101–110 of 285 posts
Ads are terrible regardless of whether they are “nice, inoffensive privacy protecting ads” or “unethical spyware web ad network ads”. This is a great tool and saves people their only truly nonrenewable resource: time. Thank you for making it; if I listened to any of these podcasts I would be using it. Always block everyone’s ads.
I'm already aware of these brands, I even recommend one of them to clients. At this point, the ads aren't telling me anything new, don't make me aware of a new product, they are just annoying and waste my time.
Is it still wrong to block these ads?
We messed this up 20 years ago when online print media tried doing the same, and the result has been an endless and wasteful arms race. Let's not mess this up again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, because some percentage of the users will still listen to the ad, especially if it's the first time they're hearing it. Make it automated, that guarantees that no one is listening to it. Which would mean no revenue for the content creators. Which would lead to a really crappy system.
But advertisements in podcasts are commonly pre-recorded by the podcast host(s) - so the host would still be paid for the advertisement, before it goes online. If the advertiser isn’t given any information about playback at ad time, then the revenue would not be affected.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could say the same thing about adblockers in general. It's unfortunately pushed more content creators to put up paywalls and move to subscription-based models. The smart thing to do with apps like this is to keep it to yourself, but inevitably someone will release one for the masses.
Yeah, but ads on the web have lots of issues like tracking and malicious code injection, so blocking them makes total sense. 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.
To the people saying this is morally wrong, let me give you a different perspective: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and they are ad-supported (although I do support them on Patreon whenever possible). The ads are for the likes of SquareSpace, Skillshare, etc (there's also lots of shit like VPN providers but let's focus on the good ones first). I'm already aware of these brands, I even recommend one of them to client…
If you implement automatic ad blockers, that guarantees that no one is listening to the ad. Which would mean no revenue for the content creators. Which would lead to a really crappy system.
I block ads on the web because web advertising networks proved that they had no respect for user privacy, lacked security controls around their ad delivery, and were targeting using data that they probably shouldn’t have had access to. Podcasts do not suffer from this. It’s much harder to identify a user, the ads aren’t software, just audio, so security is better and there’s not much way to see who is listening to th…
I block ads on the web due to the invasive tracking and targeting. I'm not opposed to ethical, reasonable ad space which is why I don't tear ad pages out of magazines when they arrive. If news sites would run their ad infrastructure focused on presentment rather than tracking I would grant them an exception to my ad blocker. While they outsource ad space to adtech and use their platform as a method to execute arbitrary code on my computing devices the block stays up.
Podcast ads tend to be non-intrusive, are much harder to track and are non-executable. I listen to some very niche podcasts and am happy for the hosts to receive compensation for their creation, especially since it doesn't come at the expense of my privacy.
Most podcasts are pretty grassroots without financial backing, I think.
I don't really mind the ads, and most podcasts apps seem to have skip buttons anyway. I mostly use the iOS podcast app, but it has a 30 second skip button. That usually gets me right past the ads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this different than, say, Brave blocking in-flow YouTube ads? Minus the fact that this one is a paid app.
It's not different. Brave's business model of inserting themselves as a middleman and charging a ransom is awfully unethical.