If you need a device that listens for the inaudible codes it could be reduced to be included in hardware and offered as a software component for use in players, but it would take years to reach market penetration anywhere near close to Audible’s. Meanwhile, the technology adds no benefits for the user, which Audible’s does, including the ability to start where you last listened across multiple devices, bookmarking, etc.

You’d also have to distribute tools for producers in order to inject the codes into audio. This is a solution that’s miles and miles from commercial deployment.

Very different than “exists” in any commercial sense, but don’t take my word for it. Check it out and tell me if I am wrong.

See: http://vocuspr.vocus.com/VocusPR30/DotNet/Newsroom/Query.aspx?SiteName=arbitron&Entity=PRAsset&SF_PRAsset_PRAssetID_EQ=102232&XSL=PressRelease&Cache=True

Tom Evslin and Tim O’Reilly said it better than I did at Fred Wilson’s and Brad Burnham’s Union Square Ventures event recently: first build the network. Take as little as you can at first to grow as big as you can. That’s the opposite of this trajectory: Make money from the first and you will grow slowly. And in this world, slow growth can be the same as no growth if you don’t get to critical mass first. I’m dying — dying — for the means to commercialize audio and video for those who want to. But a $35 cpm as the starting point won’t scale. And, sorry, but I don’t buy the Radio analogy. I negotiated my employer’s investment in Pyra.
Three cents just to measure one listen is in any measurement excessive. I’ll bet that if you found a way to reduce that — while keeping the ad-serving piece — you’d grow a heckuva lot faster.
And the only ones who can use this are the big companies. That’s not where the real growth is, as we all know. Making this work on the, dare I saw it?, tail is where the size is.

You’re fixating on MP3. It’s just an audio codec and not a particularly capable one—assuming everything has to be MP3 to succeed is locking the industry into something comparable to AM radio. Audible’s .aa file can be delivered via P2P, too. So we could do everything you’re describing wanting to do and with greater distribution reach than MP3 provides (since Audible’s format is supported, with wireless delivery, on Windows Mobile, Nokia/Symbian phones and Palm devices, too).

So, I think we’re all on the same page. The only problem is that Audible can’t go broke revolutionizing the market; it can, however, learn from this kind of feedback and will.

They are here at the PME, too. Although, Audible bought all the lanyards, getting the hit on attention.

MP3 simply can’t do what Jeff suggests it needs to. Every MP3 player would need to be replaced with devices that supported a new MP3 standard.

Displaying ads in conjunction with audio doesn’t make sense in almost every situation, as you are not looking at the device or application you are listening to. Not to mention that speech recognition is incredibly hard.

Finally, the product offering is designed to support a lot of different types of audio delivery, not just individual podcasters and not just advertising-based—that’s the fiscal reality of building software—and we are doing our best to bring the tools into the realm of every producer of content so that they all can play on a level field for the first time.

Are people tryint to think outside the box and not use the “old media” advertising models to support these efforts?