In other podcast-related news... Those consumer-centric media geniuses at Apple have come up with a new way to make the podcast format even more powerful and consumable. The following patent application surfaced this week at the USPTO:

CREATION, MANAGEMENT AND DELIVERY OF PERSONALIZED MEDIA ITEMS

Abstract

Improved techniques to facilitate generation, management and delivery of
personalized media items for users are disclosed. Users are able to
influence or control content within a media item being personalized. In
one embodiment, personalized media items are podcasts. Users are able to
influence or control the content in or with a podcast. In other words, a
podcast can be created in accordance with a user's needs or
specifications so that the content within a podcast is customized or
personalized for the user.

So what does that mean? In broad-strokes, it's a framework that will allow you to program your own podcast "mixes", by taking segments of your favourite podcast sources, and combining them together in the order you want. Like traditional podcasts, it will allow you to subscribe to your new mix so every day you could get your custom-blended mix of news, commentary, music, etc.. If you currently subscribe to 15 different podcasts, and you only want to hear specific segments from each one, combined in a single show, this will allow you to do just that. Obviously it's going to be designed to work perfectly with Apple's iTunes application and sync to the iPod and AppleTV devices.

The images below, from Apple's patent application, demonstrate how it might work:

Here's another way to look at it: you're hungry for pizza but you don't want to order a "Pepperoni" or "Vegetarian" pizza. You want it customised with your favourite toppings. Just the way YOU like it. In other words, Apple's idea is kinda like ordering a custom podcast pizza.

New technologies have a way of catching on rather slowly at first, before eventually hitting critical mass and taking off. This can definitely be said of podcasting. According to a recent eMarketer report, the numbers have reached an impressive benchmark of 18.5 million listeners in the US alone for 2007 (a 285% increase from 2006). More significantly, 6.5 million of those are considered "active podcast listeners", meaning they download on average more than 1 podcast per week. According to the eMarketer crystal ball, this market is destined to grow to a 65/25 million listener split over the next 5 years. To put those numbers in perspective, the number of US satellite radio subscribers is expected to grow to 30 million in 2015, from 13.6 million in 2007 (according to a summary of another eMarketer report on radio advertising's future).

What's really interesting about this latest report is the suggestion that the medium is still mainly accessed through a PC, rather than a mobile device like the iPod. Mitch Joel, a highly-regarded socialmedia marketing podcaster over at Six Pixels of Separation, has offered his own take on the eMarketer report, in which he hints that the number of podcast-listeners who use their PC as the primary play-back device may be as high as 70%. His rationale for why Podcasting is finally catching on: because once people try it, and subscribe to their favourite shows, it's hard to go back to traditional media (i.e. radio). Time-shifting, Mitch suggests, is the killer feature, along with the ability to pause/fast-forward/rewind. I agree, and while I think that radio will always have a place for live and up-to-the-minute information and discussion (news and talk radio, essentially), where the podcast format is really going to have an impact, and probably already has, is on the mix-tape and mix-CD scene. Seamless integration within iTunes makes the entire process of managing your podcast library a breeze. And this last point will, I suspect, eventually lead to greater mobile device usage over time as people realise they can download fresh mixes of music and play them back in their iPod-enabled cars and while working out - domains long-associated with mix-tapes and CD's.

One last note about podcasts and podcasting: less than three weeks from now, Ryerson University will play host to PodCamp Toronto 2008. This free event takes place over two days, Feb 23-24, and features dozens of information sessions and presentations covering a ton of podcast-related topics by some very respected individuals. More info is available at the Podcamp Blog.

So, are you into podcasts yet? And if not, what's holding you back?

This week I attended the IAB Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Intensive One-Day Course, here in Toronto. The day-long event was hosted by Mitch Joel, a digital media rockstar, principal of the Twist Image agency based in Montreal, and host of the Six Pixels Of Separation podcast.

The course was very thorough, very informative and it was presented in a very engaging and inspiring way by a man who not only "gets it", he lives and breathes it! The course covered the following main areas of the online landscape:

• RSS and Syndication (Google Reader, feeds)
• Tags and Tagging (Flikr, Del.icio.us, YouTube)
• Online Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Blogs and blogging (including Twitter)
• Podcasts
• User Generated Content (or Consumer Generated Content)
• Wikis (Wikipedia, PodCamp, etc.)
• Virtual Worlds (Second Life, Webkinz, Habo Hotel, etc.)

A big focus of the material was skewed towards determining ROI and identifying the metrics that can be used to gauge the effectiveness of these new media outlets. Obviously this is something that advertisers and agencies need to have in place before they they green-light any new project on one of these platforms, because the methods used in "traditional" online media (display media) don't necessarily apply. There was much discussion around how to accurately or more importantly effectively track the "performance" of a non-traditional campaign that may not be easy to quantify. This dilemma was particularly evident for the people in the crowd who were trying to sell the idea of doing a cutting-edge campaign to their client or management. The old rules are good for some things, but don't always work. For example, how do you measure the effectiveness or impact of having a Podcast or a Blog on your brand's value? Well, there are ways, but they may not all fall under the category of "scientific data". And sometimes the effects are not directly related to the cause. 

What may seem like a great idea at the time doesn't always work out. There were quite a few humerous examples of companies that tried to be "hip" by adopting the latest platform for their new marketing campaign, only to end up on the wrong end of the PR-backlash stick. These examples were not only amusing, but also very telling and served as great cautionary tales to those who might not otherwise do the research and think their ideas through to the potentially disastrous outcome. Case in point: the Walmart flog (fake blog). Mitch actually opened his presentation with a cartoon that lampooned the account executive who came up with that not-so brilliant idea.

The other message that was repeated over and over again, was that a lot of these things are so new that the long-term viability and marketing potential have not yet been proven, so there's quite a bit of "let's just put it out there and see what happens" going on. Ultimately, as with many technological innovations, the expression "only time will tell" is the closest we can come to predicting what will work and what won't. To be sure there will be winners and losers, and as with so many other things in life, the more you play, the more chances you have to win. The point to take home (or back to the office) was that these are pioneering times, and there will be casualties along the way, but these are also very exciting times full of opportunity and ripe for savvy and selective advertisers and marketers who are willing to take a chance.