Podcast Advertising: My Review of Fruitcast

I began using a new, online service called Fruitcast this past November. Created by James Archer of Forty Media, Fruitcast is a service that inserts brief, 20-second ad spots at the beginning and end of your podcast. In return, they pay the you a percentage of the cost to the advertiser. It’s very much like Google Adsense but for podcasts. You receive anywhere from 2 cents to 5 cents each time one of your ad-inserted podcasts is downloaded. There are several good things to say about Fruitcast, as well as a few negative issues that ultimately led me to stop using it as of this morning. Lets start with the positive aspects of it.

1. Reduced bandwidth costs. When you post a new podcast, the Fruitcast system picks it up from you RSS feed and creates a new file which they host on their server. So any time someone downloads a one of your podcasts through an aggregator like iTunes or iPodder, Fruitcast covers the bandwidth. If, however, folks download your podcast directly from your blog, you’re still on the hook for bandwidth.

2. Great service. James is great to work with. Each time I’ve had a question or problem, he’s been right there to address it within - at most - a few hours, and usually, immediately.

3. Revenue. As of the time of this writing, I’ve earned about $400.00 on about 8100 downloads since mid November. If my math is correct, that works out to just under 5 cents per download (my most recent downloads, however, were only bringing 2 cents per). Since most podcasters are used to having to pay to support their podcasting habit, this is obviously a plus.

4. Ease of use. Once you have your podcast set up through Fruitcast, there’s nothing else to do except keep podcasting and posting them to your blog. Fruitcast handles the rest.

Now, here are the current problems with Fruitcast in my book (I’ve covered all these with James):

1. Increased file size. When Fruitcast creates a new file from your original podcast, they increase the bit rate to 128 kbs. Although the sound quality is a bit better for the listener, it makes for a really big file. As an example, a 30 minute podcast at 64 kbs is about 15mb in size. At 128 kbs, your file size is doubled to 30mb, which makes for a longer time to download the file and more space consumed on a hard disk or mp3 player.

2. Modified ID3 Tags. ID3 tags provide information such as the title of the podcast and the podcaster’s name. They make it much easier to find stuff when you have more than a few different files on your mp3 player. When Fruitcast creates the new file, they replace the ID3 tags with just the file name. So instead of seeing this on your mp3 player: “SavvySoloCAST #28 - MicroISV: From Vision to Reality With Bob Walsh,” you see “ssc-ep28.”

3. File Clipping. This is the biggest problem I’ve experienced so far with Fruitcast. My last two podcasts have been cut short by the Fruitcast system, and I’ve had to repost them. As an example, the podcast I posted last night runs about 44 minutes, but when I downloaded it through iTunes this morning, it was cut off at about 10 minutes. Likewise, when I downloaded it through iPodder, it was cut off at about 28 minutes. I’m not sure why that’s happening, but it’s just too much of an inconvenience to my listeners no matter how much revenue it generates.

4. Stats tracking could be better. The fruitcast stats system provides:

• total downloads per podcast
• total ad runs per podcast and per month
• total revenue per podcast and per month
• top ten cities in which your listeners reside

That’s not bad, but I’d like to see something more extensive in a stats package. One crucial missing element is the downloads per month. I can tell you how many total downloads I’ve had since starting to use Fruitcast, but I can’t tell how many total donloads I had in December alone.

5. Limited number of advertisers. Since I began using Fruitcast in mid November, I’ve had about 20,000 podcast downloads. However, only 8100 of them have had ads inserted, which can only mean there are not enough advertisers to use up all the inventory. This, of course, has less to do with Fruitcast and more to do with the young age of podcast advertising, but it’s something to take into account if you’re considering using Fruitcast.

Going forward, podcast advertising is going to happen one way or another. And although there are several benefits to using Fruitcast, you have to weigh them against the possibility that you may alienate your listeners due to the current problems with the Fruitcast system. From my dealings with James, I suspect he’ll eventually get these problems ironed out, but until then, Fruitcast is off the table as an option for me and my listeners.