As the owner of ipodjuice.com, I thought I would throw in my two cents. Whenever we receive a phone call from a customer wanting to place an order with us, we ask how they came across our site. Almost always the answer is Google, Yahoo!, or MSN.

When we ran podcast ads with BackBeat Media, for a few weeks during and after, the answer was sometimes ‘Evil Genius’ or ‘Coverville’ – which was great!

Months later, we would still get occassionally get orders from customers using the show-specific coupon codes that each podcast host included in their announcement. However, as time passed, I personally began to wonder how many of those orders using the codes were from actual listeners or simply from customers who FIRST came into the site from a PPC ad and then, at the last second during the checkout process, decided to do a secondary search for ‘ipodjuice coupon code’ or some other variation and found the Evil Genius and Coverville show notes that displayed the discount code we offered at that time.

Erring on the side of caution, we always honored the discount when customers who used this coupon code also added a comment saying that they first heard about us from the actual podcast.

I think the jury is still out on how “indelible” podcasts ads. However, as Garricks’ original query demonstrates, they may be more memorable than traditional advertising outlets.

P.S. Garrick: please use the coupon code ‘garrick’ for that $4 off shipping when you are ready to place your order from us! This is a one-time use coupon code and will only be active for the next two weeks.

With our ‘talking points’ model of having the host deliver the sponsorship, the sponsor’s message/brand is burned very deeply into the brains of the listeners. Look at the dial-a-mattress/Howard Stern success. Commit to sponsoring a show for a year (or more) and you’ll have a very robust presence in the mindshare of the audience. On the flip-side, doing one spot and then looking for results the next week just doesn’t translate to this medium.

The good news is that we already have stables of sponsors who get this, and we are obviously hard at work every day teaching the rest of the world what it all means. Hoping that the newly-formed Association for Downloadable Media can act as a big megaphone in this regard, too.

Exactly why I think there’s a good conversation here. Podcasting is asynchronous - potentially well beyond the timespan of an individual campaign. While my retention and intention is good, I wasn’t able to act on it as easily as I (or anyone else involved) would like.