Stuff like this https://podads.podbean.com
When I see ads on the NYTimes I know they're just whoever paid for the space. It isn't the NYTimes claiming to have curated the best of the best and they're only showing you the greatest products and this just happens to be The Best pickup truck out there, etc. Eh.
[1] - Every podcaster is going to claim that no, it's really what they think, what a marvelous coincidence. It's amazing what someone will "think" when their paycheque relies upon it.
When a normal ad comes on, it's outside of the "content" you're used to. A different voice, a different presentation style, a different part of the webpage, a different section of the newspaper.
When the content producer themselves is presenting the ad, however, you feel a bit more subconsciously inclined to trust them. IMO this is why YouTube ads have taken off so well.
Obviously I know that it's just an ad, but in the back of my head I'm paying more attention to it.
I think there's a lot of truth to this, but there are also plenty of podcasters who will literally try all the products themselves (or have some staff do so) and if the thing is no good, pick a different sponsor. The biggest shows are often in a position to do this without any real sacrifice, other than the time investment in testing: they have loads of sponsors knocking at their door that are all offering similar (large) amounts of money, so they're free to pick the one they honestly like.
Here, I feel like the gray area is that they're unlikely to have tried the alternatives to the product. So they'll give a ringing endorsement of Squarespace or Mailchimp or Purple mattresses, but all that shows is that it's probably decent stuff, not the actual highest-quality or best-price option for the listener.
Overall, though, I feel like it's practically a miracle that we have an online media industry that is free of the totally maxed-out creepiness of website advertising (tracking across media, profiling down to the individual level, etc.) And it's even making money. Just listen with a healthy skepticism about the ads. I think most people do.
I profoundly doubt this. It is a tiny set of sponsors who keep the entire podcast industry afloat, and remarkably every podcaster is just a great fan of that tiny set. It's transparent and profoundly disingenuous. It's an old school friend now bothering you to buy their MLM bullshit candles or knick knacks.
But again, I have absolutely no doubt that each and every one of those podcasters have convinced themselves that they thoroughly considered every option and this foam bed (indistinguishable from any other) at a huge premium, this fear-mongering VPN, this insurance option, this piece of luggage, etc, are all simply the best for their listeners. One would have to be profoundly gullible to actually believe that.
From an ethical perspective, if a podcast is doing this tactic they deserve every skip they get.
On the scale of scumbaggery, tracking ads that pitch to my profile are a world less vile than the current podcast pitch.
I'm all for adblockers on the web, due to their tracking nature, but podcast ads aren't served from some third party that eats up bandwidth, causes page jumps or autoplays video. They aren't even like Spotify ads, which seem to know when you've muted audio.
Is it really that taxing to fast forward through them?
I don't know if that's a representative opinion. Ads are ads. Having the host read copy doesn't tell me anything about whether the product works for me.
There's a scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt gestures at a bus stop men's underwear ad with a chiseled model on it and says dismissively "Is that what real men look like?"
Moments later, he is shirtless, with a perfectly chiseled body (that fitness trainers will tell you is impossible to keep year-round) fighting waiters and parking lot attendants.
The movie itself is an ad. It would never have sold well if two schlubby middle-aged actors had been cast to play it.
This is in essence no longer something that's just a cool idea and a nice novelty, it's why streaming companies and creators especially complain about losing revenue.. OP is taking what I would prefer to go to creators.
For me some podcast hosts are so ridiculously funny that I actually intentionally listen to their ad reads. There's been a time or two when I've gone back and re-listened to an ad because I was dying from laughter the whole time. Most of the time it's because the hosts are ripping on the advertiser a bit but it still seems like an amazingly good value for them. The only other time I'll ever do this is for Super Bowl ads, even though those are generally pretty lame. (Other hosts do just dryly read their ads with nothing ad-libbed -- or don't read ads for their own show at all (NPR) -- and I'll usually skip those when it's convenient.)
Podcast advertisers often fall into a category of product where name recognition is important. They are okay knowing that most of us skip the ads because they know the audience will hear the name before they have a chance to skip the ad.
Actually... now that I think about it... I think I do respond better to podcast ads. There's 5 or 6 instances, this past year, that I checked out companies because of them. I've only done that once for a tv commercial in my lifetime and... I don't think I ever clicked on a banner ad before... on purpose. Never on purpose. Accident, yes.
I think it's because they're not, "OH MY SHIT LOOK AT ME! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" types of ads.
Advertisers care about conversions -- this is why promo codes exist. If podcast advertisers don't see a steady tick of users spending money via the promo codes they distribute, they'll stop advertising. The impressions are way less valuable than conversions are.
So is it unethical (or "un-strategic" if you prefer) to not buy from brands that are mentioned by your favorite podcaster? If people en-mass start making educated purchasing decisions and ignoring openly silly ads from WeWork or matress companies, is that harmful to the industry?
Advertising itself in its current state is harmful. People treat it like, "you listen for ads and you get the content for free." But no -- the ads manipulate you. If on average most people are not being manipulated, then the system doesn't work. The manipulation is the part that advertisers care about. It's not free. Objectively, if advertising was not manipulating your purchasing decisions in a non-optimal way, it would not be worth doing.
From that perspective, I'm more than happy to burn advertising to the ground, even if it means taking out a few podcasters.
You can also take the perspective that advertising is a zero-sum game where nobody wins and consumers aren't affected, but every business has to spend just to keep up with each other. In which case, I'm also happy to burn the industry to the ground to reduce pointless corporate waste and reduce the cost of entry for new businesses.
You just decide the transaction isn't worth it, and then not execute the transaction. I do it whenever I decide not to buy a Tesla.
Edit: meant to say I regularly don't buy a Tesla, not regularly do. College student, definitely couldn't afford one
No. It works the same way any newspaper, radio, and TV advertising work.
If advertisers sponsor a podcast and get zero return, then the advertisers stops sponsoring the podcast and the podcast dies.
Is it ethical to mute the TV when commercials come up?
I think it's just your choice, right?
> Is it ethical not to look at a billboard when you're walking down the street?
This is fine, you're in a public space where somebody paid for an ad on nearby private property, and society wouldn't be worse off if everybody ignored billboards, advertisers were no longer willing to pay for billboards, and we got rid of the lot of them.
> Is it ethical to mute the TV when commercials come up?
This is fine, you paid for the TV and you pay for cable, and there will be no consequences to many people muting the TV during commercials.
If, however, you're given something for free that could be taken away, and it is able to be offered for free due to the business model of ads, taking this concept to its conclusion where everybody automatically skips over ads will make the free and open podcast system no longer viable.
Advertisers will no longer be willing to pay for ad space on podcasts, and the podcasters will have to move to charging per episode, or more likely, getting tiny royalties from a company like Spotify.
The nature of advertising has turned the entire TV device into an advertising machine that phones home whether I mute and look away or watch "ad-supported" content, or paid-for content, or my own content. I cannot buy a TV that does not funnel my private life into someone's advertising budget thanks to Smart TVs and the normalization of surveillance capitalism.
If a podcast can not survive off its syndication, its advertising, its royalties, nor off its direct subscriptions, then the market has clearly spoken: that podcast is not providing value to listeners, and if it weren't subsidized as a channel by which advertising campaigns reach a desired market segment, it wouldn't exist at all. Clearly if this scenario causes you to shed tears, perhaps consider donating or subscribing, otherwise that podcast isn't a valuable product, it was a line item on an advertising campaign meant to reach you.
A better example would probably adblocking on either YouTube or any website. The service is otherwise free, and you're demanding it in some sense.
There are still lots of people who watch ad supported TV broadcast over the air. So I think muting commercials or recording with a DVR and skipping over later is a decent analogy.
Imagine the advertisement was not on TV but it was ringing your doorbell.
An option is ethical, one when you replace someone else's work is not. (i don't like advertisement thrown in my face either).
As much as I hate the clever marketing tactics that happen, I wouldn't want them to have one more excuse to invade me more.
This seems like one of them
it's probably not ethical to vandalize a billboard so other people can't see the ad on it.
it's definitely not ethical to sell billboard vandalism as a service, or to patronize a service that does that.
If the advertiser isn’t given any information about playback at ad time, then the revenue would not be affected.
It shouldn't take long for advertisers to realize that a) podcast listeners tend to skip over ads or b) podcast ads don't result in sales.
a.) Patronage/donation model b.) Paywalls c.) Integrated the advertising into the program rather than making it a separate ad read
OTOH, I've seen a number of youtube and podcasts where the Ads are read by the hosts as part of the show and are unique for each podcast. I heard one once recently where the host must have had 10 different versions of their travel ad, for the same place worded in slightly different ways. Maybe they were just ad'libing them. Either way, I have a hard time believing this can be easily detected. The flow and voice intonation was such that I didn't even realize it was an ad until 3/4 way through.
That being said:
>If we do stuff like this, the podcast industry will switch to a closed system which would require you to install proprietary apps to listen to stuff. Likely several different apps for different shows and companies.
You can dismiss all adblockers that way. Except it's not really how it'll work: if people really make it inconvenient to access the content people will pirate instead. Podcasts are also generally small audio files which makes them super easy to share.
Instead I think that blocking ads (which, IMO, are a cancer for our society and I have no moral or ethical problem blocking everywhere) will incentivize podcasters to find alternative schemes to make money. For instance you could have a "Spotify for podcasts" that lets you watch podcasts ad-free with a subscription. There actually already are a few services for that (Stitcher comes to mind). I actually pay for a Stitcher subscription to listen to my podcasts ad-free.
I want to believe in a future version of the internet where everybody and their dog aren't spending their entire resources conning me into watching ads I don't want to see.
The benefit of podcasts being an open system -- of them being raw MP3 files, is that users can manipulate and control the content they're being served. An open, ethical system that can only exist because users don't exercise their rights is of little value.
There are already segments of the industry that want to turn podcasting into a closed system (see Spotify), because as good as the current model is, it's still more profitable to turn podcasting into a top-down controlled system with gatekeepers. If business interests are currently what is keeping the ecosystem open, then I think we're doomed, because Netflix is always going to be the more profitable business model.
Cool, let's automate away creators' ability to make money by giving away free content. Sure, podcasting will die and be replaced by closed, DRM-encumbered audio platforms, but then I'll just steal that same content. And really, isn't killing an open medium better than manually skipping ads a couple times an hour?
Ads aren't free.
Yes, it sort of stinks that we might have to come up with another way to fund podcasts. But we should come up with an alternate funding model anyway -- ads aren't ethical, and they're not free. The only reason anyone pays a podcaster to display ads is because statistically speaking, that recommendation is going to manipulate someone into buying that product regardless of its quality or relevance to that person's life.
If you listen to advertising but don't buy the advertised products, you're not supporting creators. Other people who buy those products are supporting creators, and they are subsidizing you. Your money is valuable, not your attention. Your purchasing decisions are valuable, not your ears.
So the idea that advertising is a completely neutral act that somehow magically gives us tons of content for free, without any knock-on effects towards society or business costs or acceptable content is one of the most widely-shared, pervasive misconceptions on the modern Internet. Ads are not magically making money appear from nowhere, ordinary people are indirectly paying for those ads by having their consuming habits altered against their will and without their permission.
It's better for us to just acknowledge that podcasting has a cost, and to just deal with that fact -- not to keep hiding behind the idea that there's a payment scheme out there that will somehow pay someone's salary without affecting anyone else in any way. Just directly support creators: it's healthier for the ecosystem, and it's healthier for you.
> And really, isn't killing an open medium better than manually skipping ads a couple times an hour?
An open medium that you're scared to manipulate is not an open medium. If we're all scared to attach metadata to an mp3 file, then who cares what format the file is in? Who cares whether or not a file has DRM if you're not willing to touch it?
Users have the right to exercise their rights. They also have the right to delegate those rights to other people and software products[0] -- ie, to have a piece of software exercise their filter rights on their behalf. Any world in which people aren't free to filter the content they consume is just another dystopia.
Because most podcasters make no money and don't have the skills to write an app or service to do it for them.
Larger companies like NPR and BBC already do it.
OP's concern isn't about individual producers. It's about media and tech companies like Spotify and Stitcher gobbling up the market.
Make the ad-skipping automatic, then it's guaranteed that no one is listening to ads. (no ads == no revenue). This will completely ruin the system as it exists today.
Breakdown the ethics violation you see happening here. The way I read your argument, Podcast apps have an ethical obligation to ensure users can't easily should the ads.
But no major podcast apps have implemented it (because why the hell would they?)
Allow me to propose a pivot.
Most listeners know in the first few seconds whether an ad falls into the “hey, that actually sounds interesting” category or the “no, I still don’t need a Squarespace/Casper/Mailchimp” category. Take a page from YouTube and play the first 3-5 seconds of the ad, and then give the user a big skip button that skips the entire ad segment.
Your app will still have the USP of a better experience than jumping back and forward in 15-30 second increments, and it preserves the ad-supported model with a proven UX pattern validated by one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world. You could even form partnerships with podcast networks who want insight into what ads get skipped and which get played for longer.
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There is another medium which has a similar interaction model, and most people seem to really dislike those, i.e. in-game cut scenes with surprise quicktime events.
Let them read all the NordVPN and Dollar Shave Club ads they want. I'd rather put up with that than the wastage that goes into production of merch and swag.
Because if they do, that's an ad.
I don't like being guilted, I really don't. But I understand that some feel differently.
Public funding makes a ton of sense, personally I think it is the only economically efficient solution, but doing it well is hard. I scanned your history here to see a bit more on where you are coming from (I agree with you on a lot of things), and I see that this is something you talk about a lot.
I notice you say elsewhere "the enemy is the state". That makes it tricky to say "the state should decide what stuff gets funded." I always tend to be up against that whenever I suggest that state funded IP makes sense. I still believe there is a way.
I have more thoughts on how we could actually move toward such things, my contact info is in my profile, feel free to email.
* see chapter 25 of the Grapes of Wrath for a beautifully written essay on the evils of artificial scarcity: https://genius.com/John-steinbeck-grapes-of-wrath-chapter-25...
When I look at the list of podcasts I subscribe to there aren't really any that I would miss terribly if they decided to stop. I have too many options when I want to listen to something.
The smart thing to do with apps like this is to keep it to yourself, but inevitably someone will release one for the masses.
A lot fewer people would be using ad blockers in browsers if web ads were as simple as podcast ads (the equivalent would be unobtrusive static images with links) .
You could also have dynamic images thank to GIFs. Just think of the possibilities that would be enabled by that - "Hit the monkey!", "Shoot the gangster!" - An incredibly effective way to drive engagement.
Practically, what is different about manually skipping every single ad (which I - and presumably other people who might consider a skipping feature useful - currently do) versus automatically skipping them? It seems to me the only difference is that automatic skipping frees me from a minor annoyance.
Even if this app is successful beyond OP's wildest dreams it's going to take 1% of the market or whatever -- the idea that this is going to cause a sudden shift in business strategy, and that that shift will be in favour of proprietary apps in a way that people aren't trying now, beggars belief.
Skipping a portion is equal to redacting the part of a landscape image with a billboard in it.
Furthermore, the digital medium is inherently copyable and malleable. If you want to distribute content via this medium, you need to accept that. Sure, make it harder if you please.
Absurd. Software's whole deal is wrecking people's jobs to save someone else money or make their lives easier. This time it's ad-supported mp3 makers instead of any of the tons and tons of other people who've been tossed around by software. Often this does suck but to single out helping people avoid ads as the one thing you must not charge for is silly.
If we do stuff like this, the podcast industry will switch to a closed system which would require you to install proprietary apps to listen to stuff. Likely several different apps for different shows and companies.
As it exists today, it's a very open system, with publicly accessible feeds and the ability to use any app. Don't ruin it. It's not hard to press the "skip forward 30 seconds" button when an ad starts playing.
Edit: also, it's super unethical to have a paid app that profits by taking away any scope for content creators to monetize. Leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Didn't realise it was a paid app at first. Shame on you, OP.