Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company?

Post by shalmanese » Wed, Sep 14, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

franga2000 wrote: post #12

rchowe wrote: post #4

... and a lot of those VPN companies are probably VC-funded. Tom Scott made a good video on the uses and non-uses of VPNs [1]. VPN advertising has changed since that video to downplay "security", but what I think is odd is that they've replaced that with advertisement that basically is "violate the terms of service of Netflix". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

Glad I'm not the only one that got the feeling this video impacted the entire VPN advertising space. All of us techies have been screaming this from day one and many tech-focused creators even talked about this publicly, but the ads kept going. Tom Scott seems to be in the perfect position where he has the technical background to understand why the ads were wrong, but also has a much wider and more general audience t…

Post by musicale » Wed, Sep 14, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

rchowe wrote: post #4

... and a lot of those VPN companies are probably VC-funded. Tom Scott made a good video on the uses and non-uses of VPNs [1]. VPN advertising has changed since that video to downplay "security", but what I think is odd is that they've replaced that with advertisement that basically is "violate the terms of service of Netflix". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

Post by tinus_hn » Wed, Sep 14, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

iudqnolq wrote: post #16

naet wrote: post #10

There are a couple companies or industries that seem to dominate large sections of the digital ad market for videos, podcasts, live streams, social media, or other content creator focused markets.* They aren't all VPNs, but VPN is one of the main categories for sure. Not sure why these companies have a larger advertisement budget or why they are choosing those platforms over other more traditional ad opportunities. S…

Some of those obviously have negligible marginal costs. I think the ones that are less obvious, like shaving and mattresses, exhibit the same characteristics. I haven't heard this from a reliable source, but I read somewhere on the internet the founder of Dollar Shave Club bought a warehouse of low quality razors from a company that went bankrupt and misrepresented them as custom premium products. I don't know anythi…

Post by piva00 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:01 AM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #7

VPNs are very high margin products (50% of revenue is cashflow, the author points out). But they suffer from higher churn rates than most SaaS businesses. Switching costs are essentially free, it's hard to differentiate your product from someone else's in a meaningful way, discounts and promos abound, and achieving any kind of lock-in is next to impossible. Therefore, they advertise a lot. We here on HN probably get…

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:28 AM UTC

fancyfredbot wrote: post #13

If all these VPNs make such huge margins, and if barriers to entry are so low, then why hasn't someone undercut them?