Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced on Wednesday that it has surpassed 200 podcast-related iPhone Apps in the iPhone App Store, bringing the total number of paid Apps to 260 for the iPhone and iPod Touch platform.

The company also announced first quarter unique monthly podcast audience numbers of 18.5 million, up slightly over the first quarter of 2009. When adjusted to account for the shift of the Company’s free podcast hosting services to an all paid platform in mid 2009, Wizzard estimates unique monthly audience for its podcast network up approximately 23% “on a pro forma basis.”

“Our revolutionary podcast App allows podcasters to monetize their already-established, iTunes-based podcast audience, said Chris Spencer, Wizzard Media CEO. [Our podcast App lets podcasters sell listeners] paid access to bonus content, the ability to charge for virtual goods and sell subscription packages for reoccurring revenues. This new product changes everything for our industry.”

Wizzard Media provides podcast publishers with distribution and monetization services to clients like Microsoft, National Geographic, Harvard Business Review, Usher, NPR and more than 13,000. Wizzard Media products measure clients’ podcast audience, deliver popular audio and video entertainment and enables podcasters to “monetize content” through advertising and App sales. According to its own calculations, in 2009, the Wizzard Media Network received over 1.4 billion podcast requests from approximately 50 million people worldwide through iPods, iPhones, iTunes, Zune and many other devices and destinations.

Wizzard today announced that it recorded 1.4 billion podcast download requests in 2009 through its podcast-hosting service Libsyn, or about 16% more than it delivered in 2008.

Libsyn received an average of 3.77 million requests for podcast episodes per day in 2009. On average, 23 minutes per episode equates to almost 1.5 million hours of programming distributed worldwide every day.

“We know there is strong demand for the podcasts we distribute, seeing downloads grow from 400 million to 1.4 billion in the last few years and monthly audiences grow from 4 million to 18 million,” says Laurie Sims, President of Wizzard Media.

“Now, podcasting becomes a platform that converts audiences to revenue, accelerated by the micropayment billing process that Apple has created with the App store. Unlike most Apps in the App store, podcasters have a distinct advantage to successfully market their App in iTunes due to the fact that they have already built a substantial audience for their podcast show over the last several years. Now it is just a matter of continuing to convert them over and expand the model to the Tablet, Andriod and Palm.”

Podcasting network Wizzard Media today announced that podcast downloads from their network were up by 45% in Q2, compared to 2008.

For the second quarter of 2009, Wizzard Media saw total network podcast download requests of 350,053,574 vs. 241,600,000 download requests in the second quarter of 2008

The company also reported:

• The audience consuming podcasts from shows on the Wizzard Media Network grew 41% (5.3 million).
• Wizzard Media Network advertising impressions served through its proprietary Alchemy advertising engine grew from 3.9 million in the second quarter of 2008 to 13.7 million in the second quarter of 2009, an increase of 251%.

Anyone who thinks that podcasting is a niche media for geeks should check out what Ira Glass has to say on how podcasts grew This American Life’s audience:

Podcast fan: Have you found that podcasting has changed This American Life?

Ira Glass: Interestingly, it’s pulled in a much younger audience.

The radio audience has stayed the same size – 1.8 million people a week – but now there’s this extra half million people and they’re much much younger than the public radio audience.

Which is fantastic, of course. I know meet lots of people in their teens and twenties at our live events, and some of them aren’t public radio listeners at all. They simply know us as a podcast.

In terms of content this hasn’t changed the show but in terms of reach, it’s really nice.

Glass didn’t lose radio listeners by offering a podcast, he gained half a million listeners that otherwise would not have heard his show.

Glass’s experience with This American Life’s podcasts demonstrates how powerful podcasts can be for reaching people that prefer to consume media on their own schedule.

Podcasting is going mainstream, at least according to eMarketer:

Podcasting has evolved from an odd, funky blogging experiment into a broad medium with mainstream trappings. Today, the vast majority of the top-rated podcasts come from recognizable media entities that are using podcasts to expand their existing radio, TV, cable or satellite audiences.

They peg the podcast audience at 9% of Internet users now, and are predicting the audience to nearly double, to 17%, within five years.

Podcasting & eCommerce

eMarketer also notes a relationship between podcasting and online shopping:

US online buyers who purchase mostly online showed an even greater propensity to listen to podcasts.

50% of mostly online buyers in a PriceGrabber.com survey said they listened to podcasts—a far greater number than comparable percentages of Internet users or consumers as a whole.

eMarketer’s research suggests that podcasting has evolved from a niche channel to a mainstream one.

The podcast audience also deserves special attention from online marketers, because it appears that the podcast audience is more likely to shop online than Internet users or consumers as a whole.

What do you think? Is podcasting now mainstream?

Startup digital advertising and technology firm VoloMedia has launched a new version of podcast advertising tracking plug-in that is compatible with Apple’s iTunes.

VoloMedia, formerly PodBridge, has created downloadable software that is designed to measure audience activity, such as how many people listen to a particularly podcast. The program also works as an ad-serving platform, letting marketers place timely messages within podcasts and other digital content even after they’ve been downloaded to various devices.

The company has created a version of its plug-in that works specifically with iTunes. Podcasts that contain the VoloMedia plug-in will feature three clickable buttons, identified as “Share,” “Bookmark” and “More” — which allow users to automatically spread content, much like they do with videos on the Web.

via AdWeek

According to Microsoft Zune guru Rob Greenlee, there’s been “a huge jump in podcast interest in the Zune Podcast Marketplace Software.”

“This is an annual rite of passage, that summer is the time when podcast usage dips and then it comes stampeding back in the Fall and Winter,” explains Greenlee. “This year is no exception and we have seen a 30% or more jump in new podcast subscriptions from August to September.”

The Top 25 most subscribed to podcasts in the past week (Sept 21-28, 2008):

1. FOXCAST: Family Guy (audio)
2. Best Of YouTube (video)
3. HBO’s Stand Up Comedy (video)
4. Zune Insider (video & audio)
5. Strong Bad Emails (video)
6. Xbox 360 Only Game Trailers (video)
7. Discovery Channel (video)
8. Discovery Dirty Jobs (video)
9. Dane Cook Podcast (audio)
10. GameTrailers.Com – Xbox 360 (video)
11. Happy Tree Friends (video)
12. NBC Nightly News (video)
13. Onion News Network (video)
14. G4 Attack Of The Show (video)
15. Dilbert Animated Cartoons (video)
16. Comedy Central: Standup (video)
17. Real Time With Bill Maher (audio)
18. Lewis Black’s Root Of All Evil (video)
19. G4 TV X-Play’s Gaming Update (video)
20. 60 Minutes Podcast – Full Episode (audio)
21. Xbox Live’s Major Nelson Radio (audio)
22. G4 TV Around The Net (video)
23. HBO’s The Life & Times Of Tim (video)
24. CNBC’s Mad Money W/Jim Cramer (video)
25. G4 TV Street Fury Video Podcast (video)

Podcasters – are you seeing a bump in subscriptions from Zune users?

Note: These links go to the Zune Podcast Marketplace - media player software. You can download the desktop player here.

For the last three years, we’ve been wondering why Paris Hilton was the first celebrity podcaster.

You may recall that, back in 2005, when most people had no idea what a podcast was, Hilton was featured in The Paris Hilton Podcast, considered by some to be the worst podcast of all time.

Now a new survey – the 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey – may offer an explanation.

The survey found direct relationships between income and media usage:

• The higher your income, the more likely you are to read magazines;
• The higher your income, the less television you watch;
• The higher your income, the less radio you listen to; and
• The higher your income, the more time you spend using the Internet.

In a nutshell, people with money are rapidly moving their attention to online media, and the more money you have, the more likely you are to spend your time online:

Paris Hilton, and high-income people in general, have moved their attention to Internet media and are leaving broadcast television behind. The rich spend nearly twice as much time online as they do watching television, and nearly three times as much time online as they do listening to radio.

This is a key trend for advertisers and those in new media; if you want to get the attention of people with money, you have to do it online.

The Mendelsohn focuses solely on the top fifth of U.S. households, based on household incomes ($100,000 or higher in 2007). This group is one of the most desirable demographics for retailers, because it accounts for a large proportion of the total household income of the United States.

More discussion at Ad Age.

Image: Sebastian Fritzon

Podcasting continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with the total audience for podcasts increasing by 58% in under two years, according to research by the Pew Internet Project.

The dedicated podcast audience – those that download podcasts every day – has gone up 300% in the same time, from 1% of those surveyed to 3%.

The survey promises to provide ammo for podcasters and critics alike. While the number of dedicated podcast fans is up 300%, the technology’s steady adoption rate is closer to something like RSS’s, rather than the rocket-fast adoption of something like YouTube, which has a much lower barrier to entry.

Pew also found that men continue to be more likely than women to download podcasts:

• 22% of online men have downloaded a podcast
• 16% of online women have downloaded a podcast

Men and women are equally likely (3%) to download podcasts on a typical day.

Age differences are more defined with regard to podcast downloading than they were in 2006 when all age groups, except for those 65 and older, were almost equally likely to download podcasts. Now, the dividing line is around the age of 50, with internet users under 50 years old significantly more likely than older users to download podcasts. Fully 23% of those under 50 say they have ever downloaded a podcast and 4% downloaded one yesterday, compared with 13% and 1% of their older counterparts. Since 2006, younger generations have more fully embraced the technology, their percentages nearly doubling since 2006.

Pew also found a strong correlation between broadband access and podcast use:

Internet users with broadband and premium broadband access at home are significantly more likely than the average internet user to have ever downloaded a podcast, with twice as many premium home broadband users being daily podcast users.

Image: nataliej

People are leaving traditional radio behind for on Internet radio and podcasting, but a new UK study suggests that radio stations that embrace podcasting can actually grow their audiences.

Research firm Ipsos Mori has found that 10% of those surveyed said they listened to less live radio after starting to download podcasts. However, 15% said they listened to more live radio since they began downloading podcasts, and 39% said they were listening to radio programs they did not listen to previously.

Other highlights of the research:

• Podcast listening occurs throughout the day, with an evening peak when 44% of podcast users click on the play button. A total of 83% of podcast users now listen to content that is more than a week old.
• 6 million people in the UK have now downloaded a podcast – up from 4.3 million in November 2007. And 3.7 million now say they listen to a podcast each week, up from 1.87 million in last year’s survey.
• The average podcast user subscribes to 3.6 podcasts and spends just over an hour a week listening to them. Comedy and music continue to be the two favorite genres.
• iTunes remains the preferred software for almost three-quarters of users who subscribe to podcasts, while a fifth simply download directly from the website via their browser.
• 79% of people listen to podcasts on their home computer and 66% listen via a portable audio/mp3 player.
• 53% said they would be interested in downloading podcasts containing advertising if they were free.
• Only 31% responded positively to the idea of podcasts without adverts that had to be paid for.

Image: Thomas Hawk