It’s vital for radio stations to monetize their digital initiatives
SNL Kagen sees a bright future for online radio station revenue growth http://www.snl.com/SNL-Financial/Press_Releases/20091102.aspx . This is great news at a time when terrestial ad revenues are at a decline.
Because of the downward sloping revenues from traditional ad sales, terrestrial stations are accepting the online broadcast space as a viable revenue source. Services such as live streaming, mobile apps, and ad insertion are ways to build monetization for the radio station’s digital initiatives.
One easy and effective way in building online revenue is utilizing an ad insertion service. Ad insertion systems match advertisers with an online audience when broadcasting on the Internet. Basically, online radio ad insertion replaces the station’s terrestrial commercials with online-specific content for the Internet audience. The audience who listens to a radio station over the air hear the terrestrial ads, and listeners on the Internet hear the online ads. Ad insertion services integrate with the station’s broadcast so there is no need to dedicate extra resources to broadcasting an additional audio feed.
With the future of online revenue growth becoming more promising, now is the time for terrestrial stations to start familiarizing themselves with the digital monetization tools that are available.
Streaming formats and end-user experience
Before beginning to choose a streaming package it’s important to understand the different delivery methods and codecs. These ultimately affect your viewers experience. You will also need to know if you’re planning to be streaming audio, video, or both?
Windows Media format offers a great delivery for audio/video, can easily be embedded on a webpage but it not natively supported on Apple computers. They will have to install Flip4Mac or Windows Media Player for MAC. Also, Windows Media currently is not supported on most mobile phones.
Adobe Flash streaming is considered a more universal option as Adobe’s Flash player is installed on the majority of internet computers. Adobe Flash is typically more CPU intensive so older machines may have trouble keeping up, and to display the stream on your website requires a separate flash application.
If you are just broadcasting an audio MP3 stream, using Icecast or Shoutcast are very direct methods of streaming to stand alone apps (Winamp, iTunes), hardware (Squeezebox), and are usually supported on mobile phones. Standard MP3 format requires the use of higher bitrates to achieve good sound quality, but recently AAC has allowed reduced bitrates with great sound quality. There are many formats out there, make sure and do your homework on what the pros and cons are for each type to make sure you present your users with effortless streaming!
Webcasting the DCIA P2P & Cloud Market Conference
This DCIA event is scheduled for March 9th at the Cornell Club of New York, from 9am to 5pm. It features keynotes from the top P2P, cloud computing, 
and social network operators, advertising agencies, sponsor companies, content providers, online ad networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs).
There’s panel discussions, case studies and workshops, plus plenty of time for networking during the luncheon and the cocktail reception.
For those who cannot make it, we’ll be webcasting the conference via our own network through our Flash application designed to show video of the conference as well as the slides presented by the keynotes.
For more information about the event click here
Abacast Announces New Board Members and Record 2009 Revenues
Tim Napoleon, former Chief Strategist at Akamai and John Kesler, VP of Business Development for Emmis Communications join Abacast’s Board of Directors; Abacast reports record revenues in 2009, its fourth consecutive year of double digit revenue growth.
