For the last few months I have told my “podcasting pals” that I thought Podtrac’s survey idea was pure genius. It is about time I posted my thoughts here on the site. Podcasters who want to monetize need to gather demographic information about their listeners. When asking for money, it is critical to know who is listening to your show, how often and how they are “consuming” it. For months, independent podcasters were using survey systems such as SurveyMonkey and others to gather this information. Last fall, Mark McCrery and the team at Podtrac put together an easy to integrate survey system for podcasters to use to learn about their audience and potentially set them up for advertising and sponsorship. Why was this smart? Because it was easy to use, non-exclusive (as far as I know you aren’t beholden to Podtrac for using the service) and provided useful information to podcasters. That is great.

Here is why it is pure genius: Podtrac now has the most complete demographic information about podcasts, podcast listenership and podcast consumption in existence. Across all the podcasters who implemented their survey, they gathered data from close to 40,0000 respondents in total. In an emerging medium, that is incredibly valuable information. [Video of his powerpoint slides and results.] There are plenty of $695 white papers available on podcasting, however no one has a data set like Podtrac. If I were Podtrac’s competition, I’d be kicking myself for having not thought of this first. A lot of companies missed this opportunity. Kuddos to Podtrac, in the podcast ad aggregation and sales arena – this is the smartest move yet.