According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 26 million Americans looked to the Internet as a source of news and information during the mid-term election this August, compared to only 21 million during the general election in ’04 and 11 million during the mid-term election in ’02. The increase in online videos and podcasts contributed significantly to this increase.

Online video created a new meaning for mudslinging campaigns, with political staffs airing any humorous event or mistake of their opponent, even skewing footage to slander a challenger. One of the most talked about videos currently is from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which put up a video showing Congressman Harold Ford Jr’s staff “freaking out” while a cameraman follows him. There is speculation that it was a set up by opponent Republican Bob Corker.

Podcasts are a relatively new source for information, but a significant factor driving people who look to the Web for election news. During the mid-term election in ‘02, podcasts were not even avaliable to the public. In 2003, they could only be found on well-known Web sites. By 2006, according to the Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia survey, 11 percent of the U.S. population had listened to a podcast. Some of my favorite podcasts for election coverage include:

Midweek Politics with David Pakman - Politics, news, and current events with heartheissues.com’s David Pakman.

Vote 2006 | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS - Coverage of the 2006 Senate, House and gubernatorial races including analysis from NewsHour’s Political Wrap. Reports on election trends and policy issues, and documentaries from key regions of the United States.

CNN News Update - The latest news happening in the U.S. and around the world.

For more policatical online video and podcast suggestions, visit PodZinger.

The St. Louis Cardinals clinched the National League last night to go head to head with the Detroit Tigers for the World Series title. And it was a pretty interesting game too, considering it was tied in the ninth and determined by a two-run homer by Yadier Molina, who had a .216 ERA and only six home runs in pre-series games!

The series starts tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. ET in Detroit, and since Boston’s beloved Red Sox are out of the picture, it’s going to be a tough decision which I’ll be routing for. I usually go for the underdogs, but between the Cards winning the NL with a homer by a no-name player, and the Tigers going from being the worst team in the league during the past three years to the Series’ favorite, it’s going to be a hard decision.

Either way, I’m just glad the Yankees lost in the first round!

For all of you baseball fans out there, I’ve included a few links to some of my favorite baseball podcasts below. For more suggestions, visit PodZinger.

Baseball Geeks PodCast - Gregg Keer and Rob Reed present a MLB (with a Fantasy spin) podcast from links and information submitted to the BaseballGeeks.com and PlayerTrack.com sites.

Pro Baseball Central - A weekly radio show that discusses the happenings in Major League Baseball.

Baseball Prospectus Radio Podcast – Provides up-to-date news on happenings in the baseball world.

Week after week I’ve noticed articles about the continued craze of online video. Amazon now offers movie downloads from its Web site, Apple has a new technology that allows consumers to play a video from their computers directly onto their TVs, Google replaced its Froogle tab on its toolbar with Google Video in early August, Blinkx announced on Monday a partnership with Microsoft to power video search capabilities for some sites on MSN and Live.com, and most recently, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars, making it Google’s largest acquisition since the company’s inception eight years ago.

The increase of online video content has simultaneously caused a soar in online advertising. A recent article by Brian Morrissey in AdWeek noted that net video advertisements are becoming more expensive than advertising space on TV. Ad agency executives said that the cost to play an ad before video content now costs anywhere from $25 to $40 per 1,000 plays, which is a 25 percent increase just in the past year. Media execs say that that is comparable to the price to run a similar ad on network television.

Catherine Holahan wrote an article today for BusinessWeek discussing the recent YouTube acquisition and citing that in addition to expanding Google’s user base, the purchase gives a hefty boost to Google’s online video library, searchable content and potential advertiser base, as 65,000 new videos are currently uploaded to YouTube every 24 hours. Holahan also interviewed our CEO, Alex Laats, who discussed our new advertising platform with her and how it relates to search. We were very excited to see that we were the only company referenced in the article in regards to video advertising!

It seems the timing of the release of our advertising platform could not have been more ideal. I think now that we’ve introduced such an innovate option for advertisers, we are going to start seeing similar ones pop up among other search engines. At least we’ll still be able to say we were the “first of our kind!”

In recent BlogZinger postings, I’ve been hinting that PodZinger would soon be announcing an advertising platform that was unlike any other out there and provided more benefits to the consumers, content creators and advertisers. Well…today, we officially launched our first-of-its-kind online video advertising platform, enabling advertisers to serve relevant ads in audio and video content!With the new ad platform, podcasters are able to monetize their content and receive half of all generated revenue. Using content classification technology and algorithms for analyzing consumer intent and aggregate consumer usage, PodZinger solves the problem of connecting consumers with relevant advertising in online audio and video content. The new service goes far beyond traditional text and click-through advertising services that advertisers are dependant on today, providing enhanced online experiences for content creators, advertisers and consumers.

We’ve already gotten some great feedback from the media, and I’ve included some of the highlights below from Red Herring, The Boston Herald, Adotas, ClickZ and more. Feel free to let us know what you think of our new platform, or if you’d like to become involved in the program yourself!

Red Herring, PodZinger Targets Ads, October 5, 2006

Boston Herald, Video podcast ads on tap, October 5, 2006

Adotas, PodZinger Opens Podcast Advertising Search Network, October 5, 2006

ClickZ, PodZinger to Offer Targeted Video Ads, October 5, 2006

MediaPost, Podzinger Rolls Out Ad Network, October 5, 2006

CNET, PodZinger to share ad revenue with podcasters, October 5, 2006

TechCrunch, Podzinger to listen for ad opportunities, October 5, 2006

eMarketer recently released the findings of the study, “The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy” conducted by Synovate. Interestingly, the study found that there are more than 16 million Hispanic Americans online. (55% of the total US Hispanic population)

This is music to our ears, as we offer full-text search of all the audio and video podcasts created in Spanish with PodZinger en español. With more Hispanics going online to learn about brands, make purchasing decisions, chat with friends and read blogs, advertisers are beginning to take note of this influential population. The U.S. Hispanic population alone has an estimated purchasing power of over $700 billion.

In general, more Americans, 40 million according to the Pew Internet Life Survey, go to the web simply for entertainment. All of this translates into online advertising potential for marketers and advertisers. As more consumers continue to devote their free time surfing the web and searching for interesting content, online advertising budgets will simultaneously increase. Yet, marketers and advertisers still struggle with how to best target these audiences.

PodZinger enables advertisers to tie their messages to relevant content in audio and video and effectively deliver their brand messages. With our technology, advertisers are able for the first time to mine multimedia search data and leverage usage and topic filters to arrive at a better understanding of how consumers are interacting with content. For consumers, this means a more enjoyable search experience as ads directed to them are based on stated interests. For the Hispanic population, this gives more reason to visit PodZinger en español.

The trend of online advertising has steadily increased as companies continually recognize its value. Just this week, eMarketer reported that U.S. Internet advertising will increase more than 33 percent in 2006 from a year earlier, which is the fastest pace this decade. In addition to that, marketers are developing new, innovative ways to advertise online, such as placing ads within video clips, creating ones that are less intrusive and more user-interactive, allowing for heightened viewer responsiveness.

Online competitors Google and Yahoo! released new advertising campaigns last week, unveiling video user-integrated strategies of their own. While Google’s, takes the user on a cyber car shopping experience, Yahoo’s integrates a 15-30-second commercial after each viral video, making it the first time it has incorporated advertisements with user-produced material.

It’s exciting to see what other search engine providers are developing on the video advertising front, especially as we are in the process of completing our own platform, which we think adds unique benefits to advertisers and content publishers. Stay tuned for details on the launch of ours shortly!

In the Wall Street Journal today, editor William Bulkeley wrote an article entitled, “Surfing the Internet for Spoken Words:  New Technology Allows Searchers to Scour Online Audio, Video to Target Advertising,” and included PodZinger as one of the leading industry experts.  The article explores how online audio and video search engines are becoming a tapped resource for targeted advertising. 

“Audio and video have been a black space that cannot be discovered by traditional search engines,” Bulkeley quotes our CEO Alex Laats saying.    

Bulkeley discusses that, similar to targeted advertising with text-based searches such as Google and Yahoo!, PodZinger is utilizing viewers’ key word searches to enable advertisers to create relevant ads that are specifically tied to those queries.

Watching television as a little girl, I remember thinking how cool it was that no matter what show I watched, there were always commercials for my favorite toys.  It took me a few years to realize that that was just targeted advertising.  Boy, it’s amazing how far technology and advertising have come since then!

eMarketer just published an article, “What Do ‘Heavy Users’ Do Online?,” citing a study from Universal McCann that discusses how “heavy” Internet users are utilizing the Web and the impact of new media on advertising.  Since we’ve been talking about several trends in media lately, I thought it would be interesting to include some of its results. 

• 16% of people ages 16-34 used podcasting and 20% plan to use podcasting in the future

• Close to 100 million people in the U.S. (about 1/3 of the population) fell into the category of a “heavy” Internet user, which is defined as someone who’s accessed the Web at least 11 times in the past week

• IM, price-comparison sites and social networks were the most popular uses for the Web

• The most common activities were shopping and buying.  84% of the people polled said they had done both.

• 62% said that they had participated in blogging one way or another

I didn’t find the above stats too surprising, but one that definitely caught my eye was the type of technology that ‘heavy’ Internet users would miss the most if it were taken away from them.  My first guess would have been the Internet, but it is actually television with 28% of respondents.  Only 24% said that they would most miss Web sites, with email coming in close behind at 23%.  These stats exemplify how important video still is today and why content creators continue to seek new ways to drive revenue from their extensive video libraries.

Jonathan Faz has written a script that adds PodZinger search to the Mozilla Search toolbar box. To use it, navigate your Mozilla browser to the mozdev.org download page and then and click on “Podzinger.” Then, click the pull down arrow in your search box to select the PodZinger icon. Voila!

Although the summer is coming to a close, vacation time is winding down, and the streets of Boston are full with the moving vans of students heading back to school, TV fans everywhere have something to look forward to: a new and exciting season of their favorite network shows.  I am looking forward to the next season of American Idol, finding out whether Meredith will choose McDreamy, and finally, learning whether Link will face execution, as Fox’s Prison Break starts tonight!

While I wait in anticipation for this season’s plot twists, wondering what new show I’ll add to my already-hectic schedule, thousands of podcasts are discussing the latest TV developments and making their own predictions as to season outcomes.  Some of my favorite podcasts on the topic include:

The Lost Podcast With Jay and Jack   
A podcast dedicated to ABC’s show “Lost.”  Join Jay and Jack as they recap the latest episode, discuss Lost news and spoilers, devote a large portion of time to listener feedback, and more.

S’mores American Idol Radio Show   
American Idol talk show.

24 The Podcast   
Welcome to 24 The Podcast, the podcast that follows the show “24,” every intense moment, every week, the day after the show.

Fall TV Preview Podcasts

TV Guide Talk  
Check out this podcast from the popular weekly magazine to stay on top of the upcoming fall TV season.  Join the TVGuide crew as they discuss your favorite shows along with the new series that will soon be hitting the tube.

Reality TV Podcast   
The Reality TV Podcast discusses all of the latest happenings in the world of reality TV, including recaps and commentary of shows like “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” “Big Brother,” “The Apprentice” and others.

For more podcast suggestions or to find out the most talked about television series visit our Zing Index.