A new research paper from eMarketer trumpets the coming of the podcast as the next big online advertising opportunity.  To quote from eMarketer:

The audience for podcasts has shown meteoric growth, particularly in the US. It is variously projected to reach between 20 million and 80 million by 2010.

While advertising on podcasts is in its infancy, the nature of the audience and strong growth already have major brands investing in podcast-based promotion. More advertising and sponsorship will inevitably follow.

Mark Evans of the National Post, while considering starting his own podcast series, ponders the interesting relationship between trends and consulting companies/research firms:

With so much interest, there is a huge opportunity for these consulting firms to sell research to people who think they need to know what's happening. It should be pointed out the research firms (Forrester, Yankee Group, IDC, Gartner) played this game during the dot-com boom. While many of their projections failed to play out as expected at the time, many of their forecasts now materializing - albeit a few years later than what they envisioned.

Steve Rubel figures that 50 million listeners is enough to get the attention of advertisers.   While this is great, but according to eMarketer's projections that will be in 2010 (I'm guessing sooner, myself, maybe 2008).  So, what about now in 2006?  What is the opportunity here and now?

For advertisers it is certainly a wait and see approach, for marketers, though, getting into this area now, building your audience and style, is a good idea.  Since podcasting, like blogging, takes time to build up steam in the "mainstream", those who get in early and develop their online brands will be the ones to be able to leverage the advertising opportunities first.

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