[Enters Dave’s voice: What is this? Tic-Tac?]
There is plenty of time to run ads on the long format show / app and still get as much revenue as Dave could ever want.
Dave says that the show has been his primary lead generation for other services for 30 years.
Pro tip - Don’t screw up the foundation of your business.
The core content is good, but with 30%-40% ad content, it is unlistenable while driving, or doing anything else useful.
Imagine fumbling with your phone to skip ads every couple of minutes while trying to walk on a treadmill or change lanes. It Just. Doesn’t Work.
Continuous brain disengagement at its finest.
If I wanted nothing but un-interrupted ad drivel, I’d turn on the TV or radio.
There is a reason we don’t do that anymore.
This is podcasting where listeners have to:
1. Spend more energy to seek out your content
2. New content discovery is dominated by word of mouth rather than in-your-face feeds like FB/X/Youtube.
In fact, I can’t remember ever having found a podcast that I listen to regularly OTHER than by word-of-mouth.
In that sense, podcasting is the purest of social media formats, lacking the force-“feed”ing elsewhere.
Don’t betray podcasters’ efforts to find your content or their limited social capital spent spreading your content.
Instead, reward the podcaster with a less adulterated version of the show.
Virality - The shorter format IS more shareable with friends in similar situations, and I have personally shared many of them.
Imagine how much MORE viral it would be, if there wasn’t the “share friction” of it being loaded with 1/3 ads.
Shorter format podcasts are the equivalent of mainstream media’s “sound bites”.
Have you EVER seen an ad smack in the middle of a sound bite?
[Enters Dave’s voice: Hey, you don’t have to take my advice. We’ll still be friends. I’ll still love and cheer for you, but that is what I would fix if I woke up in your shoes.
Also, I’m an expert in my opinion, and it might be worth exactly what you paid for it!]
Lastly, what’s with the sleaziness of the student debt consolidation loan and bank / credit union ads all of the sudden.
Dave says to dump debt services, but now he is selling them?
[Entering Dave’s voice again - What’s next? An ad for (gasp) SoFi?]
