I was at the gym the other night listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. He was describing a new marketing program called the “Golden Ticket” at his new podcasting company, Podshow. It’s–in a word–BRILLIANT!

The way Podshow’s Golden Ticket contest works is that they put a secret message into one out of 25,000 MP3 files downloaded by users. If your file has the “ticket” then you’ll get a message at some point during the recording telling you–and you alone–that you’ve won. The result? You can be sure that (more) folks are gonna listen to the show.

It’s simple technology–folks have been dynamically building audio files fro a long time on the Internet (people did it in the streaming days). Most of the time folks use this technology to change the ads in the show so that you can sell ads across 5,000 MP3 files on a CPM or timed basis without remastering 5,000 MP3 files. However, this is the first time I’ve heard about doing a contest like this.

Fun. If Curry was smart (and he is) he would enable this service for podcasters.