by Lee Gibbons, Podango CEO

On Wednesday of last week Doug Smith and I met with a few podcasting industry influencers in the Washington, D.C. offices of Porter Novelli to discuss the concept of Open Metrics for podcasting. In attendance were representatives from the Ad/PR agency side as well as podcasters and podcasting infrastructure companies. So, in my view, the right groups were represented, although not nearly as thoroughly as they need to be in time.

The reason for the meeting is that the podcasting industry lacks standardized measurement tools for measuring audience found in other traditional media. The thought is that by establishing standards and compliance incentives podcasting can become a more purchasable medium.

Podcasting suffers from a barrier of trust with potential advertisers. If there really are as many as 82,700 podcasts in iTunes, how should an advertiser determine the audience size for any one of them? And having received a media kit from one that claims n listeners, how do they square that with the next podcaster that claims to have m listeners or y downloads?

The bottom line is that they have no confidence in the consistency of the numbers, nor do they have any means of understanding the standard means of arriving at those numbers; there is none.

This post is to make an open appeal to all within the podcasting industry to arrive at a standard set of metrics—both what we are measuring and how—so that those who wish to put money into our industry can do so with greater confidence.

We need either an open consortium model, where standards are established by cooperative effort, or we need the podcasting equivalent of Nielsen Media Research.

Still, I am aware of the difficulty of establishing an industry consortium that can operate with the speed of a self interested entity like a Podtrac or Kiptronic or even a Nielsen.

On the Nielsen Media Research site, they describe their mission as follows: Our ratings aren’t qualitative evaluations of how much a program is ”liked.” Instead, they’re the simplest, most democratic measurement: how many people watched.

Such a deliberately simple set of metrics is just exactly what we need. Now, if you go and look at a report from Nielsen, you will find that it becomes very detailed regarding the viewer numbers for individual programs. The podcasting equivalent will require the same granularity of information, with information about each podcast.

If we are able to merely arrive at a standardized set of measurements and a common method of measuring we will have come a long way. Then, if, on top of that, we can come to standardize on some means of certifying that the numbers we are seeing from a given podcaster are compliant with those measurements and methodologies, we will really have something advertisers can and will use to grow more confident about buying ads broadly across the podcasting industry to fulfill the reach required by their campaign objectives.

Now, separately, I have a concern with all of this focus on measurement of quantities, as I fear that it is insufficient and will lead to a CPM model for pricing podcasting that will grow up (or over) from radio advertising and establish pricing that is far below the true value of podcasting. The far more intimate, connective, and niche-focused nature of audio podcasts warrant a much higher CPM than radio. Video podcasts warrant a much higher CPM than TV. Why, because of the relative waste found in every thousand impressions on Radio and TV is much higher! Therefore, we need a separate, parallel effort that helps establish a bank of both anecdotal and empirical evidence that backs up this claim.

I believe a podcasting association of some sort could make some of these initiatives and issues roll forward faster. So I have registered PodcastingAssociation.org and set up a really basic web site/blog from which we, as an industry can build a synergistic tool for moving these initiatives forward.

If the industry decides to name it something else, or move in a different direction, it is all good with me. I just want to see us get the ball rolling.