(ACT) O negócio do podcast comercial

Via Washington Post (excertos de «Record labels not boarding podcast bandwagon», By Antony Bruno, Reuters, Sunday, April 2, 2006; 7:37 PM):

«A year ago podcasting was just a fad with a cool name. In recent weeks, the format has taken several steps toward becoming big business, but the major record labels are not eager to partner with the growing format. The audio blog phenomenon that began as free, grassroots rantings is being commercialized through advertising and subscription fees. (...) Media companies like National Public Radio (NPR) and Clear Channel now sell 10- to 30-second commercials for their podcasts, prompting the emergence of startups formed to insert ads into amateur podcasts whose creators are unable to sell the ads themselves. The trend has expanded into the mobile space. On March 27, Mobile podcasting service Pod2Mobile introduced an automated advertising program that inserts 20-second audio ads at the beginning of participating podcasts. The motivation is clear. A recent eMarketer report predicted that podcast advertising spending will increase from an estimated $80 million this year to $300 million by 2010. Venture capitalists at Sequoia Capital -- which participated in the $8.85 million funding of podcasting pioneer PodShow--say the market could grow to as much as $2 billion in the next five years. Of course, to reach these figures, podcasts need listeners. According to Bridge Research, there are about 9 million podcast listeners today. Conservative analyst projections peg that the audience will reach around 12 million in the United States alone by 2010»

(obrigado E.)

ACT a 7/4/06: Uma visão mais pessimista, a Kurt Hanson: «My belief is that podcasts — in the sense of short programs automatically downloaded overnight onto MP3 players — are merely a transitional phenomenon, until consumers' mobile devices are Internet-enabled. At that point, it will make sense to simply grab an on-demand stream of the program you're interested in»