Startup digital advertising and technology firm VoloMedia (formerly known as PodBridge) has  announced today a free metrics and analytics service that helps podcasters track the activity of the programs they publish to iTunes.

VoloMedia founder Murgesh Navar described the service in a post today on the Association for Downloadable Media blog:

“Bridge-to-Google Analytics is a plug-in to the iTunes Media player, now installed with over 100,000 iTunes consumers in the US…. Publishers are free to use this free service if it meets their needs, i.e. collect anonymous usage statistics regarding usage of their content on iTunes, and to analyze them using Google Analyics: a free and robust industry-standard platform. If you have ever used Google Analytics, then you are familiar with “GA_ID – Google Analytics ID”. With a simple modification of the RSS feed to incorporate the GA-ID the publisher can start flowing aggregated play and download data to their Google Analytics account.  More information is on our website: http://www.volomedia.com”

Navar also pointed out that podcasters can use the metrics and analytics service whether or not they are VoloMedia customers, insisting, “this free service does not require any relationship, contractual or otherwise, with VoloMedia.”

Podcasters will also have access to the API for VoloMedia’s iTunes plug-in (now available for PC and Mac). The plug-in gives the audience tools for sharing podcasts via email or social bookmarking sites and provides the podcaster with a place to display supplemental content or advertising/sponsorship messages, along with a way to track data on whether the audio/video file is played.

Reed Kavner, Associate Marketing Manager at VoloMedia, elaborated on the benefits of the service: “It’s a cool move for VoloMedia, as previous products and services were only available to top-tier publishers who had partnership agreements. And while we will continue to offer enterprise-level services, this is VoloMedia’s first offering to publishers of any size without any business development paperwork. And it’s free.”

The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) today released a list of association members from across the downloadable and new media industry, all of whom are in voluntary support of the preliminary standards and guidelines agreed upon by the organization. ADM officials characterize this as “another step toward creating a landscape favorable to the commercialization” of web-delivered shows.

The members endorsing this set of measurments and ad standards come from across the podcast and new media industry, and include marketers and ad agency people, podcast networks, individual content creators, and non profit organizations.

Both the advertising standards and audience measurement guidelines were created by open committees, then offered for public comment and feedback, and finally edited and ratified by the organization. Many of the organization’s members had already been following these formats. Now the member organizations advocate that these standards be adopted more widely across the podcast/new media industry. They argue that this will ease the creation of an organized market for advertisers to launch campaigns and/or become sponsors of episodic podcasts and video series.

The organization’s recommended standards for ad units include pre-, mid- and post-roll insertions, product placement within shows, and host endorsements, chosen from among the twenty-five creative options outlined in the standards document. The recommended measurement guidelines give each member company one of two reporting options, based on how their shows are hosted, either Native Server Measurement (NSM) or Third Party Measurement (TPM).

ADM member organizations who have adopted these standards argue that this simplifies how marketers create ad units, which then can be placed across multiple podcast networks, as well as in the shows of independent content producers, crafting a demographic and/or contextually targeted campaign. In addition, they argue, the audience measurement standards enable audience metrics to be compared more easily, as “apples-to-apples.”

“With the emergence of each new digital media it’s vital to create standardized ad units and measurement. Now that downloadable media companies are adopting these guidelines, ad agencies [are more likely to] include podcasts and vidcasts in their media recommendations.” said Susan MacDermid, SVP, Real Branding.

The ADM, founded in 2007, is open to both corporate and individual content producers, well as non-profits, advertising agencies and “solutions providers” in the portable media industry. Its focus is on the commercialization of web-based content.

Companies which have agreed to offer “at least a portion” of the ad units outlined in the standards document, and to report their audience metrics through one of the two methods outlined, are listed below.

COMPANY / CONTACT
BackBeat Media / Dave Hamilton
Bare Feet Studios / Roxanne Darling
Burst Media / Rob Simon
Circle of Seven Productions / Sheila English
Coverville / Brian Ibbott
Culinary Media Network / Jennifer Iannolo
Culture Catch / Richard Burns
IndieFeed / Chris Macdonald
KCRW /   Jennifer Ferro
Kiptronic / Dave Rowley
Modified Media / Doug Taylor
NPR / Bryan Moffett
Personal Life Media / Susan Bratton
Podcast.com (Treedia Labs) / Glenn Gaudet
Podtrac / Mark McCrery
Portage Media Solutions / Jeremiah Staes
PRI / Morgan Church
Quick and Dirty Tips / Richard Rhorer
Raw Voice / Angelo Mandato
Revision3 / Jim Louderback
Sciencepodcasters.org / Ginger Campbell
SkydiverGirls.tv / Karen KFC Blanchette
Volomedia / Jeff Karnes
Wizzard Media / Chris MacDonald
ZimmComm New Media / Chuck Zimmerman

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

The industry group formed around the nascent podcast industry, The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), has announced the release of two sets of recommended guidelines: ad unit standards and audience measurement guidelines. The recommendations released today grew from feedback and discussions of proposed standards, which were first unveiled in April at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco.

The Download Measurement Guidelines and Advertising Unit Standards are available now at http://www.downloadablemedia.org.

In The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 study, derived from the Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study, podcast consumers are attractive advertising targets. The downloadable media industry is seeing a notable surge in listeners who actively seek and select a program (rather than passively consuming whatever is available via traditional media), downloading it and potentially moving it to a portable device.  This enhanced level of engagement with the programs and hosts of the shows they select may translate to an increased credibility and level of trust for the show’s sponsors and advertisers.

The ratified guidelines have been accepted by the fourteen-member ADM Ad Council, a special  interactive advertising agency liaison group, which acts as a sounding board for the ADM committees.

The specific recommendations for advertising unit standards and guidelines for audience measurement follow after the break.

From today’s ADM announcement:

The Advertising Unit Standards include three kinds of formats -  Insertions, Content Participation and Collateral. The units outlined in the document are the most common set of existing formats in use today by sponsors and content producers. The ADM has plans to innovate new formats in the future, but this initial version of the Standards serves to organize the common set to make it most available to buyers industry wide.

INSERTIONS

Definition:  A separate ad file that is attached, inserted, or edited into an audio or video podcast.
Time: Up to :10, :15, 30 or :60 seconds
Location: Pre-roll; mid-roll; post-roll

CONTENT PARTICIPATION

Definition:  When an advertiser’s message is included as part of the audio or video podcast content.
Examples:
1. Underwritten Sponsorship
2. Scripted Live Read
3. Talking Points
4. Host Endorsements
5. Product Placement / Product Discussion
6. Sponsored Interstitials
7. Special Episodes
8. Advertorials / Interviews
9. Infomercials

COLLATERALS

Definition:  All the other real estate that a podcaster has that may be included as part of an advertising or sponsorship package, or as separate items a lá carte.
Examples:
1. Show notes on podcast website
2. ID3 tags in podcast episode file
3. Album Art Cards
4. Link and banner in enhanced audio podcasts
5. Overlays, underlays in video podcasts
6. Web banners, buttons, text links, hyperlinks (using IAB standards)
7. Email sponsorships
8. Press Releases
9. Product sales (CDs, DVDs, merchandise)
10. Signage/Outdoor (for retail)
11. Brochures, flyers

Audience Measurement: Because there are two ways a content creator can get access to audience data, the ADM guidelines encompass two types of effective measurement techniques, Native Server Measurement or Third Party Measurement. Both are approved by the ADM in providing accurate data when complying with the standards parameters:

Native Server Measurement (NSM)
The Native Server is the actual end point where the media is hosted. Native Server Measurement refers to the log files derived from the Native Server. It may include the amount of data that was transferred in each log entry, and therefore may provide information to derive more than simple download statistics.

Third Party Measurement (TPM)
A Third Party server is the intermediary between the Native Server and another Third Party Server. Third Party Measurement refers to the files measuring the initial download requests as received by a third party server to be delivered to the requester. Because the Third Party server is a constant, it may uniformly measure download statistics across multiple hosting services.

The Association for Downloadable Media, a recently-formed industry association “focused on creating standards and guidelines to support the continued and increasing monetization of downloadable media,” last week unveiled proposed guidelines for audience measurement at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco. The draft proposal is open for public discussion and comment for the coming thirty days (through May 16).

Explaining the audience measurement guidelines and discussing the rationale behind their creation were three panelists who were among the several dozen committee members involved in the drafting process: Stephen Smyk, Performance Bridge; Angelo Mandato, CIO, Raw Voice (and Chairman of the ADM Measurement Committee); and Daniel Rioux, SVP, Media Director, Campbell-Ewald.

Here is a brief synopsis of their presentation:

Need for download measurement:
Throughout the downloadable media/podcast industry there is a need for download measurement. This need impacts us all, from veteran podcasters, to “amateur content producers,” to what we consider more traditional media.

Need for measurement standards:
Coming up with some standards for how we count/measure downloads would provide confidence for ad buyers (“so we’re all measuring apples-to-apples”). Committee members agreed to utilize existing measurement methods where possible, while also proposing and adapting standards for future measurement methods. For all of these, analysis of data is required.

Sources of measurement data:
“native server” (where the downloadable media is hosted) measurement, and
“third party” measurement (measurement by an intermediary server between the content creator and another third-party server). This third-party can uniformly measure across multiple native servers (from own server, from Libsyn, etc.).

Much of the data used for gauging audience size can be gleaned from server log files. Some things that can be measured include

From Third party and native servers
IP address
Time stamp
HTTP: status code
referrer
user agent (tells where download occurred: browser, podcatcher, web bot)
byte range

From Native servers only
Bytes served

Some Analysis Factors to Consider:
IP address (proper filtering based on IP address – so 1 person doesn’t download multiple times)
Time Stamp – when time frame of download occurred
HTTP: status code
Bytes Served
Referrer
Byte Range

Analysis Methodologies
Methodologies Available to Buyers
ADM Compliant Publishers
Minimum Recommendations
IP Address Analysis
Advantage
Methods that best fit the publishers’ situation

ADM Measurement Committee chair Mandato explained that the ADM Ad Council, comprised of seasoned veterans in the digital/online advertising industry, also reviewed the measurement guidelines document, “to make sure that we have a complete document. In weeks to come,” he said, “we are going to create a standards/terminology document, to further explain the terms.”

The draft audience measurement guidelines are open for public review and comment for the coming month.

More of the panel presentation, on case studies and the ad agency’s perspective on audience measurement, after the break –

Audience Measurement, from an agency point of view
Stephen Smyk, Performance Bridge and an appointed ADM Ad council member.

“Downloadable media is under-utilized by agencies at this point,” recounts Smyk. Ask ten different content creators about their audience size and reach, and you’ll get nearly as many kinds of (valid, but different) metrics. Terms and metrics are inconsistent at this point in time.

“We hear back from podcasters about their metrics in these terms:

downloads, listeners, requetsed downloads, completed downloads, hits, ranking (iTunes), site traffic, US listeners, impressions, unique downloads, US-unique downloads, ‘Internal Estimate’, “Log File Numbers”, Third Party Measurement, Demographic Data (age, gender, geography, etc).”

“We need to put these into an apples-to-apples unit of measurement in order to understand – and we need to know the % of people who are listening to that download. We are excited to be looking at some measurement standards that will help us greatly to meet our clients’ needs.”

According to Smyk, there are still plenty of challenges to widespread planning and buying podcast advertising, including various ad units, different terms and different meanings, different executions to carry out advertising campaign. Podcasters’ schedules always”subject to change” – many indie podcasters do not adhere to strict schedules, which does not fit well with the needs of traditional advertising.

Finally, Dan Rioux, Campbell-Ewald, gave an overview of one podcast advertising case study (interestingly, one I had also used in my presentation on advertising and podcasts at ad:tech)

US Navy/Wizzard Media podcast advertising campaign
Media Objectives -need to recruit 25,000 18 – 34yo
Need to generate awareness while cultivating a favorable image of the Navy
Facilitate decision making process

Rioux talked about what he called”The Current” (not the cool NPR network in Minnesota, but rather) “the rapid adoption of technology which aids in time shifting of media consumption and P2P sharing of content.”

Rioux explained that traditional media is not very interactive, it is very one-way (consider the broadcast media, vs. more conversational, interactive new media). New media and consumer-produced media are “the current”, more like a “media soup” swirling and constantly changing and expanding. As advertisers, “we need to get in the current and swim, or jump into the soup and stir things up,” said Rioux, mixing his metaphors.

Back to the specific case of the U.S. Navy’s advertising campaign with Wizzard Media, Rioux illustrated his agency’s “contact map” of prospective Navy recruits as a big bubble chart graph of interconnected media and interests.

Media Mix rationale – podcasting fits into growth and speculative media stocks – a self-selective audience listening/watching podcasts.

Navy podcast strategy
Radio has become more a “background” medium for 18-24yo target audience
Technology has altered their listening habits- satellite, streaming, podcasts
Following the listening habits of young people, we did an ad-sponsored audio podcast program in 2007

“Grabbing hold of the long tail”
Uses Wizzard Media to identify small and large ad-sponsored podcasts targeted to lifestyle and activity interests- Fitness (podrunner, ironman), Gaming, etc.

How’s it working out?
Doing ongoing testing and monitoring trends, using internal and external analytic tools