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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Let’s hear it for audio

There’s a meme building strength that suggests video podcasting will dominate audio-only. I don’t buy it. First of all, as I’ve noted so often in the past, audio is unique among communication channels because you can pay attention to it while you’re doing something else. I got through about eight podcasts yesterday while driving from one errand to another. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with video podcasts (or, if I’d tried, I’d probably be dealing with insurance paperwork right about now).

Now there’s research to support the notion that people will listen to more of an online audio file than they will watch an online video. The research comes from Podzinger, the online audio-and-video search engine. (Note: Neville and I just finished recording an interview with Podzinger President Alex Laats, which will be available shortly on the For Immediate Release blog.) According to the study, consumers typically will listen to audio for almost three times longer then they will watch a video.

There was other interesting data in the study, which was undertaken to provide some evidence to prospective advertisers that online audio and video was a good investment. For example, consumers tolerate ads that appear during searches for audio and video content; they’re also willing to watch 10-15-second ads that precede a video as a de facto element of such content. Also, consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it (by a factor of nearly six to one).

In any case, the value of audio podcasts won’t fade in the face of the rising popularity of video podcasts.

Posted by Shel on 12/19 at 11:46 AM
Podcasting • Research • (6) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

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