Earlier this month Podzinger announced the launch of its advertising platform with free opt-in for podcasters. I spoke to the good Zingers recently and asked them some questions about Podzinger. Here they are.

1. What, in your opinion, is the killer feature of Podzinger?

The PodZinger difference is the unique way that users can find audio and video content based on standard keyword searches, skim the results for relevance the same way they would for text, and then "jump to "a specific location in the audio and video without fast forwarding or listening to the entire file.

To demonstrate, here is a snapshot of a results page for PodZinger search on "Madonna" and "adoption" to find the latest news on the celebrity's plans to adopt a young boy from Malawi. You can view the snippets of text to determine if this is relevant, note that each snippet has a time-stamp of where these words were spoken. Then you can click on any part of those text results to begin playing from that location.

2. How is Podzinger superior, smarter or better than the competition?

There are two things that distinguish PodZinger in audio and video search. First is PodZinger's advertising program combined with PodZinger's unique ability to assess "consumer intent" and filter the best content from the less desirable content. In this way PodZinger delivers more relevant audio and video ads to consumers, allowing advertisers to associate branded messages with the most appropriate content for them.

Secondly, PodZinger brings a traditional search experience to what we call the "black space" of audio and video search. PodZinger improves the consumer experience making it easy to directly find, skim, and play just the portions of online audio and video that they choose.

3. Who do you see as serious competition?

On the consumer side, no one else provides the user experience that I described above. For our white label partners, we often find ourselves in accounts that are currently using (or planning to deploy) Google or Yahoo for text-based search. These customers recognize PodZinger's value proposition for audio and video and are working to deliver a best-in-breed solution with PodZinger side-by-side with the major text-based players.

4. What's the expected growth of Podzinger in one year?

PodZinger's business plan has two major elements, (1) the ongoing growth of the consumer-facing site and (2) the delivery of audio and video search on a "white label" basis for customers. So, PodZinger is working aggressively on both of these aspects of the business, and they have equal importance in the ongoing growth of the PodZinger business.

5. Finally, what is your goal with Podzinger? Is it a means to a higher goal, or is the goal not fixed right now?

We are very focused on continually improving the consumer experience with audio and video search while simultaneously pushing the envelope for online audio and video advertising.

As you can see, Podzinger is getting really serious and all grown-up !