Playfuls.com has a pretty insightful article from last week on Google's move into the online radio station advertising network space via their purchase of dMarc, the ad network for Internet radio stations.

As you can see, podcasting is still a virgin market, at least from the advertising point of view, and the announcement made by Google, that is will buy dMarc Broadcasting, a company that maintains and runs an advertising network for online radio stations, represents perhaps something more than an integration of Google AdWords in the audio content.

Very few players - Pheedo included - have been able to really crack the podcasting ad market. There are a number of factors at work, not the least of which is a strong inventory for advertisers to choose from. Most podcasts are not really great places for advertising just yet...due to low listenership and the subject matter of the usually niche content.

Bill Flitter, CMO of Pheedo, a company that’s trying to create such a network, declared in July 2005 for Clickz Network that he has managed to gather round 30 podcasts on which to run campaigns for 6 advertisers , http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3517416, which is not much, but nevertheless, it’s a start.

At WOMMA, Bob Garfield made some pretty compelling arguments that podcasting and other niche consumer 'pulled and controlled' media will win the day...but that's IN THE FUTURE. Perhaps, 5 years down the road or so.

While I don't exactly feel warm & fuzzy about Google's pushing forward in this space, I do like it for the fact that it lends credibility to an ad-supported model for content. There were some pretty heated discussions last week, especially from the hardcore grassroots marketing folks, about how awful advertising in podcasts really is. Face it folks - no one works for free here. I personally enjoy the advertising in, say, Adam Curry's podcast because it's targeted and relevant...which is what advertising in Web 2.0 should be all about anyway.

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