Podcast advertising revenue is growing, but not as quickly as for other online media. An article today from eMarketer says that by 2011, podcast ad spending will grow to $43 million — but that amount comes to “less than 0.2% of [media services firm] ZenithOptimedia’s projection for the total online advertising space.”
ZenithOptimedia, a communications strategy company, forecasts that $28 million will be spent on podcast advertising in the United States this year. They expect it to grow at an increasing rate over the next several years. But the podcast advertising industry will not grow as quickly as, or to the magnitude of, other online media like paid search, display ads, or Internet radio.
Compared with terrestrial radio (which is losing ad money, year-to-year) with a forecast $14 billion in revenue, eMarketer says, “The appetite for podcasts is fairly light.”
“Much like blogging, podcasting is proving to be profitable to those who have premium content, but less so to everyday citizens who use the medium to reach long-tail audiences,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst in the article.
But should you consider this report bad news for podcasters, or the downloadable media industry?
And are the forecast $28 million in ad revenues this year going to prove elusive to “everyday citizens,” as eMarketer’s Verna suggests?
Edison Research says, in their latest report, “The Infinite Dial, 2009,” that the US podcast audience has grown by 22% since last year, expanding from 18% of all Americans in 2008 to 22% in 2009.
Combine steady, unrelenting audience growth with steady increases in advertising revenue, and, from our perspective, the future for the podcast industry looks pretty promising. Attention to traditional media is eroding, and attention to online media is growing. If you create online content, or work with folks who do, that’s good news.
The podcasting piece of the online ad revenue pie is small, but the pie (and the size of our “slice”) gets bigger each year. Even for those “everyday citizens” Verna talks about.
Maybe we are suffering from irrational exhuberance, but we see this steady growth as a really good thing.
What do you think?
