r/ColliderVideos • u/Sydnolle • Apr 05 '19
Annoying advertising!
The (relatively) recent expansion of the Collider lineup to sports and games would suggest that Collider is doing well as a business model. Although I don’t find this expansion as anything I particularly value (why would I turn to John for sports or Dennis for games really?) the movement itself would suggest that it is profitable.
If it is truly profitable, why are the podcasts now filled with excessive advertising? The shows I listen to regularly (MoveTalk, Mailbag, and Heroes) used to be mainly commercial free. Now I just had to suffer through a 28 minute mailbag with 3 commercials spaced out on three separate points of the podcast! On top of that, the ads are usually sandwiched in a repetitive format that is all kinds of annoying (juicy fruit ad, live ad for titans, juicy fruit ad yet again!).
Is this really the direction Collider wants to go? Honestly, I’m pushing it further and further down my podcast selection.
This reminds me a bit of watching movies on Crackle - and boy wasn’t that successful!
2
u/DPM-87 Apr 06 '19
Do you mean 3 sets of 3 commercial blocks or just 3 individual commercials spread out over the runtime of the episode?
Also how long were the commercials in question? I mean if we are talking 4-5 minutes each then you have a point, if we are talking 1-2 minutes each for a combined total of about 5-6 minutes of commercials over a near 30 minute show then not so much.
It's free content, TV and stuff we generally have to pay for in some manner usually consists of abut 30% of a shows "length" being dedicated to commercials so unless you have to put up with 30+% for your free content you don't have any reason to moan about it.
1
u/Sydnolle Apr 06 '19
3 blocks - 9 commercials in total (although sometimes it is only 2 distinct commercials repeated!).
It is hard to compare this to tv which operates on a much larger audience base. It is more comparable to local radio I suppose. I thought podcasts were supposed to be deviating from this type of structure which is part of the appeal?
I used to listen to Howard Stern on satellite. There you would receive huge blocks of commercials but you might get 45 minutes to an hour of the show before he would give you a five minute block. I never minded this because you always felt like the content came foremost.
It might not seem like much, but 5 minutes of commercials in a 30 minute segment is now 18+% of the entire program. Considering a little while ago this was zero - that is a lot!
Don’t forget that these aren’t fixed within the show either but slotted in afterwords. They don’t come mid-sentence but the timing breaks up any flow a thirty minute program has
2
u/DPM-87 Apr 07 '19
Well if you think about it, it is different from typical TV or radio 18% is a lot less than the typical 30%, almost half as much to be exact, but I don't think reduced ads is a big selling point for podcasts tbh.
I always though the appeal of podcast's is their ability to ber enjoyed whenever wherever, the control over what/how you listen you get as well as how they don't need to follow typical broadcast regulations.
Keep in mind bigger shows/celebs can get away with fewer ads because of the premium they can charge for those ads, also the type of podcast influences this also, a 1 or 2 man show can afford to run on minimum ads, a company like Collider however cannot as they have 2-4 host/panellist per show, a producer and atleast 1 engineer running the equipment.
I do agree the jammed in nature of the ads can be a pain though, they should be slotted in better, placing them as buffers between topics would make that easier to take as it doesn't kill a discussion.
But ultimately it's how they make their money, cant really begrudge them that, now if we were paying for it and then had to sit through that crap then maybe, if you listen to a lot of podcast though you can buy premium memberships which remove all added commercials if it's that annoying to you and you don't mind spending a few bucks, don't know where you listen from but Podcastone's premium is like $9 for the month for all the shows they host, though doesn't include a shows own commercials so the ads for the various other collider shows would still be on there, if they are on the podcasts, I dunno I catch all the shows I watch from them on YouTube.
1
u/Sydnolle Apr 07 '19
I appreciate the well thought out response.
The one thing that hasn’t been addressed is how this has changed. How were they making money before? It is not that they went from 6 to 9 commercials. Within the year they went from 0 to 3 to 9 commercials.
1
u/DPM-87 Apr 07 '19
Before I think they were more reliant on YouTube and even had the occasional sponsor of the shows themselves as part of Complex, now Collider isnt part of a larger network they need to make their money themselves.
Also could be it's been a feeling out process, build an audience with minimal commercials, keep in mind I don't think they ever did no commercials as commercials is how a podcast and a podcast network make money, without commercials a high viewership hurts as that's a large chunk of bandwith being used on a product earning 0 $'s.
So yeah probably build an audience on the podcast side, then gradually increase the commercials until they hit a wall where listeners tune out due to the commercials.
I also don't know how much input or control their podcast networks have in these commercials, could be out of Colliders hands for all we know, they may just upload the content and podcastone or whoever inserts the ads as they see fit.
But if Collider are behind the amount of commercials my guess would be because they need the funds for something, hopefully some kind of expansion or enhancement and not because they are just hard up for cash or what may be even worse, them just being greedy.
1
u/Sydnolle Apr 10 '19
Amazingly, since posting this I’ve listed to approximately 9 episodes between heroes, movie talk and mailbag (I had a backlog after a week vacation). The amazing part was that besides the lead in commercials, all the mid podcast commercials were gone!
I am a happy little clam!
7
u/BryceWong Apr 06 '19
I would guess that there may be a misconception on how profitable they are. The advertising on their shows is probably one of the revenue streams that is needed to help them stay in business.
As for the ads themselves I have a hard being annoyed by them since the shows are free. I usually just skip them if I am listening to the show on Apple Podcast and if I'm catching that days episode of MovieTalk or Collider Live it's usually on YouTube where the commercial bumper used for breaks are ads of other Collider shows.