my podcast, I am the producer, the host and the advertiser, and as long as I don’t take advantage of my listeners attention by soap boxing my own products and services, they’ll listen to a 30-second sponsorship announcement in each new episode, and allow me the opportunity to raise my professional profile as a thought leader in the industry, which is something I had to get on a plane to do to be here today.

It’s funny because if you had to build a business case for being on this panel, no standardized metrics exist for the business value of this endeavor, but since it’s an accepted practice, it’s blessed with budget dollars. Podcasting, on the other hand, is new, and new media has to be proven.

So I invited this expert panel of podcasters to come here today to help better understand:

First – How to build a case for podcasting internally. We come to these conferences, drink each others kool aid, and then have to go back and sell the idea in internally. I’m sure we all wish we could take this panel with us to our meeting about podcasting with our clients and our superiors, but unfortunately, with the cost of oil at an all time high, the economics of air travel becomes more and more cost prohibitive each day.

And Second – Once there is buy off internally, how should we approach and integrate podcasting as a format strategically into our overall media plan? How do you introduce podcasting into your program? Should marketers be buying time in podcasts, creating their own podcasts, or both. What are the best practices, what works and what doesn’t. In the world of PR, we focus a good part our energy on generating editorial coverage for our clients. By producing our own editorial content, we’re getting the opportunity to think beyond the press release about how to create compelling, informative and informational programming that effectively draws our desired audience.

To help us sort through and examine the real opportunities podcasting affords advertisers and marketers, our experts come from various sides on the podosphere.

I’ll introduce them one by one, and I’ll ask that they limit their opening remarks to 7 minutes and we’ll segue into a Q & A.

Katie Kempner is the VP/Director of Communications at Crispin Porter + Bogusky / WebmasterRadio.fm, and host of “The Hook,” a podcast about the intersection of advertising and PR. In January 2004 while continuing to run the CP+B PR department, Katie joined MDC Partners, where she is responsible for media relations within the business press as well as the advertising and marketing press for the network.

Steve Gillmor is the host of Podshow’s Web radio programs The Gillmor Gang and Gillmor Daily, whose advertisers include Earthlink and AOL. Steve is also a ZDNet contributing editor and president of AttentionTrust.org. After stints as a contributing editor with InformationWeek Labs and as editor in chief of Enterprise Development magazine, and as editor in chief and editorial director for XML and Java Pro Magazines, he joined InfoWorld as test center director and columnist. Later, he wrote CRN’s Emerging Opp’s blog, and then became eWEEK OpEd columnist and contributing editor.

Tim Bourquin is founder and CEO of TNC New Media, Inc., an online media company that has developed, launched, and grown several advertising-supported podcasting sites. Among the portfolio is EnduranceRadio.com, whose advertisers include Gatorade and Fleet Feet Sports; SmallBusinessPodcast.com with content for entrepreneurs and TraderInterviews.com, a podcast site for online investors.

Kelly Wagman is the manager of customer relationship marketing at Juniper Networks. Kelly spearheads “Sound Off,” a podcast designed to galvanize the company’s customer base through an open dialogue between their employees and customers.