TWiT Host Leo Laporte Lands Major Advertising Deals September 15th, 2006 by Josh in Japan
Los Angeles KFI radio host Leo Laporte has launched a podcast network called TWiT.tv with three top brands to support the endeavor, which is separate from his role at Clear Channel Communications.Dell Computer, T-Mobile, and Visa have agreed to sponsor a series of podcasts running on the TWiT.tv network. This week, listeners will hear Visa ads in all podcasts for the month of September. Dell's ads begin running in podcast programs dubbed "This Week in Tech," "Security Now," and "Inside the Net."
The sponsors will run the ad campaigns as tests, shorter campaigns than Laporte would have liked, but the goal aims to help larger brands feel more comfortable with the medium. "If a few big advertisers and agencies try it they'll go 'Wow, this is more effective and efficient than anything we've done before'," he said. "I could be wrong, and they could come away saying that didn't work. But shoot for the stars, right."
Laporte, known for his expertise in tech, estimates the combined TWiT.tv network has more than 300,000 listeners. The site will offer 12 podcasts, varied in length. The Daily Giz Wiz, averaging 10 minutes, has about 20,000 listeners, while the flagship podcast, This Week in Tech, or TWiT, typically runs more than an hour.
The relationship between the podcaster and the audience proves important when looking for advertisers to support the program, said Mark McCrery, CEO and cofounder, Podtrac Inc., a podcast research, advertising and marketing firm that found advertisers for the TWiT.tv network. A survey conducted earlier this year, said 93 percent of the 15,189 TwiT.tv podcast listeners who completed the Podtrac survey earlier this year said they have listened to six or more TWiT podcasts. Ninety one percent said they always listen to the entire episode. Nine percent said they listen to each episode more than once.
The survey also gives insight into the amount TWiT listeners spend on electronics. "Representative of the U.S. population, most people spend about $100," McCrery said. The average spent on "computer software in the last 12 months was $350."
The data supporting the higher than average spend for electronics by TWiT listeners helped McCrery secure Dell, T-Mobile and Visa as advertisers.
Laporte had hoped to build the TWiT network strictly on donations from listeners. Although not opposed to advertising supported podcasts, he shunned the prospect of his having ad segments during the keynote at last year's Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, Calif.
"Last yea, at the keynote, I said don't worry the about money, just do it cause you love it," Laporte said. "That's still true. Most podcasters will not make more than enough to fund their bandwidth bills."
Although TWiT listeners are loyal contributors, donations didn't cover the costs to pay podcasters or support the network. Until now, volunteers had produced the shows.
Laporte also will keynote this year's Podcast and Portable Media Expo, held this year on Sept. 29 and 30, in Ontario, Calif. Topics will address advertising, finding the accurate numbers to approach advertisers, and Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store podcast dominance.
Who's listening to podcasts? A survey conducted by Forrester Research Inc. reveals the highest percentage of listeners range between 12- and 21-year olds. "In a survey of 67,000 households, 25 percent said they listen to podcasts, and 3 percent said they listen daily," said Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler.
Listen to the podcast here.
By Laurie Sullivan, TechWeb Technology News
Original Story: Techie Radio Host Launches Ad-Supported Podcast Programs
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Surfing the Internet for Spoken Words September 15th, 2006 by Josh in Japan
The Wall Street Journal has recently written an article detailing how advertisers are using searchable audio and video resources such as the Podzinger podcast directory to find compatible podcasts as business partners.
One of the charms of Internet video and audio is that Web sites featuring such offerings are largely free of the advertising cluttering television and radio. That may be about to change.Several small companies are starting to pitch advertising links using their software that will search every word spoken in Web-borne video soundtracks or Internet audio programs known as podcasts. The new technology, from companies including Podzinger Inc., TVEyes Inc. and Blinkx Inc., uses voice-recognition software to translate spoken words into text or audio-wave forms that can then be searched.
Identifying spoken content of audio and video clips results in more-relevant results when using a search engine to look for a particular item or topic. From there it is only a short step to also use the new technology to match related advertising with the search results -- much as Google Inc. and others do for searches of text-based material.
Major search portals, including Google, already offer searches for videocasts and audiocasts. But they search for text "tags" -- a few words of summary created by the producers of the content that may not fully describe all the content of the audio or video material.
The new technology makes it possible to take a searcher directly to the portion of a podcast or video where the speaker discusses specific topics of interest, such as mutual funds, cholesterol or Lindsay Lohan. On the side, the search page can display ads supplied by Google or Yahoo Inc. based on the search term, with the site that serves as the host for the search getting a cut of the ad revenue.
Podzinger, of Cambridge, Mass., which provides audio search on its site and for some partners, says the ability to find words in videos fills a huge gap. "Audio and video have been a black space that cannot be discovered by traditional search engines," says Alex Laats, Podzinger's chief executive.
Also, the traditional "tag" searches typically take the searcher to the beginning of what may be a very long audio or video interview, for example, without telling the searcher how to quickly hear or see what they want.
Software products from TVEyes take the Web surfer directly to the place in the video where the search word is spoken in podcasts available at Evoca.com, a podcast-hosting site based in Savannah, Ga. David Ives, president of TVEyes, Fairfield, Conn., says his company's PodScope software also will analyze advertising clips for key words that are relevant to a user's search so ads can be matched with search requests. He says Time Warner Inc.'s AOL is testing PodScope search podcasts.
With the spread of video and audio on the Internet, "The ability to target advertising to content is a major leap forward," says Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner Inc. He says it may spur "monetization of video."
Blinkx, of San Francisco, provides search technology to sites like FoxNews.com and Lycos.com. It also sees opportunities to sell search-related advertising for audio and video content related to travel and personal finance.
The new search technology captures only part of the Web's audio content. Podzinger says it is indexing for search some 300,000 regular podcasts, or 30% to 60% of the estimated 500,000 to one million podcasts available on the Internet.
Even the best speech-recognition technology has trouble understanding many speakers. People with accents or colds confuse it. Music in the background causes trouble. Suranga Chandratillake, founder and chief technology officer of Blinkx, says accuracy ranges from 60% on amateur videos to close to perfect for trained newscasters in professional studios.
Searches often return many irrelevant videos. For example, looking for "online investing" on Lycos, which uses Blinkx software, gets 19 results including, logically enough, an interview with a low-priced stock-trading firm but also, inexplicably, a BBC-TV clip about a nurse murdering elderly patients.
Still, the speech-recognition technology picks up many words and takes the searcher directly to the relevant portion of the recording. For example, if a Boston sports fan wants to find out if outspoken Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has ever opined on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, he can search the Internet archives of sports-talk station WEEI for "Schilling Brady" and find a link. Not surprisingly, Mr. Schilling thinks Mr. Brady is great: "I'm a huge Patriot fan for a lot of character reasons. Is there any doubt that Tom Brady is going to make the four guys he throws to good?" Mr. Schilling asks.
Bill Alfano, director of marketing for Entercom Inc., based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., says his company started using Podzinger last month at its Boston sports-talk station WEEI because "we were blown away by the technology."
He says it provides a way to let the 100,000 WEEI listeners who have registered at its Web site retrieve segments they might have missed. The station hasn't started to link ads on its Web site to the audio search capability, but Mr. Alfano thinks there is potential. "If Tom Brady says, 'I love to go to the Pro Bowl,' at the end we could run an ad for a trip to the Pro Bowl. People almost expect that," he says.
Mr. Ives of TVEyes says that on sites it has indexed, PodScope continuously looks ahead 30 seconds as a viewer watches a video. Then "it puts a contextually relevant clickable ad near the organic content," without interrupting the video the way a traditional video ad would. He says that "in early tests we find the click-through rates are a multiple" of clicks on random ads.
One believer in the technology is Leo LaPorte, who hosts radio shows and podcasts about technology. Mr. LaPorte, who produces 50 hours of programming a month, plans to start using Podzinger on his sites next week.
With the technology, he says, listeners who want to hear again what he said during a program about Fujifilm's Finepix digital camera, for example, can search and find it. Then the search engine can provide click-through ads from half a dozen photo stores with prices for the camera. "It's considered a service" by searchers, he says, and he can get $5 to $25 each time listeners click on ads after such searches.
Mr. LaPorte says he is hopeful that audio search will boost his revenue from "a couple of hundred thousand a year now to over $1 million a year. For a guy working in an attic, it's a viable business."
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
September 14, 2006; Page B3
Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com
original story: The Wall Street Journal
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PodShow launches UK branch and talent quest September 14th, 2006 by Steven Lewis
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Apple releases iTunes 7 September 13th, 2006 by Dismay
Apple announced the release of iTunes 7 with an emphasis on the iTunes Store now offering over 75 movies from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films.
“Here we go again! First music, then TV shows, and now movies,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a press release. “In less than one year we’ve grown from offering just five TV shows to offering over 220 TV shows, and we hope to do the same with movies. iTunes is selling over one million videos a week, and we hope to match this with movies in less than a year.”
The new version already has some positive reviews. An article at tuaw.com says, "The new viewing options for the individual library entries in the Sources list (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts and Radio) are really, really slick. As a clever touch, the List view, pictured below, shows album covers on the left (which iTunes can now grab automatically from the store for all your non-iTS purchases), with a list of each song, artist and album name (somewhat redundant) for each individual album."
Daily Tech (http://www.dailytech.com/) says, "One of the biggest features of the new iTunes software is that users will now be allowed to sync their iPods to different computers. As long as the user owns the account and authorization on the computers, their iPod will no longer be wiped."
Sources:
http://www.dailytech.com/
Apple Press Release
Walthrough iTunes 7
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Orchestral podcast September 12th, 2006 by Steven Lewis
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra claims to have become the first major ensemble in the world to launch a regular podcast.
Classical music podcasts from the UK have proved popular in the past. The BBC's Beethoven Experience attracted over a million downloads of Beethoven symphonies during the month-long experiment in 2005.
The podcast is to be hosted by Tommy Pearson, formerly a presenter on BBC Radio 3 -- the network's classical music station -- and will feature a number of segments in monthly magazine format.
The CBSO venture is further evidence of podcasting's appeal beyond the demographics stereotypically associated with headphones and portable music players.
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