The Promotional Power of Podcating

How effective is podcasting as a promotional tool to sell books, for example?

Nielsen published The Economics of Podcasting in June of '06 stating that 6% of the web population, or 9 million users had downloaded a podcast in the previous 30 days.

The report is based on a survey of 1,700 podcasters. Some statistical highlights include:

• 6% of respondents described themselves as regular podcast downloaders, more than 75% of whom were male.
• Approximately 38% of these active podcast downloaders say they are listening to radio less often.
• Some 72% of respondents who regularly download podcasts say they download an average of one to three podcasts per week.

Here is a great article from May 2006 ClickZ on how to get the most marketing bang out of your podcast buck.