Corporate podcast production/promotion company PodGarden has announced an enterprise-level tracking service. The PodTractor service verifies audiences for large podcasting organizations similar to print magazine circulation audits.

PodTractor executives say this tool lets podcasters accurately describe their audience size to potential advertisers and sponsors, or present an accurate accounting of returns to investors and management. On the other side of the media table, the technology helps advertisers determine where to buy ads by making a comparison of podcast audience value.

“Accurate podcast tracking is a major issue among large-scale podcast producers,” says Lisa Wehr, founder and president of Oneupweb, parent company of PodGarden. “Before PodTractor, podcast producers couldn’t prove their value to marketers or media planners. Now they can.”

The service’s reporting includes:

• A summary of the series or an episode overview–by month, week, day
• Most popular series and episode–top downloads
• Visitors and downloads–which domains visited, what each downloaded
• Subscribers–non-subscriber downloads or dedicated subscriber
• Number of subscribers by directory source
• Loyalty tracking–organized by series and episode
• Top podcast directory traffic sources
• Position in search engines Google, MSN, Ask and Yahoo
• Running trend graphs–week-to-week, month-to-month