Earlier, Ben Castelli wrote in this blog about Google video ads for Adsense. That reminded me that very soon, Google will be launching an audio ad service, too.

Back on Jan. 17, Google announced that it had acquired dMarc Broadcasting, which offers an automated platform to serve advertising into the broadcast radio market — a very mature ad market, compared to online advertising.

Google said it "plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers" — which means serving ads to radio. My understanding is that the new service will launch this fall.

Still though, I wonder if that kind of platform might be used to serve ads into podcasts? That could make a huge difference to the economics of podcasting, certainly.

Although I must admit, the podcast ads I find most effective and least offensive are those which involve the host — like the way Andy McCaskey of Slashdot Review(one of my favorite podcasts) reads a variety of ads from his sponsors, and often adds some commentary from personal experience. Most of the time, those ads sound pretty relevant to that show. I doubt such custom ads could be handles completely via automated platform — but my guess is custom audio ads offer higher value to the advertisers, podcasters, and audiences.

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