For people interested in the potential of advertising on blogs and podcasts, the Center for Media Research has a new report that offers some modest encouragement. Some of the key findings are:
- total spending on user-generated online media will grow by 106.1% a year to $757-million by 2010
- blog advertising will climb to $300.4-million in 2010 from $16.6-million in 2005; or 39.7% of total spending
- podcast advertising will jump to $327-million in 2010 from $3.1-million in 2005, or 43.2% of total spending
- RSS-related advertising will rise to $129.6-million by 2010 from $650,000 in 2005
   A few things jump out from the report:.
- $757-million doesn't seem like a lot of money given the growth of the blogosphere and podcasts - although it is a new medium and advertisers will take their time trying to get a handle on the economics and most fertile opportunities - much like they stood on the online sidelines until the last couple of years.
- It is interesting to see podcasting accounting for a greater percentage of the advertising pie than blogs. It would be curious to see the rationale behind this development, particularly in light of Forrester analyst Charlene Li's contention that only 1% of U.S. households currently list to podcasts - although the number of listens is expected to hit 12 million by 2010 from 750,000 in 2006.
- While I haven't seen the full report, it would be interested to see how much of the advertising business will be done by blog networks such as John Battelle's Federated Media and AOL's Weblogs Inc.
  For more perspective, check out Buzz Machine. I also wrote a column a few months ago in the Financial Post looking at how the blog-vertising market  and who was going to get a piece of the action.
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