Podcasting for Revver Ad Delivery

There is no doubt that podcast and rss distribution can drive a show's viewership, but is it effective ad delivery? RSS tracking from Feedburner.com is a great way to understand your podcast or blog viewership, and revver files are supported by iTunes and most podcast directories which provides a turn key solution to hosting and syndicating video podcasts. But in our experience the powerful distribution combination, does not convert advertising clicks in an effective way.

For our original production, The Retired Porn Producer's Guide to... we have many methods driving viewership.

Podcasting
Our podcasting feed is directed to Episode 5 (the latest episode) of the series, which downloads (or as Revver puts it "views") when the podcast is subscribed to. Roughly 30% of those go on to download another episode and 10% download them all, but in general podcasting drives 30% of our daily viewership. That episode however has performed poorly over the last month with a click through rate of 0.15%.

Adwords Promotion
Our adwords promotion efforts are directed to a landing page where Episode 1 is embedded. This activity drives 40% of our web traffic, which is about 50% of our total embed code traffic. This episode is shorter and designed to bring in viewers in general, and we have already examined episode length in relation to click through rates. The episode converts clicks at 2.5%.

The series averages a click through rate of 1.31%, so you can see podcasting drives traffic but not necessarily advertising revenue.