I’ve been working on a few new sponsorship deals for my podcasts recently and so I was really excited to point my newest client towards the recent draft standards put out by the ADM. The client in question is looking at trying out new ways of acquiring customers through non-traditional advertising. He had a lot of questions about what I mean by a download and how I measure my podcasts statistics.

I said, “Great questions and I’ll answer them for you. First, I am a member of the Association for Downloadable Media and they have just released the first draft of their advertising and measurement standards. You should take a moment to go over to their site and take a look at the standards and definitions they use to define these important concepts.”

His response to me was classic.

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As you are all no doubt aware, the Advertising Committee of the ADM has been constructing a list of standards that podcasters and media planners can agree upon, which should further the acceptance of podcasting in the eyes of ad agencies, advertisers, and key executives in the industry. I felt this was a task we could accomplish easily and I began the discussions with the committee with no trepidation. 

Several weeks into the process, back in January, Susan Bratton threw me a curveball that didn’t break and was coming directly for my head: “When you complete the ad standards, they’ll be reviewed by the ADM Board and turned over to an Advertising Counsel for review.”

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First Standards and Guidelines To Be Presented at ADM Forum at ad:tech San Francisco

Washington, DC (PR WEB) March 10, 2008 — The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) announced today the appointment of a special advertising agency liaison to the organization, along with the confirmation of a fourteen-member Ad Council, comprised of media professionals from leading interactive advertising agencies.

The council will act as a sounding board for the ADM committees, which are creating downloadable media advertising standards and guidelines. David Herscott, President of San Diego-based interactive agency MEA Digital, has been appointed the liaison between the Ad Council of media strategists and the ADM committee chairs.

The Association for Downloadable Media is committed to advancing its charter: creating a landscape favorable to the commercialization of portable media. The ADM’s focus includes revenue generation from advertising and sponsorships of audio and video podcasts, (aka vidcasts, or vlogs), and other digital content distributed via RSS, ATOM, peer-to-peer, mobile devices, downloads from Web sites and other platforms to come.

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The type of inventory that can be offered to advertisers is impacted by technology decisions made by publishers and platform developers. Client playback environments vary in capability, and while this introduces new advertising opportunities (advanced players may offer innovative new ad units), the lack of uniformity across platforms complicates the ad-supported media proposition.

Consider the evolution of the web browser as it pertains to the situation with media playback environments. The tremendous presentation flexibility of the browser as a standards-based platform provides a rich palette for creative expression on both the content and advertisement sides. The ubiquity of the Flash player and its cross-browser compatibility opens up even more creative possibilities.  This is an example of two different types of standards—one managed by a standards body (the W3C) and the other a de facto standard (Flash as a widely adopted rich client browser extension).  Early days in the browser wars featured debates over standards compliance versus innovation.  While the numbers show that Microsoft won the browser battle (for now, at least), adherence to standards has also won. Will standards develop around video playback environments to allow all participants in the content publication ecosystem to optimize their efforts? 

Today, publishers have a tradeoff to consider.  They may be able to obtain a high value from innovative, engaging ad units that creatively deliver the advertiser’s message, or better target the desired audience, but possibly at the expense of broad reach.  In a browser environment, this might not be much of a tradeoff. Thanks to a standards-based presentation layer, highly innovative ad types can be delivered to most all viewers.  But as digital media consumption moves beyond the browser, the lowest common denominator comes into play, and the lack of standards constrains the type of ads that are universally applicable. Over time, we may see standards emerge in non-browser playback environments, and this will lead to innovation built on top of those standards.  Today, however, the advertising value calculation has to take into consideration the capabilities of all the environments the publisher wishes to target, and the complexity associated with a client-specific publication process to support client-specific ad units and ad delivery methods.

I’ve been reading the intensive debate this last week in the Yahoo ADM group, and now it’s my turn to chime in.

Some 25 years ago, I was part of the birth of another new media industry — cable TV. I helped start two cable TV companies and then consulted to many of the giants here in Denver. I have applied alot of the lessons-learned to starting my own podcast business; it’s almost identical.

When cable started, consumers subscribed to cable not because of new
content but because of improved reception to local and network TV. Cable was the iPod of that generation — creating convenience for accessing their favorite progamming. The first cable-only networks to
launch were super-stations like WTBS and WGN and then later CNN and
ESPN that were “ad-supported.” To pay the freight of carriage, the
industry struggled to define standards so traditional TV advertisers
would be able to understand and buy niche cable channels more easily.
The NCTA and CTAM were born to help set technical (for insertions)
advertising standards and make it easier for agencies and marketers to
buy cable. Sound familiar?

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The ADM is busily preparing to present our 1.0 version of Advertising and Sponsorship Standards and Guidelines for Traffic Measurement to get 30-day public feedback from the ADM members and greater industry at our upcoming event, 9 am - 11:45 am PST in San Francisco at the ad:tech Expo.

ad:tech is the leading conference for digital marketers and agencies who focus on emerging media. They are hosting a morning of ADM programming. In three sessions, we will present the latest numbers in podcasting/vidcasting and downloadable media, case studies of successful programs, new ad units around which our industry can standardize and guidelines for audience traffic measurement.

We currently seek panelists for these sessions. If you are an extraordinary speaker who can talk about numbers, case studies, ad standards and audience measurement, please send an email to susan at personal life media.

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A new super-thin Apple notebook computer was not the only sexy thing to come out of MacWorld. ADM held its all-member committee working group, and what could be more attractive than progress towards infusing our industry with copious ad purchases?

Thanks to Kiptronic and Porter Novelli for hosting the meeting in San Francisco and New York City respectively, and for Blog Talk Radio to connecting the dots through conference and chat. The hour was packed with reports and ideas. There was a lot worth covering, but I want to lay out the two biggest initiatives on our near-term plate.

Ad Units - (part of the Ad Standards Committee)

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From a recent letter from the AAAA’s to it’s members, copied to the ADM:

New Advertising Media Associations Formed

As more new and emerging media seek to become advertising-supported, relevant media trade associations are forming to standardize creative ad units and metrics and set other guidelines. AAAA works closely with many of these trade associations to develop industry-supported guidelines.

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I just tripped across the Custom Content Conference being held this March in New Orleans. It is targeted at brand managers and ad folks who may be considering creating their own serialized web content or new media/social media channels. I thought I’d mention a few of the companies who have already ventured in to this arena, and hopefully you may have some more to add to the list.

Whole Foods has been doing this for about a year with both audio and video podcasts, all of which are produced using in-house talent. Scott Simons, Regional Marketing Director, hosts the Secret Ingredient show. There has been discussion on the Yahoo Videoblogging List about this show and the opportunities to also integrate both freelance produced content as well as user-generated content. Word on the street is that Whole Food is not interested, preferring to control the show in-house. It’s a full service blog-based site, with comments accepted and RSS. Visitors can manually download the flash version of the episode, though that is not playable on most MP3 devices.

American Express last year launched LX.tv which is a combination traditional web site and video blog, using the “new” part of the media and not so much the “social” part of the media. It is Flash-based, which makes the site a bit slow for my tastes, but does allow the designers to create a very rich, urban mood and feel. They use freelance contributors and the episodes focus on restaurants (AMEX merchants) and celebrity/social life. You can get an RSS feed, and in their grab the embed code for each episode, but the flash programming makes that part very cumbersome and the interface is elusive unless you know what the little icons represent. Viewer comments are not accepted.

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Here is a great post by  Patrysha Korchinski outlining multiple ways an advertiser can create their ad to insert into podcasts.  This is written for audio podcasts, but since many shows are audio only, this is helpful advice.

As an association and an industry, we need to remove the barriers to entry. This includes “creative” production.  If you sell audio ads in your show(s), I suggest incorporating something like this into your media kit to outline how easy it can be to create an ad in your show.