By Doug Smith – Podango President
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Unlike most podcast networks, Podango stations target specific audiences with multiple podcasts to make advertising dollars perform better, so advertisers and sponsors spend more with Podango.

Podango Stations are popping up in all types of niche markets including snow skiing, family matters, event planning, automotive tools, mountain biking, business leadership and more.  The profile of Podango Stations will clearly follow the “long tailâ€� distribution curve.  Stations will focus on highly targeted niches where niche savvy Station Directors will coordinate the “conversationâ€� with likeminded listeners. We are beginning to talk more about the “conversationâ€� that will evolve as selected podcasts are delivered to these niches with simple mechanisms allowing the listener to join in and provide their own insights, questions, and answers. Each episode becomes the catalyst for a deeper conversation. Â

By subscribing to the Station, the listeners self-select themselves for these conversations. What a perfect target for relevant advertising and sponsorships.  As Dixie has become the perfect sponsor for the MommyCast show, we will see the likes of Shimano, Sram or Trek for the Mountain Biking Station, or Marriott for the Event Planning Station, or Salamon, Atomic, Fischer or K2 for PodSki Station and FranklinCovey for Business Leadership Station.  Sponsors are loving the results, but it is yet very early. Major ad buyers are moving to take advantage of the targeting opportunities of this “new mediaâ€�. Greg Stuart, CEO, IAB recently said: “The steady growth of online advertising is a clear indication that marketers continue to believe in the opportunities and effectiveness that this medium delivers in reaching and engaging their consumers,” He also reported that: “Online spending for advertising is on a pace to reach $15 billion in revenue for all of 2006.â€� Take a look at the graph.

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The attractive relevance of these niche-oriented stations is only part of the appeal to sponsors. The mix of advertising elements is also appealing. These elements include sponsor impressions (audio, video , text and image), product mentions and discussions, spot ads before or after podcasts, banner ads, infomercial podcasts, video ads, surveys, polls and more. Also the consolidation of multiple high quality podcasts into a single station will bring larger audiences and this focused variety (strange combination of words) will hold the attention of the audience.  To top it off the community features will bring the audience into the conversations about the products and services of the sponsors yielding great feedback and great testimonials.

I listened to a Mommycast episode (#105) this week, (I am a Dad however) to see how they support their sponsors. They took their children the new Atlanta Aquarium, an affiliate of Georgia Pacific, the parent of Dixie, Mommycast primary sponsor. Their description of the experience and awesome nature of the exhibits had me wanting to jump a plane for a visit. My next trip to Atlanta will include a visit to this new site. What a great way to advertise.

Podango go!Stations will become wonderful revenue opportunities for Station Directors and Podcasters. As Directors add more podcasts to the station, there will be incremental ad spots. And Podcaster will love to join a station with an existing and growing audience getting instance exposure.  Podango is about teamwork, strength in numbers, relevance in advertising and creating deep conversations about product, services and especially about life. Come and join us, the train is leaving the station.

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by Doug Smith - Podango President Â

It is easy to get noticed in an empty football station.  But when it is full, getting noticed requires a lot of obnoxious behavior or an inside relationship with the PA announcer. Like with blogs, where there are the “haves� and the “have nots. “ There are those podcaster in the top 50 or fat end of the tail and those in the narrow part of the long tail. A great article in the February 20^th issue of the New Yorker Magazine, Blogs to Riches by Clive Thompson does a great job of explaining the intricacies of “linkology� and getting noticed in the “blogosphere�.  Some of the same rules apply with podcasts, but the fundamental mechanism of a podcast to podcast link is not available. Podango’s “every podcast gets a transcript� will help with links going in and out of the podcast text pages. But that will only be one approach to Podango helping podcasters get noticed in a growing sea of content providers. There are not nearly as many podcasters (upwards of 60,000) as there are bloggers (23 million blogs), but it is still difficult to get noticed.

Have you ever been to a football game where the audience uses cards to spell out words or create symbols to be seen by the other half of the stadium? They are hard to miss. That is achieved through teamwork. Many people combine efforts to get noticed as a group, directed by a coordinator, for the benefit of the whole. Well, that is the general philosophy of Podango Stations, team together to be seen and noticed. Be big, influential and “remarkable�. As a Station Director recruits multiple podcasters into a station, each bringing a unique audience, they all get exposure to each other’s audiences. And the combined audience gets introduced to additional great content that is “sifted, sorted and prioritized� by the Station Director. There is strength in numbers and volume normally wins.

So, if you are a start-up podcaster with no audience, but great content, or an experience podcaster with a big audience, seek out a Podango Station owner in your niche market and audition to be included on their station, so you can get immediate exposure to their additional 10,000 to 300,000 listener.

Remember Rule #5: Get Noticed! And help others get noticed. Podango stations sign “anchor podcasts� and routinely spotlight rising star podcasts!
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by Doug SmithÂ

A few weeks back my partner, Lee Gibbons, posted the 10 rules that Podango is following to help redefine the “Podcasting Game�. “Changing the Rules�  We hope this doesn’t sound arrogant. We don’t mean it to be. But we think there is a better way for podcasters to have influence and make money. It is not all about having “voice�, it starts with having “ears�.
 Rule #1 is about understanding the user’s perspective and solving their problems. Stephen Covey calls this “Seek First to Understand�, Habit #5. To serve a market, a podcaster must be in touch with the needs and desires of the audience. He/she must listen to the market and the audience feedback, build community involvement and garner the wealth of the audience’s knowledge to enhance the content being provided. A cornerstone of the Podango model is “Listening to the Market� even when the feedback is painful. Someone recently said: “A complaint is a gift�. If so, then bring the gifts forward so we can learn and grow.
 We are also listening to our users, the podcast listener audience, and what we are hearing is: It is too hard to find and too hard to consume great podcasts. We continue to hear and see the problem. It is discussed openly in various podcasts and blogs. Thus, we are recruiting Station Directors that will own their on Podcast Stations. And with their high passion an area of expertise, they will sift sort and prioritize the best content for a market niche and provide it to an audience over a single RSS feed. Our tagline is: Simple, Tailored, Targeted. We think it will catch on, because as a speaker said at the Syndicate conference last week, “We all have enough shirts. What is scarce is time.�
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Rule #1: Put the Listener First and provide a simple, familiar station format for uses to subscribe to, instead of one podcast at a time.

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by Doug Smith – President, Podango

I have managed eCommerce and online media companies for several years, 6+ years at Franklin Covey and two years as the CEO of a startup. But only now am I beginning to grasp the sub-culture of Web 2.0, the LIVE Web as Doc Searls referred to it in his closing remarks. This “Live� Web was clearly demonstrated throughout the conference by posts appearing on the internet before echoes settled from each speaker’s last words. Steve Gillmor referred to a prior panelist a pinhead not naming him, but the blogs did. On the first day, a lady sitting in front of me was in the state of panic because she could not connect to the web and post her blog. It was like an addict going through a withdrawal (not that I would know). This conference pealed back two layers of the onion for me, but I sense I have several more layers to go. And most of that learning will need to be experiential, so I am blogging and will soon be podcasting. The learning continues.

I entered the conference thinking Google was on the forefront of all new Web innovations. To my surprise a few of the esteemed presenters suggested that they were part of the “Dead� web, focusing their search engines of “static� pages, not highlighting their offerings for searching the Blogosphere or the “Live� web. I learned more about tags, gestures, attention and click streams. I picked up “Naked Conversations� and started reading it on the way home. This is a whole new world and I like what I see. It is a world of “love cats� and open hearted conversation and discussion. But it is only beginning to unfold as demonstrated early this morning on my 6am mountain bike ride with my neighbor and friend who works for Oracle. I asked him, if Oracle executives blog, he asked “what is a blog�? Enough said.