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Advertising - Friday, April 20, 2007

Podcast Advertising Firm PodBridge Raises $8.5M More

By most accounts podcast advertising has been very disappointing. There is just not enough podcast listeners for advertisers to scale as they can with Adsense or other buys. But a couple of research groups keep publishing glowing reports about the future. Blog, podcast and RSS advertising are the fastest growing segments of the alternative media industry, says media researcher PQ Media as combined spending surged 198.4% to $20.4M in 2005. PQ Media says that aggregate spending on the three channels will grow another 145% to $49.8M in 2006.

And while blog advertising accounted for $16.6M, or 81.4% of total spending on user-generated online media in 2005, PQ expects podcast advertising to be a larger market by 2010. It expects podcast advertising to grow at a compound annual rate of 154.4% to $327M in 2010, while blog ad spending will rise 78.4% to $300.4M in the same time frame.

It doesn't seem logical to us that podcast advertising will be bigger than blog advertising but PQ contends that advertisers like the medium's audio and visual components, as well as the reluctance of some marketers to advertise near non-favorable content on blogs.

Today, podcast advertising network PodBridge raised around $8.5M in Series B funding, according to a regulatory filing dug by PEWire. The Mountain View, CA-based startup is backed by Sutter Hill Ventures in the round and joined by return backers Mayfield and Worldview Technology Partners.

Podbridge competes with Blast Podcast, Kiptronic, Radiotail Podtrac and others. It does seem that podcast advertising enjoys a reprieve from competition from large ad networks like Google/Doubleclick, Yahoo and others.

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