Profits coming to Podcasting

March 22, 2005

Good news for podcasters. Podcasting has caught the attention of a major record label and tech company. Eric Rice from ericrice.com has secured Warner Brothers Records as a sponsor while Citrix Online will sponsor the Chris Pirillo show.

The Warner Brothers' sponsorship is set to launch March 24. Rice will incorporate music from ""The Used" latest tour. The band is under the Warner Brothers Reprise label. The podcast will include behind the scenes chaos, live jams from the tour bus and interviews with the band. The music/interviews become the advertising. It is a great combination of sponsorship and entertainment. This is significant step forward for a major label; reaching out to their listeners and encouraging them to share music. Hopefully, this sponsorship will start a conversation and other labels will create podcast safe music. We have been working closely with Warner Brothers to devise the best strategy that incorporates the music/interviews into a podcast while avoiding disrupting the normal flow of Eric's show. It is refreshing to see a record label that 'gets it' and is willing to take a chance in an unproven advertising medium. Hats off to 'The Used' for giving back to the fans.

The Citrix Online sponsorship of the Chris Pirillo show is also unique. It is basically product placement during the first ever interactive podcast for Chris Pirillo. His audience will be able to listen as they typically do now. However, for those who want to see first hand the products Pirillo will be showing during his live broadcast, they can sign-up to get access to the demo using Citrix Online's GoToMeeting product. The show will be archived and can later be downloaded. Not only will Pirillo be demonstrating his favorite software on the web, he will be using GoToMeeting to do it which is a demo in itself. And again, the Citrix Online sponsorship is adding value to the show not distrubiting the normal flow of the Pirillo broadcast. Citrix Online will measure results by providing a free extended trial of GoToMeeting. Listeners will be given a special promo code during the show to access their free trial. The show is scheduled to launch March 31.

Both of these intiatives represent a major shift in online media buying; moving from mass media buys with big portals to smaller buys with micro-content publishers (Blogs, RSS feeds, Podcasts). Both campaigns also include an RSS and Blog advertising element.

Posted by Bill Flitter on March 22, 2005 11:41 AM
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