Jimtac.com

I very much understand the need to advertise on podcasts, especially video podcasts, they’re expensive to make, and moreso to host and serve. That being said I do take a bit of an issue to short podcasts inserting long ads into their shows. To me I have a personal annoyance level of 1.5:1 content:ads, which seems high to most, but to me if the content is good I’ll sit through ads to ensure I can keep getting my free entertainment.

This week I was glad to see that one of my favorite comic strips turned video podcast ‘Dilbert’ got a sponsor, and with it being the perennial Audible, one that I use myself. The problem, as you may have surmised, is that ‘Dilbert’ has a normal runtime (including credit plates) of ~20 seconds, however with the pre- AND post-roll ads works out to be ~59 seconds. As such the math works out to be much more than 1.5:1 favoring the ads, which means that I’ll probably be unsubscribing by the end of the week, since the content just isn’t worth the waste in my time.

I’m sure that ‘Dilbert’ is not the only only one who does this, Revision3′s ‘Film Riot’ had come close a couple of times in their shorter episodes. I get that advertisers like buying specific chunks of ad time, (30/60/90/120 seconds), and buy sponsorship deals for a period of episodes, or time. This means that whether your episode is 30 minutes, or 3 minutes, your 3 sponsors still want their full 30 second spots.

I do believe that if you are going to accepting advertising, you should be giving both your advertisers, and more importantly, your audience more value. When you’re in your garage with your friends doing something on your own, it’s acceptable to vary length and quality. Once you accept that money, there is an expectation on the part of the advertiser that the quality will go up in order to show that thier money is worth it. However on the part of the viewing audience, the annoyance/intrusions of inserting ads is something that should not impinge on the viewing experience.

If done correctly, it will feel like a minor bump in the flow of the show; the aforementioned ‘Film Riot’ does an amazing job at this, to the point of actually making the ads enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately even this can break the creator/consumer relationship if it exceeds the new content that the viewer/listener tuned in to get, the very content that made the show successful enough to garner the attention of advertisers.

I hope that they will figure out that it’s bad to have more advertising than content, but if not, it will at least help me thin out my podcast subscriptions.

Tim