I’ve just read an interesting article on PC Pro, entitled ‘Podcasters beware: the marketeers are coming‘. From the article (my emphasis):

This year has been earmarked as the tipping point for the new age of online media, with blogs, podcasts and video podcasts beginning to challenge the dinosaurs of broadcasting. The supposed mass migration of people to the web will relieve traditional media firms of their viewers and listeners, putting pressure on the old-school rules of advertising.

But, unfortunately for those hoping to sidestep adverts, product placement and the hard sell, technology is giving with one hand, and taking with another.

The new business model needs to provide ads that aren’t as intrusive, delivering a more seamless experience that compels us to buy things directly rather than having to go to another website, or remember a URL.

So don’t think that by becoming a consumer of blogs, podcasts and video podcasts that you’ll evade marketeers: technology is helping them become even better at getting their message across.

It raises some interesting questions about what the future of advertising will be in this much hyped (but in my opinion not over-hyped) world of the new media. The article makes the point that it the old hard-sell, in your face ads will not work, and it is right. Advertisers need to radically rethink their strategies if they want to succeed.

The last time there was a new media was at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Although it all went to pot, there were some successes. One of the most notable is Google with AdWords. One of the few examples of successful monetisation of business models, it revolutionised the world of advertising, by provided advertisers with a win-win situation; great targeting, and if it doesn’t work, you don’t pay. Now obviously problems have emerged since with AdWords (such as click-fraud), but it still contains valuable lessons.

In the new blogs and podcasts it is eminently possible to monetise them, yet without downgrading their quality or irritating users. It will be made possible by having clever technology and clever people to implement it. A scenario; I have a podcast which I want to make money from. It is about great country walks available in my area, and I am happy to let someone pay me to put a 30 second clip advertsing their product, but only if it is relevant and interesting to my users. I use an online service to achieve this. The service scans my podcast, converting the speech into text and then semantically analysing the text so that it knows what the podcast is about. After comparing what the podcast is about with a list of the advertisers wanting to advertise in podcasts and finding a match, it automatically inserts the ad. Thus, in an episode that talks about rambles in Kent, a local landlord could place an advert about their pub that lies on the route.

We’re not at this stage yet. For the above to happen, technology needs to improve massively, but more importantly there needs to be widespread adoption of the new media outside the tech demographic. For this to work, someone needs to be publishing a podcast about walks in Kent, and a pub owner on the route of one of these walks has to want to advertise. The technology will probably get there (it usually does), but what is more uncertain is whether there will be widespread adoption. One of the biggest tests will be the imminent expansion of Digg into new areas of news; will ordinary people get excited enough for it to be a success. Only time will tell, but I certainly hope they will.