Just yesterday I posed the question “I wonder when Arbitron will begin ratings for podcasts?” Guess what they announced today?

Arbitron Portable People Meter System Successfully Tracks Podcasts; State-of-the-Art Audience Measurement System Demonstrates It Can Track Listeners of Alternative Radio Technology

With podcasting making headlines as one of the latest technologies being embraced by terrestrial radio broadcasters, Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) has demonstrated that its Portable People Meter (PPM(SM)) system has the ability to track audiences who listen to this new method of radio programming. During the week of July 18, Arbitron encoded several podcasts by Clear Channel’s WHTZ-FM (Z100) in New York, that were uploaded to the podcast portion of Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The Z100 podcasts were then downloaded to an MP3 player and played over headsets using the PPM headset adapter. The PPM detected and recorded the unique identification codes that were embedded in the MP3 file.

Granted this is just a test of one station that’s podcasting and granted that podcasting of “big media” isn’t really where I think podcasting will be most successful but it’s a start and shows that even the big boys like Clear Channel consider it serious! Thanks to Steve Rubel for the alert!

Heads up folks. You and I can do it ourselves. In fact we are doing it. Want us to help you do it?