Podbridge, makers of a podcasting analytics package that tracks audience demographics, plays, and ad rotation, just closed an $8.5 million series B round. A new investor Sutter Hill Ventures led the round, with the original investors Mayfield and Worldview participating. We covered Podbridge in detail last March. Podbridge’s analytics tracker is an iTunes plug-in that gets downloaded and installed when a listener first downloads a Podbridge-enabled podcasts. When the plug-in is first installed, the listener is asked some demographic questions to help target ads. From then on, the plug-in-tracks a podcast’s online reach, frequency and playing time (anonymous), as well as the download count. Podbridge aims to have a plug-in for Windows Media Player as well. The overall idea is that more detailed information on your audience will lead to higher ad rates. Targeting ads for the podcast is not a one time deal, with static ads embedded in the podcast. Instead, Podbridge allows for the dynamic insertion of ads that can change on each play. In a deal made last June, Podbridge opened their podcast advertising slots to Ingenio’s advertising network. Podbridge’s clients include Sports Byline USA, the BBC, Military.com, and Forbes.com, who started using the service last September. iTunes has over 65,000 free podcasts and generated over 1 million subscriptions within two days of its 2005 launch. Research from a survey conducted last November by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found over 17 million people have downloaded podcasts, with 1.4 million saying they had heard or seen a podcast on a typical day (cited by MarketWatch). → Read More
Podbridge aims to bridge together podcasters and advertisers (as the name sort of suggests) and serve as an advertising network for audio advertising in podcasts. Podbridge is aiming for an exploding space with podcast growth being huge and advertising growth on the web and in rich media particularly being large. The service for publishers and advertisers they have recently launched allows them to track not just how many times their podcast has been downloaded, but how many times it has actually been listened to. It does this through software on the client side that the listener must install once the first time they listen to a Podbridge-wrapped podcast. This has long been a long problem for both parties and previously advertising in podcasts has been sold on estimated numbers based on the number of downloads. How Podbridge works is the publisher wraps their feed in Podbridge code that will allow it to sit in between the publisher and the listener. From the listeners perspective when they download the Podbridge add-in the first time they will be asked a few questions so that advertising can be better tailored to them (how users will react to this I am not sure). Podbridge can already point their advertisers to a number of big media podcasters which it counts as clients with publishers such as Sports Byline USA, the BBC, Military.com and a few others. Podbridge’s new and updated service is hoping to appeal to all podcasters who wish to get some income for their efforts. Podbridge makes it easy for the publisher to signup, as well as allowing them to know a lot more about who their listeners are. The business model is a straight-forward revenue share between Podbridge and the publishers. For advertisers, they are given a portal (much like Adsense) where they can specify to whom they wish to advertise to (demographic and geographic information) as well as other options such as daily budgets. They can then upload an MP3 advertisement and have it pushed out onto the Podbridge network of podcasts. Podbridge solves some previous problems that publishers and advertisers have had, while at the same time providing an easy way for publishers to integrate intelligent advertising into their podcasts while letting the technology that Podbridge has take care of what advertising to server to who. This space is really heating up and it will be interesting to see if → Read More
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