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Yesterday I raised several questions/concerns/thoughts about the realities of a Google AdSense service for podcasts. There’s another big issue I should have mentioned. I haven’t seen it talked about enough in the blog buzz.

How is Google going to measure this thing?

The beauty of AdSense is it is pay-per-click. The whole thing is based on performance and revenue share.

But how do you measure performance for an audio ad inserted in a podcast?

Is it pay-per-download? This won’t work since a number of downloads are never listened to. The ideal situation is to measure exactly how many people listened to the ad, not just some portion of the podcast. How will Google measure this? This requires some sort of Digital Rights Management (DRM) wrapper on the audio. This presents two problems:

1. MP3 files don’t support this, but MP3 is the universal format for audio podcasts
2. Podcast listeners have come to podcasting seeking choice and convenience in their listening. DRM defeats that.

Measurement will be the #1 question for advertisers (since it determines their bill) and a potential headache for Google. Google has enough problems with click fraud.

Further, when a prospect clicks on an AdSense ad an action has been taken. Also, you can easily measure the traffic to a URL from the ad.

With audio, the ad may be heard but how do you know if an action is taken. Was the listener’s attention even on the ad, or did it get zoned out like we tend to do with radio and TV commercials?

There are some things you can do to measure response from audio or video just like you would on radio or TV (e.g. URL, phone #, etc.). But if Google measures pay-per-consumption, advertisers will be charged whether the ad incites a response or not.

Or…will this service only be used in streaming applications fromGoogleTube and other such services? In that case, measurement becomes easier. The podcasting industry has discovered that as much as half of the podcasting audience is listening to podcasts on their computers. It’s feasible to dynamically serve ads to these listeners and measure consumption.

There is a definite value difference with audio AdSense that will need to be considered. The good news is that AdSense is based on what advertisers are willing to pay. A true market value settles in.

Despite these concerns, I’m hoping to jump in on some audio AdSense action as soon as I can and hopefully get cheap placement early on while other people are still leery. I’m willing to test it out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 and is filed under Podcast Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.