Google is planning to release the beta version of its Google Audio Ads by the end of this year and everyone in the podcasting community and blogosphere seems to be excited about it... it has become the buzzword. This was very much expected after Google's acquisition of dMarc.

It's still not very clear about how they are going to put it to work but according to Jeff Molander it's going to be contextual placement of ads along side of podcasts. "I would think they would focus on streaming media appearing on Web pages and, likely, RSS feeds – perhaps even within Google Reader?" says Jeff Molander. And here are some more ideas from Steve Bryant

On the other side there has been a lot of criticism about ads being displayed or broadcasted at all as is evident from this post by Fred Wilson and the comments on this post by Jason. But eventually Fred has got the point - "Ads are content just like everything else." This is especially true with targeted ads. The audience gets what they want!