Ad Free Podcast Feed

We sent our Data Skeptic Members a survey last year asking for feedback on a number of things. At the time, we were considering what projects to take on in 2018. Members were shown a list of projects and asked to rank how important they thought the project was. While not the highest rated, "Members Only advertisement-free podcast feed" was highly valued.

You voted, we're going to act. A feed is being worked on for Members without ads. But as I'm doing this, I'm pondering the exact best implementation.

We work hard to keep ads semi-relevant to the show. You're never going to hear generic products advertised on Data Skeptic. If I don't feel the product or service is respectable and applicable to at least 25% of the audience, we don't accept the sponsorship.

In some sense, I feel like the ads have a benefit in keeping listeners aware of services in the marketplace. On a personal level, I was relatively unfamiliar with one of our advertisers until they reached out. Since learning about their product, I helped one company where I'm an advisor onboard their tool and derive great benefit from it.

Why do people dislike ads? Of the podcasts I listen to, for some, I'm rapidly hitting the "+30 seconds" button. This occurs most often on shows with an excessive number of ads. Usually these are the same ads I've heard on nearly every other podcast dozens of times before.

I agree that advertising of that form is extremely annoying. I'd like to think that our one-ad-per-show policy and drive to keep them short and on topic makes our advertising more palettable. If not, please use your +30 second button. Our advertisers are generally smart enough to be measuring conversions, so if you're not in their market, we don't mean to waste your time.

Yet, if our ads do ad some small value in terms of keeping listeners aware of new products and services, maybe instead of ad-free, we should have an ad-abbreviated show. What if the member's feed cut the ad and replaced it with a 5 second (max) clip saying something like "Ad for Yoshi Dashboards removed".

Surely a short message like that would not annoy anyone?

Data Skeptic Membership is significantly less than 1% of our total listenership. Getting a few extra ad impressions out there isn't going to benefit us at all. My motivation to consider this is purely about wondering if 5 seconds can confer a few bits of information that members might be happy to have without the burden of a 45 second advertisement read.

I feel like this is a good idea, but I'm not confident other people would see it the same way.

Please feel free to share thoughts in the comments.