ONTARIO, CA -- Audible introduced its Audible Wordcast service at last week's Portable Media Expo. Wordcast is a service that aims to help bring the podcasting phenomenon to the next level by offering content providers a set of tools that both help generate revenue and provide metrics that are currently not available using today's technology. John Federico, Director of Business Development, Podcasting, and David A. Joseph, Vice-President, Communications and Strategy, took some time to demonstrate the service to The iPod Observer.

There are two levels of the service, Wordcast Basic and Wordcast Pro. They both provide content management, letting you build, host and manage your content on Audible's existing distribution network. They also offer dynamic advertising delivery, which enables use of the same content with different ads. Both services support Audible's .aa file format, which includes features beyond those of a regular MP3 file, such as chapters. Audible's .aa format is supported by a wide variety of media players as well as such software as iTunes. The services also offer Audible's 24/7 customer support network.

Wordcast Pro is aimed at paid content, offering protected .aa files to help control podcasters' content. Wordcast Pro also offers TrueListener measurement, allowing precise, auditable measurement of the listening audience. This goes beyond today's systems, which only give a rough idea of this important number.

Audible hopes to launch both services shortly with some basic features, but there will be some advanced features available by the first quarter of 2006. The advanced features include true dynamic ad insertion based on listener demographics, rather than manual recreation of the file, which is the initial method. Another advanced feature is the ability of the service to provide anonymous, aggregated listener information, telling podcasters exactly what part of each audio file people have listened to. That helps providers tune their content based on what listeners are actually listening to. Note that this feature is strictly opt-in on the listener's part.

Wordcast Pro will require a one-time US$50 setup fee for content providers. For subscription management, there's a $0.05 charge for each episode download and a 20% transaction fee for paid downloads or subscriptions. There will also be a $0.005 (half-cent) ad insertion charge per download. Note that providers are offered unlimited bandwidth and storage using Audible's servers.

It is important to note that while iTunes can play Audible's .aa files, it is currently impossible to subscribe to Audible-based podcasts from within iTunes.

More information about the services, as well as the ability to be notified when they're officially launched, can be found on the Audible Wordcast web site.