There has been a lot of buzz surrounding podcasting over the past couple of years since Dave Winer and Adam Curry - and his podcasting company, Podshow - pushed forward the notion of time-shifted broadcasts of anything from music to talk delivered via RSS feeds containing links to digital file downloads.

The momentum of last year appears to have dwindled a bit and the latest victim may be Odeo which, as Andy Beal points out, has a decent user base of nearly 700,000 uniques and 3 million page views. The numbers do not appear to be enough to save off a sale. The company was purchased last October and now it’s already back on the block.

But, are sites and businesses such as Odeo really an unsuccessful enterprise? For now.

Niche publishers exist all over the web and, in fact, make up the vast majority of websites as popularized by Chris Anderson’s phrase “the long tail.” Just yesterday, Mr. Anderson wrote on “why niche brands win” which seems very relevant to the Odeo discussion.

The challenge with Odeo is aggregating a ton of digital download content that is very niche and monetizing it. Each podcasting ‘channel’ for example may only have a couple of hundred users and their tastes are specific. It’s very difficult to sell a direct advertiser on such a small audience given the cost of sales support and production costs that are incurred by the publisher and ultimately passed along to the advertiser - let alone the cost of the advertiser’s time to implement such a deal. The CPA just wouldn’t work.

Tags: podcasting, odeo, adam curry, podshow, longtail, chris anderson

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