Kiptronic, an advertising network for podcasting, has closed a $4 million round of financing. Investors include Blueprint Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. The company had previously raised $400,000 in angel funding.
The company was founded in May 2005 but didn’t launch its current product, a marketplace for podcasts, until January 2006. They have an important partnership with Libsyn, running all of the ad infrastructure for the Libsyn podcast hosting.
Kiptronic is based in San Francisco and has seven employees.
podcasts was so 2006.
welcome to 2007: video all the way
Make your podcast ad-tastic!
Sure. Give me a million dollars and I’ll let you sell Coke or diapers or whatever in my podcast. Deal!
Advertising in podcasts is not my cup of tea. Quite intrusive I would say.
I’m not a big fan of ads in podcasts, especially the loud, intrusive, laser-laden ones. However, a couple of things in Kiptronic’s podcaster FAQs are interesting:
1 - You can record spoken-word sponsorships using your own voice.
2 - Kiptronic currently support inserting ads at the beginning and end of your podcast. So if you accept a sponsorship, your MP3 itself will remain unmodified. At download-time, Kiptronic will insert ads at the beginning and/or end according to the sponsorship agreements you’ve entered into… you can define an “intro clip” that will play before the ad … further product enhancements will soon allow us to deliver ads in the middle of podcasts as well. And of course, for insertions in the middle, you, the podcaster, will always set the insertion point.
This tells me I can record ads using my own voice and will soon be able to insert them anywhere in my show. That sounds about as unintrusive as a podcast ad can get.
Maybe this news will wake someone at Google up so they can use dmac for online audio/podcasts ads. How long shall we wait?
Shokal: When people actually care about podcasts?
Shokal, I’m sure that made sense in your native tongue. Maybe I could figure out your point if I knew what “dmac” was. Care to share?
Luke: do you work for Kiptronic?
Hey Alaska, instead of asking a Miller, why not ask someone who listens to podcasts?
See what I did there? Alaska Podcast Listener? Eh? Eh?
Well, my podcast is much funnier.
To all the VCs reading this..
My company does not produce anything,
But I bought a Domain Name That was Real Catchy.
We sale Vapor Ware for a huge loss.
Since you have to much money Can you please
Send me 4 million Cash so I can go blow it up my nose.
Since im not using podcast, i have no idea of how good is their solution, but the first time i heard about them was on GigaOm before some time. Nice to see a company evolve.
Good luck
Derek, no I don’t, but WOW it sounds like it, doesn’t it? No, I’m actually interested in the service for my own podcast. Just happened to be looking at some other podcast ad networks when I saw this post.
But as we’ve learned, it’s all a moot point, because millers don’t care about podcasts.
#1 Alaska has spoken the truth. I would only make a slight correction: “podcast is so 2005″.
Mike,
TalkCrunch should be upgraded to VideoCrunch. I bet many free video hosting site owners would literally “beg” you to host your video shows with them, and you’d have zero bandwidth cost.
Upgrading from TalkCrunch to VideoCrunch should be easy. For instance, your interview with the Yahoo music execs on the fate of DRM could be done by aiming a webcam at yourself throughout the entire talk, then later on using a video editing software to add visual aids throughout, like inserting screen captures of Wikipedia’s article on DRM, or other writings on the topic. You could also go the more elaborate route by recording the video conference calls, thereby showing the images of people you talk to on the same screen. The possibilities are endless, and you could do all these from the comfort of your home office.
Does anybody know how many podcasts they “represent” and if they have any notable advertisers or sponsors actually buying on a regular basis through them? I agree that video has trumped podcasting, and while I can see in theory a market for a company like this, I have yet to see many independent podcasts with the audience to warrant excitement and I have yet to see that there’s a real market for a podcasting ad network. I question whether $4 million is justifiable.
To clarify, Kiptronic is a video and audio ad insertion technology - for audio and video files of all kinds, whether you want to call them “podcasts” or use other terminology. We’ll have more news soon on the video front so stay tuned, as it were. Thanks for the comments.
I have a podcast, and I represent.
Yo.
Drama - Video may get more hype, but there is still more time in the day to listen to a podcast than there is to view a podcast or watch a YoutTube Video.
Per Shokal comments above - “dmac” he actually meant dMarc - which a company Google purchased last January for a couple hundred million. That company does automatic ad insertions for the radio industry. And it has been speculated that part of the reason Google made the purchase last year was to get into podcasting. To date nothing Google has said “publicly” would indicate that is something they are actively planning on doing.
Kiptronic has a deal with Libsyn, which means they have access to over 5,000 podcasts. However not all podcasts on Libsyn want advertising on their podcasts.
If you want to hear an interivew I did with the CEO of Kiptronic and some of the founder of Libsyn from an year ago here is the link.
http://libsyn.com/media/podcast411/411_060121.mp3
They talk in greater detail about how they work together. Just audio - no video - sorry.
PODcasting is fun and this should be a good service.
-Amit
http://www.ipatrons.com
Time-shifted audio content (webcasts, podcasts, whatever) — are far from dead. Yes, YouTube is all the craze, but audio is just as compelling. Without audio, what good is video?
Just yesterday, CNN published a great article on Grammar Girl. She produces a series of podcasts which have been downloaded more than 1.3 Million times since July 2006. She is the third most popular podcast on iTunes. Podcasts aren’t going anywhere — and I don’t mention this due to the fact that I am a social media producer responsible for several podcasts myself.
Even with my own Interviews Podcast, which features in-depth interviews with folks such as Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, Digg’s Kevin Rose, Carnegie Mellon’s Dr. David Farber, etc., I’ve realized 100K downloads to date. Executives, decisions makers, high-end consumers, students, etc. are tuning in. People are downloading these interviews to their iPods and listening to them on walks, lunch breaks, flights, and anywhere there’s an opportunity to listen to content people are interested in.
The only thing preventing more podcasts from realizing a larger audience is exposure. It takes luck, hard work, press, and word of mouth to be successful. Personally, I believe I can achieve 1 million downloads per month when factoring in the content I’ve published to date. However, again, only consistent visibility will drive people in large numbers to the interviews I’ve produced with Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Webaroo, Intrado, Engage, Craigslist, Digium, etc.
“If you build it, they will come” — I’ve already built the platform and brand. I’m simply waiting for more people to discover the content. The rest is history.
Seems like all the comments are either haters or spammers.
I’ll be interested to see how this company’s offering stacks up against anything eventually coming out of google. my guess is that unless they offer something substantially earth-shattering, they won’t get the tractiong necessary to compete with google.
Amit,
That’s a very insightful comment. Great job!
Josh:
Your mom’s a spammer.
Flash announcement! Silicon Valley VC’s just funded my garage band for - wait for it - yes! $4mil! My niece is closing a term sheet another $4mil to fund her new ant farm, and my Dad got $4mil to fund his new retiree social network, http://www.pullmyfinger.com.
And you should see the valuations we got!
all i can say about kiptronic is that a popular podcast i listen to, katg.com, rave about them. they say the ads are better targetted, less cheesy, and offer better rates than the competition that they’ve seen. also that they’re a great bunch of guys. therefore i’m not surprised that they’ve raised this amount of funding, just at how long it’s taken the rest of the world to wake up to the fact.
The question is why do they need $4mil for a seven guy operation in a space that will generate close to 100% failure rates. Why not two, then another two? My guess is that by the time they burn two, they either won’t need the next two…or they won’t need the next two (if you know what I mean.)
Arguing about the sustainability of podcasts is like arguing about what’s better: radio or TV?
No duh podcasts will be around indefinitely but it will only be marginalized as time goes on as online video melds closer with offline video. Only few stars ever break out immensely beyond their locality, ie. Howard Sterns, but that view can be said for any stars, a breakout star is a breakout star no matter what medium.
People consume media visually and not with boring podcasts. To say that oh wow I’m taking interviews with Digg and Craigslist guys is poorly justifying your existence.
Podcasts are boring. The killer app is video.
Alaska,
“People consume media visually and not with boring podcasts. To say that oh wow I’m taking interviews with Digg and Craigslist guys is poorly justifying your existence.”
I don’t need to drop names to justify my existence — and that isn’t what I’m doing. What matters is that the control of media has shifted, and has allowed creative content producers a crack at delivering media people are interested in. This is what excites me about podcasting, which combines both audio and video content (and I’m not focused on audio alone, by the way.)
Having an opportunity to interview the Craigslists and Diggs of the world is a unique and inspiring experience. Regardless if it’s audio or video, the content and knowledge gained are priceless.
I happen to love video, but as one person mentioned earlier, audio is a lot more consumable than video. You cannot watch video while driving, biking, or doing any activity which requires your undivided attention. What we should all be grateful for is that for those who wish to participate in the media landscape, can now do so without great expense or red tape. That’s freedom.
Alaska,
Hate to disagree with you bro, but there will always be a market for podcasts. The reason being podcast (like radio) engage only one sense, listening (sound). This allows the person to do other things while listening…read, work, excercise.
One cannot both watch a video and read at the same time. To say that podcasts are “boring” is just juvenile as the conversation has nothing to do with which is more exciting. Podcasts and video are just different forms of entertainment for different senses.
Come on podcasts are dead? I can not work and watch video at the same time… I can work and listen to a podcast. Podcast will always exist as long as we don’t grow two sets of eyes.
You people must do some really shitty mindless work to be able to concentrate on your line of work as well as listening to boring podcasts. People listen to music for white noise and I find it hilarious that your counter argument for podcast GROWTH, notice I said the word is GROWTH, is that because people can listen and work at the same time.
That sure is the killer app folks! People sure are clamoring for that! To do drudgery and listen to boring chit chat. Oh wow you guys sure convinced me.
The only thing mindless is your sense of reason. No one is saying video isnt a killer app and none of us are saying podcasts are shit-hot.
All we are saying is there will always be a market for podcasts.
Your opinion is not indicative in the growth of podcasts. While video is growing quicker at the moment, it is senseless to say one form of media is superior because it is apples and oranges.
Excuse my frankness, but Alaska, you whore.
The article is about a podcast advertising network that raised $4 million. The article does not mention, nor does it imply, that the podcasting market is growing. It does not mention or imply that people are clamoring for audio podcasts. No claims of a “killer app”. Oh, and nothing in there about video. Hey, nothing about any of that shit in any of the comments either. Oh wait, except for some useless, off-topic, sharp-rocks-in-rancid-vagina comments by some whore named Alaska.
I won’t dignify your ridiculous drivel by a specific reply, but I will say this. Ben’s comment above, as well as Kiptronic’s own site, states they are working on a video advertising solution as well. You think maybe they can flesh that out with 4 mil to play with? Hey, since video is the killer app and all, you think maybe offering an advertising service for both audio and video might be a good business plan? You think maybe with a little research on your part, you might not have came off sounding like a retarded 14-year-old on one of the most popular blogs in the world, and set yourself up to have your ass handed to you by a lowly, boring podcaster?
Oh, when you reply, be sure to leave a link to your own video site. The killer app one. Whore.
I didn’t know people actually listen to podcasts. I mean, yeah it’s a nice open and democratic broadcasting idea that appeals to certain tech anarchists but does the general public really care? And then, listening to podcasts regularly is not for lazy people (you need a lot of stuff set up correctly and sync regularly) and we all know the general public is lazy.
Just wait for ‘podradio’ to come around (read: internet radio to your mobile music device). That will be changing the game of radio forever. My guess is that it will be year 2010’s big thing.
My $.02
Come on guys podcasts are obsolete now. I think its market will vanish forever in 2007.
Video production costs are an order of magnitude higher than audio production costs. Video bandwidth requirements are an order of magnitude higher than audio bandwith requirements.
Will video ads sell for an order of magnitude higher than audio ads?
Radio is still a $22 billion industry.
I agree that audio/podcasting on the desktop is doomed. http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2.....sktop.html . But on the mobile device there’s a huge market if you can get the friction out of the delivery system. http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/friction.html
Podcasts are merely following all new tech markets. Bleeding edge adoption followed by mass market irrational exuberance. The bubble bursts and a core of high-quality content comes out that people actually care about.
They won’t go away - any more than blogging will. The bar is higher for quality in a podcast, so it’s not a vehicle that will be as pervasive, but there’s no reason in the world that citizen-journalism can’t be audio, video AND text.
Kiptronic’s on to something here.
Advertising is the driver to blow the lid off of audio and video podcasting.
Once podcasters get a whiff of any real money the quality will improve as people will work to supplement their day job income with an initially small but potentially significant secondary source of income.
Also, widgets (the breakthrough technology of 2007) will be a critical to spread podcasts via rss readers/podcasts to an always on “in-box” on the desktop.