«(...) The growth of the medium has been explosive ever since. Apple reported 1 million downloads of podcasts in the first 48 hours of the June 28 launch and now will only say that "millions and millions" of episodes of the 60,000-plus shows listed on the site are downloaded each month. By contrast, the largest podcast directory prior to the launch, Podcast Alley, listed just 5,400 shows as of June 28. (Podcast Alley now has more than 30,000 listings.) Six months after the iTunes 4.9 launch, the word "podcast" was named the new word of 2005 by the editors of The New Oxford American Dictionary. "Podcasts were popular around the office, so we wanted to create a better home for them," said Chris Bell, director of marketing for Apple's iTunes. "There really wasn't a truly easy-to-use experience until we created one (...).

Analysts are unfazed by the early returns. Walch said the next year will be "all about monetizing and the almighty buck," a belief the eMarketer study supported by predicting $150 million each year will be spent in advertising on podcasts by 2008. Thus far, Curry's PodShow network and another consortium, Podtrac, have each picked up a few network-wide advertisements from companies like GoDaddy.com, HBO and EarthLink, and one PodShow program, MommyCast, landed a $100,000 deal with the maker of Dixie brand paper products. Advertisers will continue to tread cautiously, Walch predicted, until someone devises a sensible means of tracking not just downloads but the portions of the files that are actually played. The only such programs out there, he said, amount to spyware, offering no incentive for listeners to allow them onto their computers."»

fonte: «Podcasting After ITunes», Wired News, Steve Friess, 02:00 AM Jun, 28, 2006