Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 31. Advertising to Attract Listeners

In This Practice

• Putting up banner ads

• Creating audio advertisements

• Taking a look at “old” media ads

Popular programs don't just spring up fully formed on whatever media they exist on, whether it's television, radio, or the Internet. You have to let people know when and where the program can be found. Practices 32 and 33 look at networking and word‐of‐mouth routes to publicizing your program. This practice, however, takes a look at the old‐fashioned method of advertising. Whether you buy space or trade it out for other services, ads can be an effective way to let people know about your podcast.

A Banner Day

By far, the most common form of advertisement on the Internet is the banner ad, shown in Figure 31-1 . This shorthand term encompasses all forms of leased space on a site — from static images with links to their advertised service to “rich” media involving Flash animation, sound, or video.

Web sites sell space on their pages for these advertisements so visitors to that site see the ads. The hope is that people see the ads, click them, and zoom to a page where they can see whatever is being advertised. Each Web site has its own rules on what kind of ads it hosts, but most of the cost is determined by the characteristics of the ad.

Figure 31.1.  Figure 31-1: Two sample banner ads.

Size

The size of a banner ad plays a big part in how much it costs. ...