Media: All About ... The podcast platform.

Advertisers are waking up to podvertising's potential.

Virgin Radio's new Sunday afternoon programme, The Tim Lovejoy Show, which launched at the weekend, is available as a podcast. Nothing remarkable about that, we hear you say. These days, when launching a new radio show, it's almost obligatory to mention that it will also, naturally, be available in digital downloadable format.

Virgin, though, claims it is a market leader in this sector - and not without justification. Back in March of this year, a 'repurposed' Pete and Geoff breakfast show was the first UK radio show to be podcast on a daily basis.

It was also the first to feature ... wait for it ... podvertising. It's not as whizzy as it sounds - it's merely a matter of creating and selling tailored sponsorship and advertising opportunities around the tailored content. The Pete and Geoff show's first podvertisers were COI Communications and Expedia.

Nivea, which is sponsoring the live broadcast version of The Tim Lovejoy Show, will also be the podcast sponsor and Virgin is selling the equivalent of spot ads into the podcast show. It's early days still, but Virgin's efforts are helping convince many that this is not just a passing (and terribly geeky) fad, but something that may be of relevance to the ad industry.

1 Cynics suggest the podcasting term is an astute piece of marketing by Apple Computer, the manufacturer of the iPod, in seeking to turn a brand name into a generic. Podcasts, however, can be played on any portable MP3 player - and also, increasingly, on next-generation mobile phones.

2. A podcast is a digital audio file of substantial length (longer than 15 minutes, say) that can be downloaded from a website via the internet. It can then be transferred on to an MP3 player for later consumption.