My First Time...

I sometimes think I am out of the technology loop. Big time! I recently listened to an Edleman podcast and an AdAge podcast as part of class. This was the first time I had EVER listened to a podcast, so I didn't really know what to expect. Turns out, it is like a convenient, little radio show. I pick what I want to listen to and I can then listen to it - right then and there on my computer. There are no distractions and the information can be easily absorbed. The Edleman podcast I chose to listen to discussed a new blogging research study completed by Dr. Nora Barnes, a communications professor at Dartmouth. Barnes was the "guest" for the podcast and talked about her experience after sampling a group of 260 heavily-active business bloggers, asking them questions about their thoughts, attitudes, and reasons for blogging. Since I am a newbie to this whole blogging thing, (again...outside the technology loop), I was interested to hear what she had discovered. You can listen to it here:

http://www.edelman.com/podcasts/ShowOnePodcast.asp?ID=126

The AdAge podcasts took me a little longer to choose which one I wanted to listen to. There were many, many options. In fact, I was a bit overwhelmed as to which one to hear. There was everything from supersizing burgers to American Idol to Whoppi Goldberg. Yep, wide variety. So, I now see that the benefit of a podcast is that the "host" discusses what will be talked about before the discussion begins. So, if I am not interested in the subject matter, I can cancel the podcast and find something else. I HAVE CONTROL!! I listened to the introductions of 3 podcasts before coming across one that interested me. It talked about how TV stations are now showing commercials based on commercial ratings, rather than program ratings. If people are actually watching commercials on a station (and now you can obtain that information), TV companies will invest more advertising dollars into those commercial time slots. In turn, advertisers will know that their product is being seen. Again, there was a "guest" named Abbey Klaassen, who was a reporter from AdAge who discussed this topic. This was a very interesting podcast, as well. Check out the podcast here:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=48120

Being my first experience in podcasting, I can see how product placement may not be so relevant in this outlet. The only way a product can be placed into the consumer's ears can be through the lips of the podcast "host" or "guest." If no one mentions a specific product themselves, there is no way of the public hearing it. This would probably be one of the areas where it would be difficult to "interrupt" a listener, as Seth Godin said in my last post. But, don't assume that product placement is impossible here. It is NOT! It is just that the marketers of a certain product have no say in who is discussing their product in the podcast. A mention of it may come out, but human speech is a natural process and you can't push anything out of anyone's lips. Kind of a strike out for product placement here, but I learned a whole lot about podcasts. There is a first time for everything...