The New York Times today has some interesting coverage of the recent announcement of the Association for Downloadable Media, an organization that hopes to set standards for audience measurement and advertising for downloadable media.

The article takes a look at some of the reasons that some commercial podcasters see a need for the organization:

Susan Bratton, who helped form the Association for Downloadable Media, said her experience as the chief executive of Personal Life Media, which produces audio podcasts on a range of subjects, helped convince her that more industry cooperation was needed to make podcasting a viable business.

Among other things, Ms. Bratton said that technology companies, marketers and publishers need to agree on standard methods for packaging and delivering advertisements, and tracking the number of times an advertisement is heard. Also, there is no consensus on how best to design an advertisement within a podcast. As a result, marketers, advertising agencies and publishers cannot efficiently implement big campaigns across multiple sites.

While many commercial podcasters are already successfully incorporating advertising, there’s a need for standardization to provide advertisers with a greater comfort level with the new technology.

“There are more iPods and other MP3 devices in more places today than there have ever been,” said Dakota Sullivan, chief marketing officer of BlueLithium, an online advertising network. “It seems this notion of personally programmed media, whether video or audio, is the way of the future, and if podcasts are part of that, it makes a lot of sense for us to be there.”