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I read the article twice just to make sure I didn't miss it but I believe the article isn't the headline "Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company?" which then goes on to explain why podcasts are (might be?) a good advertising channel. The article is literally the headline, a summary of the VPN biz and... that's it. Nothing specific about podcast sponsoring or how that channel differs from any others. lol
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see VPN companies sponsoring YouTube videos with a segment in the video itself, it's not targeted ads, it's a literal 2 min segment inside an edited video.
They choose which videos and content creators to sponsor. They're more likely to sponsor Linus Tech Tips or MKBHD than Christen Dominique's "Clean Girl On The Go Makeup Tutorial". That's still "targeting" certain demographics.
A few months ago, this article would have been titled, "Why is every podcast sponsored by a shaving company?" or "a mattress company" or "some other company".
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…
Many youtube videos not even aimed at tech audience are sponsored by node vpn
From then on, every one of their sponsored videos will be forever tainted with the embedded, unmodifiable advertising segment. YouTube is not television, the content creators can't simply switch out the ad for another sponsor after the fact.
I read the article twice just to make sure I didn't miss it but I believe the article isn't the headline "Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company?" which then goes on to explain why podcasts are (might be?) a good advertising channel. The article is literally the headline, a summary of the VPN biz and... that's it. Nothing specific about podcast sponsoring or how that channel differs from any others. lol
My experience has been that every podcast is sponsored by a another podcast. I'm not sure where the chain ends.
I mostly listen to fiction podcasts, and other than mentioning related podcasts/magazines in author/narrator bios, they don't really sponsor each other. (Some do have sponsors; all have patreons, merchandise, etc.)
Are you hitting a Spotify "coordinated destruction of all that is good and holy" effect, or is it some genre-specific thing (like drop shipping cryptobro podcasts or something)?
I'm honestly curious, despite being snarky.