Wizzard Media Serves Up 1 Billion Podcasts in 2007
Jan 10th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, Making Money with Podcasts, Podcast Distribution, Podcast Hosting, Podcasting Services, Podcasting Statistics, Video Podcasts 
ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick reports that Wizzard Media, the owners of the Libsyn, Switchpod and Blast Podcast networks, will announce tomorrow that it passed the 1 billion download mark in 2007.
It’s an impressive number, one that’s sure to generate a lot of buzz for both Wizzard and podcasting.
It’s been an interesting ride for Wizzard. Here are some of the company’s podcasting milestones:
- In September of 2006, we reported that Wizzard had acquired podcast hosting service providers Switchpod.com and Blast Podcast.
- In October 2006, Wizzard announced that it was buying Libsyn and that it had secured $1,750,000 investments.
- By the end of 2006, Wizzard declared themselves the largest podcast network in the world.
In early 2007, Wizzard announced its revenues for 2006. The company recorded record revenues of $2,943,578, thanks in part to (we’re not making this up!) “Rex” Рthe talking pill bottle.- In May of 2007, we reported that Wizzard was serving up over 70,000,000 podcast episodes per month.
- By July, they’d nabbed another $7.5 million in equity financing.
- In September 2007, they announced a partnership with Nielsen/NetRatings to offer certified download data. According to Wizzard, certified download numbers will bring “a new level of accountability to podcast ad sales.”
- In November, they announced a massive 20-podcast advertising deal with the US Navy.
1-billion podcast served is an interesting milestone for Wizzard. What’s really interesting, though, is that Wizzard has demonstrated that it can execute on podcasting’s potential.
That’s pretty amazing when you think about it….nobody had ever heard of podcasts a couple of years ago.
You’re right, it is pretty amazing. I bet they double that this year. I’ll also bet on them being the first to bring consistent monetization to podcasting. 2008 is going to be a big year for podcasting.
So why have I never heard of these guys?
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I assume they’re referring to the total number of podcast downloads, because one billion podcasts would mean that one out of seven people on the planet would have a podcast.
Most people are probably more familiar with their subsidary companies such as Libsyn than with Wizzard.
[…] In 2007, Wizzard Media surpassed download request forecasts with one billion podcast download requests achieved, surpassing the 450 million download requests for 2006. […]