Podcast advertising is fantastically profitable even though it's extremely unsophisticated. As the profit margins shrink due to increased competition, more soph

Podcast advertising is fantastically profitable even though it's extremely unsophisticated. As the profit margins shrink due to increased competition, more sophisticated ad formats are going to come along to keep the lights on. Right now, every podcast listener hears the exact same ad regardless of where or when they are listening. It seems obvious that at some point soon, podcasts will include a custom code for "insert ad here" and an ad exchange will bid on that 30 second spot and put a targeted ad there. Currently, the MP3 + RSS format of podcasts doesn't support this degree of sophistication which is what Marco is alluding to with it's walled gardens comment. There's a goldmine for whoever can figure out how to move podcasts into a vertically integrated format and define the platform.