Web Marketing Strategy Update

If you’ve considered podasting in your marketing, you’ll be interested in this item I came across on WebProNews

Podtrac, a new podcast advertising company, has teamed up with Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI), a provider of magazine audience and multimedia research company, to provide advertisers and podcasters with demographic information about listeners to help them make better advertising choices.

The partnership hopes to bring the same kind of statistical information provided to networks and advertisers in traditional media to the podcast circuit.

MRI and Podtrac will provide ratings data, including an index of the data to MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer as a free service to any podcast through Podtrac. The Survey of the American Consumer is a national probability study of U.S. adult’s demographics, media and product usage, attitudes and lifestyle.

Podcasters will start by implementing Podtrac’s free Podcast Audience Survey. Podtrac will calculate indices to the Survey of the American Consumer for individual podcast survey results and provide the data to advertisers and podcasters free-of-charge.

“The Podtrac Survey together with an index to the Survey of the American Consumer provide a powerful tool for advertisers to determine the fit of a specific podcast audience for the target of their advertising,” said Mark McCrery, CEO of Podtrac.

“The demographic indexing service also provides podcasters with an unprecedented way of turning their podcasting listening or viewing audiences into a compelling marketable asset to advertisers through Podtrac.”

Back in March, Google bought Urchin Software Corporation and its online web analytics service.

The service enables website owners to track visitor behavior and marketing performance and was priced at $199/per month.

Now re-branded as Google Analytics the service is being offered free for up to 5 million pageviews a month, or with no limit at all if you’re an active AdWords publisher (you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface).

“Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You’ll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.”

Google Analytics can automatically provide AdWords ROI metrics, without you having to import cost data or add tracking information to keywords and you can track up to 50 profiles.

Sign up is via your Google account (this is becoming a very easy way for Google to learn all about you, no?) and requires pasting some JavaScript code into your web pages for tracking.

I plan to give it a try on one of my sites soon, in place of the more basic AWStats log file analyzer I currently use.