Why it pays to podcast

The word itself is something of a misnomer: you don't have to own an
iPod to listen to a podcast. In essence, a podcast is an audio or video
("vodcast") programme that can be downloaded from the internet on to a
computer or MP3 player.

The Ricky Gervais Podcast, based on the first series of The Office, last
year entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular podcast
ever, with 4.5 million downloads, prompting Gervais to switch the second
series to a paid-for model for which he charges 95p per episode. Blair
and Cameron, meanwhile, have both had interviews podcast by The Sun and
The Daily Telegraph respectively.

Gervais' success isn't the norm, but even though most podcasting gets
hundreds rather than millions of downloads, it is looking like it might
become a genuine medium. Radio companies have been quick to get
involved, making highlights of popular shows available as podcasts. And
newspaper publishers too have embraced the medium, creating content
specifically for a podcast audience.

It is the concept of audio on demand that is making podcasting so
popular.

As personal video recorders do for TV, podcasting enables people to
listen at a time that suits them.

Guy Ruddle is the podcast editor at The Telegraph - to date the only
person to hold that role at a UK national newspaper. He says consumers
like podcasts because of their convenience and flexibility. "Radio has
always been the most intimate medium, but this goes one step further,"
he adds. "You can take it with you and you can do other things while
you're listening. Podcasts have all the intimacy of radio with all the
flexibility of newspapers." Add to that the fact that podcasting is not
a particularly expensive thing to do and it's easy to see why media
owners are rushing to get involved.

While broadcast costs are minimal, production can be more expensive.

Unlike radio companies, newspapers don't have a ready stock of audio
content - they have to create their own. Both the Telegraph Group and
The Guardian have invested in podcast studios and The Guardian has hired
a radio production company to train its journalists in the basics of
scripting and microphone technique.

Publishers are now investigating various methods in an attempt to make
money out of the medium. Most podcasts are free, but some media owners
have started to charge for content. The London radio station LBC, for
example, charges £2.50 per month for podcasts of its full-length
programmes and estimates that it makes a 40 per cent profit on that. And
if all of the people that downloaded the first series of the Gervais
podcast also download the second series, the show could reap a
staggering £4.28 million in revenues. It's already at number three
in the iTunes podcast chart (see box).

Most publishers, however, feel that advertising or sponsorship is a
better route to take. Last month, The Guardian launched four new
podcasts backed by Volvo, in what the paper claims is the biggest UK
podcast sponsorship deal to date.

The Telegraph does not, as yet, run commercial messages during its
series of podcasts, but Ruddle says his personal view is that
sponsorship is the right way to go. "There is something very personal
about podcasting because it's downloaded and delivered straight into
people's ears, which means you are going straight into their space. In
that context, I think sponsorship is fine, but I have more concerns
about ads. It's possible we will need a new advertising model."

Other podcasters take a different view. Virgin Radio - the first UK
radio station to produce a daily podcast, in March 2005 - runs radio ads
early on in most of its podcasts. According to James Cridland, the
Virgin Radio director of digital media, advertisers have included
Mastercard, Orange and Bose, which used the space to promote its iPod
speakers.

"Probably the most interesting use of the slot was an ad from COI for
Special Constables," he says. "It was looking for people with spare time
to volunteer, so where better to advertise than on an iPod that is being
listened to during people's spare time?"

Because the cost to Virgin is low - most of its podcasts consist of
highlights of programmes such as Christian O'Connell's breakfast show -
this "podvertising", as the station has dubbed it, means its podcasting
is already in profit.

And Cridland agrees that the medium offers possibilities beyond the
traditional radio spot. "Podcasts are not governed by the same rules as
radio stations.

Product placement, for example, can be more overt, so, in the future, we
could consider things like incorporating advertising messages into the
podcasts themselves," he says.

Podcasting for newspapers

According to recent research from the Association of Online Publishers,
more than half of UK publishers plan to launch a podcast during the next
12 months, and 35 per cent are already podcasting. But is this just
fad-following, or are there solid business reasons for publishers to get
into the medium?

The Telegraph runs a daily news podcast featuring comment and analysis
of the day's stories, which is available for download from midnight
every day. It contains some recorded news from the paper itself plus
extra content such as interviews with Telegraph columnists or foreign
correspondents.

The paper also podcasts one-off shows around special events such as the
Budget. After the TV presenter Ben Fogle and the Olympic gold medallist
James Cracknell rowed across the Atlantic, The Telegraph published a
story in the paper and made a podcast of extended interviews.

"We decided that we have to deliver Telegraph journalism to people in
the ways that they want to consume it," Ruddle says. "There's also the
fact that most news stories have different elements that are best
communicated in different ways. With Fogle and Cracknell, the best way
for people to understand how they were feeling after the race was to
hear it in their own words rather than read it in print."

The Guardian's recent podcast launches, meanwhile, cover news, media,
politics and science. The news podcast is published at midday UK time,
so it is available to the paper's increasingly important US audience
first thing in the morning.

"Being online generally means that people who don't have access to the
paper can still see what The Guardian is all about," Neil McIntosh, the
assistant editor of Guardian Unlimited, says. "The iPod audience is also
mostly made up of young people, many of whom don't read newspapers, so
podcasts can also be a way of introducing people to the paper
itself."

Ruddle agrees that the value of podcasting for newspapers lies in its
ability to target different audiences. "It may mean that we keep people
reading The Telegraph or even that it sends people back to the paper,"
he says.

Podcasting for broadcasters

Virgin Radio now gets 110,000 downloads a month across its five
podcasts.

Most are highlights shows and some are even created automatically,
making them relatively cheap to produce.

The station has also recently launched a Best of the Guests podcast, its
first foray into content created specifically for podcast. The show
includes interviews from shows broadcast that week plus archive
material, much of which has never been heard before. It has also just
introduced software that means its podcasts can be downloaded directly
to Nokia phones as well as MP3 players.

As well as reaching new audiences, delivering radio "on demand" is
another obvious benefit for radio broadcasters. Sarah Prag, the senior
project manager in charge of podcasting at BBC Radio and Music
Interactive, says the BBC has explored podcasting as a way to distribute
content via a method that is in keeping with people's changing media
habits.

One of the pioneers in UK podcasting, the BBC launched its first foray
into the medium in May 2005, with a 20-programme trial. It has since
expanded that number to 50, all from existing BBC shows.

"For the past five years, we have had the BBC Radio Player, which lets
people listen to any show from the past seven days - but it's streamed
content, so they have to be at their computer," Prag says. "Podcasting
means you can liberate that content so people can take it with them and
have what they want, where and when they want it."

Many of the BBC's podcasts are highlights packages - broadcasters are
not allowed to podcast commercial music, because producers are concerned
about listeners clipping music tracks out of downloaded shows.

Of its 1.8 million downloads per month, the most popular is The Best of
Moyles weekly highlights show. But more surprisingly, the In Our Time
podcast from Radio 4 comes in high up the list.

"It's a 45-minute, highbrow show that you wouldn't necessarily expect to
appeal to an iPod audience," Prag says. "Some of our documentary
podcasts from the World Service are also popular, which challenges the
assumptions about MP3 usage."

Since Virgin's first podcast launched in March 2005, Cridland says the
station has gained a clearer idea of its audience profile via listener
feedback. "What's interesting is that, contrary to what you might
expect, not that many of the people we hear from are London commuters,"
he says. "Last week, we had a bus driver from Cheshire who listens to
the podcasts while driving his bus."

Podcasting for brands

Considering that its effectiveness and reach remain unproven,
advertisers have been relatively quick to embrace the possibilities of
podcasting - attracted, perhaps, by the "cool factor" such a new medium
offers.

Many brands are now choosing to make their ads available as videocasts,
some with a surprising degree of success. The Nike "joga bonito" film
that was shot in Brazil about the Brazilian approach to football, for
example, is currently at number four on the iTunes podcast chart (see
box).

Neil Christie, the managing director of Wieden & Kennedy, which created
the ad, says the decision to podcast it reflects a change in attitude at
the agency. "Our view is we have to stop interrupting the stuff that
people want to watch and start to become the stuff that people want to
watch," he says.

One of the attractions for brands is how inexpensive the medium is:
there are no media costs and creative costs only relate to extra content
produced.

"The fact that it is going out to people who have actively chosen to sit
and watch it is impossible to quantify in media terms," Christie
adds.

Some brands are choosing to go further and create content especially for
podcast. Cadbury Trebor Bassett has just signed the X Factor presenter
Kate Thornton to front a podcast talent contest for its Creme Egg
brand.

People will be asked to submit MP3 files of their performances and the
best of them will be broadcast in a series of podcasts. The Italian
lager brand Peroni has just launched its own football podcasts,
featuring Nancy Dell'Olio.

Channel 4 used podcasting in the run-up to the launch of its Road to
Guantanamo drama. The digital agency Holler used a podcast of an
extended trailer from the show along with a web-raiding initiative that
saw it seed messages about the show on 50 sites, which all linked to
channel4.com/guantanamo.

According to James Kirkham, a director at Holler, click-through rates to
the site and podcast ran at 15 per cent, compared with an industry
average of 1 per cent. "The podcast was downloaded more than 15,000
times in two weeks by an audience that is often difficult to target with
online advertising," he says. "One advantage for brands is the ability
to get a message out quickly: not only are podcasts quick to make, they
get a fast response. Almost half of all downloads tend to happen within
the first two days of release."

THE iTUNES PODCAST TOP 20
1. The Ricky Gervais Podcast (free)
2. The Best of Moyles (BBC Radio 1)
3. The Ricky Gervais Show Promocast (paid-for)
4. Nike football videocast - "joga bonito" ad
5. Scott Mills Daily (BBC Radio 1)
6. Jack Black's Nacho Libre Confessional
7. Pete Tong's Fast Trax
8. Start the Week (BBC Radio 4)
9. Kerrang! Video Podcast (Kerrang!)
10. Happy Tree Friends (Mondo Media)
11. BBC Radio NewsPod (BBC)
12. Broadcasting House (BBC Radio 4)
13. The Xfm Sessions (Xfm)
14. Radio 1's Best of Unsigned (BBC Radio 1)
15. Sex Survey: Dr Cockney (www.doctorcockney.com)
16. Al Murray: Pub Landlord (Virgin Radio)
17. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Home Video)
18. In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
19. Drum and Bass Arena Podcast (breakbeat.co.uk)
20. Strong Bad Emails & More! (Homestarrunner.com)