The Portable Media Conference and Podcasting Expo starts this Friday, and one of the big topics up for discussion at this nascent industry's clambake will certainly be Podcast advertisements.

Naysayers, Luddites and purists will offer you a hundred reasons why Podcast advertising won't work. Here are a few of their more popular profundities:

• You can't click a Podcast advertisement
• The most likely Podcast advertisers will be current radio advertisers, and 85 percent of radio advertising is local
• There's no way to measure Podcast listening
• There's no way of efficiently buying ads
• There's no way to effectively place ads

Now, here's one reason—admittedly ineffable, non-qualitative, and borrowed from Gregory Galant at Venture Voice—why Podcast advertisements will be a big hit:

• Advertising always finds a way.

Yes, I know, not exactly a wonder of profundity either. But if you look at media consumption and advertising trends, I think you'll see that Greg is right, and that Podcast advertising is all but inevitable.

And I'd predict that the Podcast advertising model will, eventually, operate on the same principle as Google's text ads: many small ads contextually associated with niche media. Because really, when we talk Podcasts, we're talking about the Long Tail.

But, to address the points against Podcasting:

You can't click a Podcast advertisement
This reasoning relies on the fallacy that Podcast ads should function like banner ads because you download Podcasts from the Internet. No. If anything, Podcast advertising resembles radio ads (but on steroids). Besides, you can't click on any other form of ad except Internet ads, so why should this be a delimiter?

But 85 percent of radio ads are local
Yes, that's true. But why? Because radio stations are local. And there are many national and niche advertisers that find the Podcast medium attractive. Home Depot, for example, employs a significant amount of radio advertisements because, presumably, customers are more likely to visit a store if they're listening to the advertisement in their cars. Likewise, Podcast listeners are often on the go.

Niche advertisers who are not attracted to radio advertising because of its broad audience will be attracted to Podcasts because the listeners share similar interests. In Podcasts, they will find a critical mass of geographically distributed consumers.

There's no way to measure how many people are actually listening to Podcasts
True. There's also no way to measure how many people are actually listening to the radio. (Don't try to convince me that the Arbitron actually works.) And again, Podcast listeners are engaged with what they're listening to. They want to listen to it. They're a dedicated audience.

There's no effective way to buy ads
Maybe not yet. But there are certainly quite a few players getting into this space. And as advertising and search giants like Google and Yahoo aggregate more and more Podcasts into directories, they're laying the foundation for selling and placing ads. Is there any doubt that Google will be a big player in this space?

There's no way to effectively place ads
A lot of companies are rolling out services to place Podcast ads. Take for instance Fruitcast, the Podcast advertising service launched last week that offers automated ad insertion. RadioTail, a similar service that will launch this week, will be the first company to offer automatic insertion of interstitial advertisements.

Many advertisers have already begun placing spots in Podcasts or buying sponsorships. As far back as February, Volvo agreed to pay $60,000 for a six-month sponsorship of Weblog Inc.'s Autoblog.

Some producers are experimenting with different ad rates, most of which rely on the only available metric: downloads.

Click here to read more about the business potential of Podcasting.

But here's the biggest reason Podcast advertising will be a big hit: Podcasts are at the forefront of a relatively new media consumption trend. Podcasts are shorter, faster and smaller pieces of content, and that's what people increasingly prefer to consume.

As Wired's Chris Anderson has noted, music listeners are buying singles, not albums. Networks are publishing shorter videos that work online as well as when broadcast. Smaller videogames that live on smaller, mobile platforms are becoming more popular. Magazine articles are getting shorter.

Advertisers must cope with these new paradigms. Podcasts are only the latest form of shorter, faster, smaller niche media, and there will certainly be others.

And, just like with Podcasts, advertising will find a way to work there as well.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Gregory Galant's name, and to mention that the company RadioTail will be the first to offer automatic insertion of interstitial ads.

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