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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".
... 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
I'm guessing many creators learned about just how blatant the lies they were selling were for the first time from him and put pressure on their sponsors to chill with the fear-mongering. And even those that knew and lied regardless were probably scared that their audience now knew too, so shifting away from these talking points was in their best interest too.
TL;DR: Tom Scott is awesome and he did a lot of good by making that video
If all these VPNs make such huge margins, and if barriers to entry are so low, then why hasn't someone undercut them?
... 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…
He generally opens with him using the VPN to get around geo-targetting in a way that isn't in violation of TOS. He does a huge amount of travel, so he does run into poorly designed websites that try to be helpful and serve content by location sometimes.
He doesn't say outright that such opportunities are rare, and normal people may never encounter them. He does say that before using VPNs to get around restrictions by streaming services users should make sure they're not in violation of any TOS. He never talks about security.
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…
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 anything about that situation anyone wouldn't see by googling basic terms though.
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…
It's been awhile since I've listened to podcasts like that, but two other heavy advertiser I can recall are: online mattress companies and SquareSpace.
I've also noticed that newspaper-affilliated news podcasts often are full of advertisements for CEO podcasts (which appears mainly meant to pump up the CEO's prestige/name recognition).
My experience has been that every podcast is sponsored by a another podcast. I'm not sure where the chain ends.
A lot of that is a tried and true method of promotion for those coming into podcasting without a big following elsewhere to try to convert.
We started with a fairly large social media following that we could promote with, but others without such an existing audience are better off advertising on similar shows. After all, that's the draw of podcasting as a medium... advertising efficacy is pretty high.
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…
My experience has been that every podcast is sponsored by a another podcast. I'm not sure where the chain ends.