This year, our third annual Podcast Consumer Revealed report (derived from the 2008 Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study) details significant gains in both audio and video podcast consumption. The audience for downloadable media is not only growing, but also represents a very attractive target for advertising. Our national data shows that more than one in five Americans have ever downloaded and watched/listened to a podcast, which breaks down further to 18% of Americans having ever listened to an audio podcast, and 16% having ever watched a video podcast. Those numbers are up sharply from last year’s figures, which were 13% and 11%, respectively. Nine percent of Americans 12+ have listened to an audio podcast in the past month, and those 23 million Americans are affluent, spend lots of time (and money!) online, and are increasingly more difficult to target with interruption advertising.

All of this represents good news for Podcast producers, and I encourage you to download the study and use it wherever you deem helpful. As a part of this release, I listed some implications/recommendations for podcast producers to consider, which I won’t recapitulate here. I will, however, touch on one of the findings of this study, and flip it on its head for a moment. I was unsurprised to see that many podcast consumers were also users of various social networking sites. For instance, about a quarter of Americans who have ever watched or listened to a podcast maintain their own profile page at Myspace. You may also find this data to be unremarkable, especially if you, too, are a relentless “profile-pruner” like I am. One can no doubt conclude from this that social networking sites and services may be an effective means to promote your podcast, especially when everyone “seems” to be on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Change occurs at the margin, and it would be unwise to ignore the increasing popularity and utility of the various social networking sites. However, as a researcher of that big ole’ middle of the bell curve, I am compelled to add here that this means that the vast majority of podcast users–and of Americans, period–do not maintain social networking profiles. This means that if you confine your marketing and promotional efforts to getting the word out on social networking sites, you are depriving your podcast of a potentially much greater audience. If you produce a podcast on restoring and customizing automobiles, for instance, the number of auto aficionados on Twitter is a rounding error compared to the vast size of this potential affinity group. If you are creating well-written, well-produced quality content on a topic or subject, you have as much right to the big fat middle of the tail as you do the long part, so think big–and market your content accordingly. I would love to see more and more partnerships between mass media broadcasters and independent content producers. You need each other. The ADM’s recent announcements on standards provide a common nomenclature for traditional and new media content providers alike to communicate with each other and with advertisers, so I encourage you to review them and get involved.

We at Edison are very proud of this research series (the main Arbitron/Edison study from which it is derived is now in its 16th iteration) and we hope it helps you in your quest to grab whatever part of that tail you are reaching for. I am happy to answer questions–grab me in Brooklyn (before I slink off to Peter Luger, that is!), contact me at our website, or follow me on Twitter (@webby2001). Good luck!

Tom Webster, VP Strategy and Marketing, Edison Media Research

We are currently seeking an ADM member to help assist me with managing the second core goal listed below. If you are knowledgeable with the challenges of calculating download measurements and would like to help, please contact me at measurement (at) downloadablemedia (period) org.

Core goals and objectives:

1. Create terminology, definitions and classifications of download measurement techniques. We will be interacting with the Terminology Standardization Committee.
2. Create formulas for calculating auditable download measurements of media.
3. Research methods to gather audience information and revenue reporting in the space.
4. Create procedures for accurately gathering audience demographics.

Beyond the core objectives, the Committee may also address the following objectives, if time allows.

• Make recommendations for the HTTP protocol to report completed downloads.
• Create an exportable file format, most likely in XML, that reports download statistics from video sharing web sites such as YouTube. The format would allow video content creators to easily export statistics from these sites to quickly combine for reporting total audience statistics.
• Recommend formulas for unifying the download measurement of different media formats for a specific episode. For example, video podcasts are typically distributed in multiple formats such as wmv or mp4. The formulas would allow for reporting of these downloads as a unified total.
• Research future media technologies that could add additional download measurement information such as play totals.

The ADM Committees have an opportunity to forge standards in the space that will give confidence to those who are unsure of the industry. If you are not an ADM member, I encourage you to join and help us mold the future of new media.

I believe participation is key. I would like to take this opportunity to invite interested ADM members to participate in the Measurement Committee by sending me a note via my E-mail: measurement [at] downloadablemedia [.] org.

The Measurement Committee will require a lot of research, analytical analysis and technical knowledge regarding the challenges of measuring media downloads. Even though I am eager to get as many ADM members involved in the process as possible, it is key that appointed committee members have the necessary skills and knowledge to achieve the Committee’s objectives. Once I receive the Charge of the Committee, the number of members and necessary skills will help me determine which ADM members will best serve on the committee. Following the ADM’s kick-off meeting on Monday, I will start a dialog with those who wish to participate to determine which members to appoint. I was just notified there will be no limit to the number of members on a committee. To allow for maximum participation, any ADM member may join the Measurement Committee.

Thanks everyone for the opportunity to serve as Chair of the Measurement Committee. I look forward to making history with everyone.