What Price Podcasting?

From the NYT:

Podcasters Unite to Figure Out a Role for Ads by BOB TEDESCHI

Few consumers will pay to receive podcasts — audio files that exist on the Web, and can be automatically sent to a person’s computer. Advertising, the other potential revenue source for producers and publishers, does not work when marketers have no way of tracking how many times their advertisements are being heard or swapping out old advertisements once they have run their course.

Industry executives say they have closed in on a solution in recent months, which means that consumers may have a much wider array of free audio (and video) content coming to them, if they can stand a little advertising to go along with it. The effort is a multifront initiative, starting with improvements in technology. Companies have begun distributing media files that stay connected to publishers, giving them a way to track the number of times that advertisements have been heard or viewed, or replace old advertisements.