Programing syndicator Westwood One conducted a webinar on podcasts this week, “The State of American Podcasting.”
Cumulus Media/Westwood One Chief Marketing Officer Pierre Bouvard was the host with a podcast professional panel of audioBoom Vice President Stuart Last; Director of Audio at Buzzfeed Jenna Weiss-Berman; Brendan McDonald, co-creator and executive producer of “WTF with Marc Maron.”
Some observations included McDonald’s on the effectiveness of advertising on popular programming compared to less popular programming. He said, “Podcasting is really ‘narrowcasting.’ We’re talking about shows with audiences that might not amount to gigantic numbers — even looking at standards of what is considered a successful podcast — but smaller numbers might still be a very high concentration of enthusiasts. You can do a very successful ad buy for that if you have a very specific product for those listeners.”
Weiss-Berman offered, “Cars … that’s the real opportunity here … if someone can figure out how to make podcasts more easily accessible in the car. If the technology improves there and there’s some way I can just press ‘play’ on my podcast app or if it’s somehow built into cars, I think you’ll see that numbers rise pretty dramatically.”
Westwood One has also been doing some research into podcasting and advertising, which it will release in an upcoming report, “State of American Podcasting Report.” It teases some findings at it its blog.
