KFC asked me about ad rates and I thought I’d share my responses and ask for comments from the community.

Here’s a reprint of our email:

KFC: Got a question about ad rates… Do you know if there are “industry standards” yet on what to charge for different types of ads? I’m building a rate card for a few different types of ads including host endorsement, 10 sec commercial spots and promo codes.

Susan: Host endorsement in audio or video is the single most valuable kind of marketing a brand can buy in our space. The hosts are the “superstars” and can be very persusive in driving demand for a product or service to their constituents. A reasonable charge per download can be in the range of .50 cents to $1 per endorsement if your show has a smaller audience. For a larger audience, you might have to charge less.

Monetizing 10 sec commercial spots depend on whether the ads are pre, mid or post roll but as an example, both NPR and Personal Life Media charge $50 per thousand cpm - which means a nickel for every :10 seconds and NPR rotates them through pre mid and post equally. For PLM, a :10 costs .05 cents, a :20 costs .10 cents and a :30 costs .15 cents per download.

Product placements, again, like host endorsements, are extremely valuable. You might charge per listen in the .50 cent to $1 range. Integration is invaluable and WORKS and it is evergreen because anyone listening to your archives is going to hear it in perpetuity because it’s difficult to edit out. You may also include host endorsement or integration as a bonus for your advertiser to support their :10, :20 or :30 second ad campaign.

Promo codes are most often used in affiliate deals where you are running the ad for free but tracking the back-end sales and taking a revenue share. Alternatively you can also offer a “blended cpm,” like .05 cents per ad and a percentage from 10%-40% of the sales you generate depending on volume and order size. This is riskier for the podcaster but both parties have skin in the game.

Here is a link to a “Monetizing Podcasts” presentation I gave at the New Media Expo and it includes many other types of ad models you can also envoke.

The most important thing to think about is how you can serve and track the advertisement, which ever format you use. You must be able to “retire” the campaign when it comes to a close. That’s why using a podcast ad serving company is invaluable. We use Podbridge for our ad serving. Podtrac and Kiptronic are also big players in this emerging market.

I’d love more comments below from other podcasting experts. Every perspective helps as we’re growing our industry!