What Ad Blocking Means To Podcasters - The Podcast Report Episode #64

What ad blocking means to podcasters. It's the podcast report episode 64 show notes, links, conversation and more at www.thepodcastreport.com 64. It's the podcast Report with Paul Culligan. And here's Paul.

Welcome to the Podcast Report with Paul Culligan. I'm Bridget Danner, host of Women's Wellness Radio. I've been podcasting for a while, but really had no marketing strategy and no way to get subscribers. Really no plan. And then I came upon Paul, who I had heard done, had done great wonders for a friend of mine, and I started listening to his podcast and I bought his book and I feel like I've got a plan. What I like about Paul is he's no nonsense and honest. He just gives you the real stuff and there's no hype. So here's Paul. Enjoy the show.

The big idea is this. Ads they don't want to block are the future of your podcast. Hey, everybody, this is Paul Colligan, podcast consultant, podcast author. But most importantly for this podcaster, this is the Podcast Report, the show where we look to make our podcasts a real business or do more business because of our podcasts. I've been part of podcasting since the beginning. Got a bunch of books out, have got a bunch of episodes out. I consult for a bunch of folk and I share these thoughts, these pieces of knowledge, this information, these learnings with you. We do that so that you can make a better podcast, that you can make a better show. The notes I've gotten from you, the emails I've gotten from you, the social reach outs I've gotten from you, thank you so much. I love doing this show. Show has never been a massive play. Never the goal to get a top 10 list somewhere, but to help you do better with your show. Not a massive play, but, but a deep one. Thanks for joining me on this journey. So this topic of ad blocking, you know, hey, Paul, ad blocking, isn't that an iOS thing? What does that have to do with podcasting? Well, let's set things up. Let's make sure this is relevant to people who are listening to this. A year later, two years later, three years later, the new iOS 9 just came out and it's made ad blocking one of the central features. Now, there's been ad blocking elements before, but lately it's just been kind of in the news because of the iOS upgrade. Now, this isn't about that, but that's just why it's been the news. Now here's the thing. I've played with ad blocking in the past. I've never really worried about ads. I've never really bothered about ads because quite simply, they just aren't relevant to me. I just don't care about them. But what's interesting is the latest batch of ad blockers have just made for a better experience. I was using the one by Marco and I was finding that my pages were loading on my iPhone and my iPad, like literally three to four times as fast. It was amazing. It was an entirely different experience and I embraced it. I loved it. And I just thought, well, there go the ads. And then Marco released a blog post and I've got a link to it in the show notes the podcastreport.com 64 that he killed it because he didn't want to do as much damage to ads as he was doing. And that's interesting. Certainly intriguing. There's a lot of assumptions about ads, that ads have to be there, that ads have to be boring, that kind of thing. Another thing that happened in the last month or so, Hulu announced this option where you could pay a few more bucks a month for Hulu and get the Hulu version without the ads, which is great. I don't like ads. Ads waste my time. I mean, it's funny if you think about it. You know, you watch an hour long show on television and 20 minutes of that show is ads. So, you know, one third of that time is ads. And I could pay $1.99 to get one third of my of an hour back, or I could pay $1.99 if I'm doing better than $6 an hour, which by the way, I am. And by the way, you are too. Getting rid of ads has always been a thing. Hulu had this option where I could pay more to get rid of ads. I did it gladly, thrilled, glad to pay them. I understand that the people who need to get paid, you, the podcaster, need to get paid. I did it. And oh, the process for upgrading that version was crazy. It was insane. It was poorly done. As a matter of fact, I still don't have the ad blocking because I have to finish my current month before I can get the ad free month. It's just ridiculous. Now, if you've ever listened to this show, if you know me, if you've read any of my books or anything on podcasting, you know that I've never been a big fan or never been a fan at all of traditional ads on podcasts. I don't think they're necessarily a Good idea. So, obviously, that is part of today's show as well. My podcatcher client of choice is one called PocketCast. I use Pocket Cast largely because, honestly, the main reason I use it. I mean, it's a great little program and it's got all the features I need. But what's interesting about Pocket Casts is the experience is exactly the same on the iPhone and on the Android phone. So if I'm in an audience where going, if you do iPhone, this, if you do Android, this wouldn't be appropriate. And, boy, there are audiences. And by the way, those are the future of our podcast. You know, I can tell about Pocket Cast and I could do well. And the interesting thing about Pocket Cast is Pocket Casts integrates with my car stereo. I didn't set this up, but the up track button on my steering wheel forwards ahead 15 seconds. And so when ads come on podcasts, I just click up, up, up to get out of the ads, just like I do on my dvr, just like I do everywhere else. I'm skipping ads already. Ad blocking is there. And unlike, you know, the websites where we know if the ads are being blocked or streaming or that kind of thing, you know, there's a lot of people who are getting money from their client to play an ad on a podcast that I don't listen to. Now, I realize it's a law of averages and that type of thing, but. But, you know, ad blocking to some element is there. A number of my clients are working through the exact same issues. What kind of ads should I put in my show? How should I build this out? I've been working on this with them. The results have very, very been interesting. And then the thing that really hit me last night was last night we sat down to watch some TV, and instead we ended up watching about 30 minutes of commercials. Trailers for movies. Trailers are a form of ads, and trailers are fun. And traders are so exciting and traders are so good that we can put a channel on it on our Apple TV and watch it. Every year the super bowl comes and everybody does these amazing ads, and then everybody chats about the ads for weeks and months. Why can't we? We do that in podcasting. So that's the topic, not an iOS thing. It's just that, boy, ad blocking is coming. Ad blocking has got a lot of press right now. Maybe ads aren't our best choice as a podcaster. So what have we learned? Well, look, first of all, people don't like annoying ads. Nobody likes annoying ads. And, well, nobody likes annoying ads. And nobody likes annoying ads. So therefore, you know, if we got a chance to get rid of them, we will. Now, they've never liked annoying ads. It's not a podcasting thing, it's not a YouTube thing, it's not a new media thing. People have never liked annoying ads. So what do we do? Well, you know, we can do ad insertion in some really, really interesting ways. A old fashioned version. And I've got a link to this@thepodcastreport.com 64. It might shock some, it might scare some, it might terrify some, but I've actually got a link to a YouTube video of Believe it or not, a cigarette ad starring the Flintstones. Yes, the modern stone age family integrated the product into the content and the ad became entertainment. And it's not by any means the earliest version of that, but it's so terrifying and it's such a glimpse back to days of gone by that, you know, I want to link to it, but we could do something like that. The ads could become more of our content and more of what we're doing. And you know, I've got some other examples for you, but you know, there we go. People don't like annoying ads. They never have. The tech will eventually give the people what they want. This is important. We're seeing this with ad blocking right now and know that it's coming for podcasting and know really that in many ways it's already there, just with skip buttons and that type of thing. And I know there are other podcast clients that have skip buttons and that type of thing. I'm just using my own personal experience there. But the tech will give the people what they want probably sooner than later. And what they want is not to listen to annoying ads. I'm accounting eventually is going to catch up. You know, when I chatted about Twitter bombing a couple of, you know, I don't know, 10 or so episodes ago, maybe it was longer than that, I can't remember, you know, but the fact of the matter was there's going to come a point where accounting is going to realize that more people than not are not listening to their ads and they're not going to pay for the ads. And this whole idea of annoying ads instead of a podcast is just simply going to go away. So there are some models worth exploring. One thing is just simply the old tell me about something you like model that they do in Back to Work. And I've got a link to Back to Work in the show notes the podcastreport.com 64. It's a great little podcast. I've chatted to it in the back. Basically, the ads become really simply, really easily part of the. Part of the content. Merlin says to his guest host, hey, tell me about something you like. And then they share the ad. And it's nice, it's simple. The flow is there. And, you know, even though I have the skip ability, even though it might be a product I've heard about, I find myself many times not even hitting that skip button, you know, because it's. It's so integrated. It's not all of a sudden the ad moment. And that. That's an easy way to do it. Some other options. Michael Stelzner. I've got an interview with Mike. I've got a link to that episode. It was. It was in a previous episode. It was episode number 31. I've got a link to that in the show notes. You know, Mike's whole first social media podcast. He admits, and he says that in all the interviews, including mine, that the goal of the podcast was to introduce people to the speakers at his event. And his event is massive. His event is huge. It's the social media marketing event of the year. And he has some pretty amazing. What's the word I'm looking for? It works. The flow is there. Every speaker on his show pours out their heart and content, gives everything, and gives the reason for people to come to the event. So it's not. I mean, yes, it's a commercial, you know, but it's not an ad. Nobody ever walks away from one of those episodes feeling dirty because, you know, now they've been conned into coming to Mike's big event. No, it's the big part of the story, and he does it really, really, really well. And something I want you to consider. You know, last week I had a consulting gig, you know, from this show. Somebody who had read the book, somebody who was listening to the show, needed an hour of consulting. Got it. Probably going to order more. I thought it was a great session. I thought it worked incredibly well, you know, and what was great was it, I've never advertised consulting on this show. I've never advertised one on ones on this show. But it came as a result of the show. The ad is almost implied, you know, people know that it's there. The email started with a, hey, do you do this? And of course I do. It's part of my business. But was great was that hour of consulting, you know, paid as much as it's about, well, more than 12,000 downloads would have paid for with traditional ad inserts, and this particular person's coming back for more. So what you don't say on your show and what you say are equally as important. So there are ads other than. I mean, face it, if I stopped right now and there was music, Paul does podcast consulting. You know, call 1-800-consulting stuff like that, you'd be all annoyed and you leave. But knowing that that's there, if you're at a time in your career where this makes sense, you might follow up and see what happens, as my new client did last week. So people don't like annoying ads. The tech are going to give them what they want. Accounting is going to catch up, and there are other models worth exploring. So what do we do? How do we react? Well, three questions we need to ask three questions. I have asked three questions you need to ask. Number one, do you consider ads part of your content, or do you consider it a necessary evil? That question alone is extremely telling. Number two, is your model made up of necessarily evil ads? If so, your model, I'm going to say it is broken and is going to die pretty quickly. And then finally, if they skip your ads, what would they miss? If the answer is nothing, you might want to think it and rethink it through. So what am I doing about this? Number one, traditional ad inserts have never been part of my model. They will never be part of my model because I've never liked them from a monetization standpoint. And what's happening in the industry has changed nothing, you know, in that take. And I'm changing nothing. So there we go, where I'm going. I'm encouraging my clients to do exactly the same, you know, and then finally, I'm encouraging you to do the same. I'm encouraging you to consider those questions, you know, is ad part of the content or necessary evil? Is your model made up of necessarily evil ads? And if they skip your ads, what are they going to miss? I want you to ask those same questions to yourself. What can you do? This one's easy. This one's really, really simple. Just practice. You don't have to air it, you don't have to publish it. Just get in front of the microphone or sketch it out. But create an ad that's part of your content. Create an ad that if they skipped, they would miss it. Create an ad that's part of the content. Create an ad that's not necessarily evil, and you'll do well there. That's my thoughts on ad blocking. You can Follow the podcast report socially thepodcastreport.com Twitter thepodcastreport.com Facebook would love it. Follow us like us. Interact. We have a lot of fun. The blog is up. Go ahead, comment away. The podcastreport.com 64 got links to the podcast book and podcast cart and SMS to opt in and Patreon. But I've also got a link to Marco's article about why he killed his ad blocking software. I don't necessarily agree with it, but it's definitely fascinating. I'll link to Pocket Cast if you want to see what I was chatting with there. A link to the Back to work show if you want to see that whole tell me about something you like. Model a link to the Flintstones cigarette ad because it's just so fascinating. And a link to the Michael Stelzner interview as well. 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Thanks so much for listening. Can't wait to shoot you the next one. By subscription of course. Automatically chat with you then. Bye.