Why do all podcast ads seem sketchy?

Upfront I am not just singling out Bombcast or on how they do ad reads (I legit find them hilarious and don't get why people would listen to the premium ads free version). I have the same problem with all the podcast I listen too be it comedy or informative. The companies just come off as not reputable and cheap. I'm also not saying these advertisers are sketchy they just seem that way.

Here's a recent example: I thought Ex Machina was a brilliant film (stands at an impressive 91% on Rotten Tomatoes) but I had strong doubts about seeing it because they chose to advertise on Bombcast and other podcast. Even companies I do use and trust like Netflix and Amazon Prime come off as cheap fly by night operations when they advertise on podcast. So two questions - Why do all podcast ads seem sketchy? Or am I the only one that thinks podcast ads seem sketchy?

Side Note - Does anyone remember that Netflix ad where Jeff subtly shits all over that hack comedian Ralphie May and his most likely shitty Netflix exclusive comedy special?

I guess I don't understand as to why you think they are hella sketch? A podcast is literally the perfect place to advertise a movie like Ex Machina or really any other 'tech' related property. They are your target audience.

Are you saying the ADs are "sketchy" or the Bombcast itself?

But the podcast ADs are all for stuff that nobody wants. It's stuff for the comic-con nerds and trail mix.

Maybe you don't feel podcasts are on the same level as other media (TV, radio, etc) so when a company uses podcast to advertise they seem cheap.

For me the only ads I think are sketchy are sports betting ones, but that's because of my personal feelings about gambling. Those ads feel sketchy to me on TV as well.

All ads are sketchy in any medium. They are ads.

Internet advertising generally has a long history of being sketchy as hell. Maybe your feelings are just instinctive.

What @fustigate said. Subconsciously you probably don't see a podcast as a legitimizing vehicle for advertisements so you automatically hold them in lower regard than an ad in a newspaper or TV.

Have you ever listened to radio ads? They make podcast ads seems like some straight up Don Draper shit.

Also Draft Kings (i.e. the Bombcast advertises for) might be a legitimate scam or at the very least in a legal grey area like those online bookie places I see advertised on British TV.

I tried Squarespace last week. It's an amazing website. I've been trying to get around to updating my mother's website since 2005. It took me 40 minutes to get it done and it costs me less than half yearly what the old website cost. Even better, my dad can update the content himself without involving me anymore.

Man, try listening to some skeptical activism podcasts and keeping your respect for the cast who read razorblade ads every week.

You should listen to the roundtables of upcoming MMA shows on sherdog. There's generally something like a 30 minute block of ad in the middle. And it's just for two products. It's one of the more ridiculous things I've ever seen or heard in my life.

I stopped listening to all Maximum Fun podcast save for My Brother, My Brother, and Me because their ad placement kills all their shows momentum. Especially on The Flop House and Judge Joe Hodgman. At least on Earwolf shows they try to make the ads funny and have the foresight to place them at organic stopping points.

I stopped listening to Bill Burr's podcast and lost a lot of respect for him because based on his stand-up material and stage persona, shilling shit like Me Undies and Naturebox makes him seem like a huge sellout.

No, there's nothing sketchy about targeted marketing. If you're selling a product, you probably want to do so where its most likely to be bought. That larger companies are starting to buy space on podcasts is a sign that the medium is growing.

Haha, this gave me a good laugh

I think it's because there are only like 20 companies that advertise on podcasts, and I've heard them all a million times.

Basically Squarespace, Naturebox, Dollar Shave Club. Heard them everywhere.

I get basic economics and I get advertising is a necessary evil to help keep most podcast afloat. What I am saying is the commercials themselves come off as sketchy even for businesses I know are reputable like Amazon or Netflix. Maybe it has to do with me listening to the host personality and not being able to buy into someone like a Jeff Gertsmann or Lauren Lapkus genuinely being excited for an overpriced box of nerd shit or simplified web template service.

If you're using the word "sellout" to describe comedians making free content with the hope of also getting ad money so that they can make more free content... no one here's gonna change your mind.

Also, just be glad you weren't alive in the 50's, where most non scripted TV shows and even some scripted ones had the hosts doing ads. The Podcast things are really just a modern version of a very old idea.

Also FanDuel, Draftkings, Sharri's Berries, Lootcrate, Hulu Plus, Stamps.com

What are you blabbering about? Nobody is being anywhere near as dramatic as you are. In fact, the OP literally said he enjoys the Gbomb ads.

The only one that bothers me is Dollar Shave Club. All of their ads are written as though the reader is speaking from personal experience: "I really love their most expensive subscription. I use their shave butter all the time. Everyone I know loves it too."

It's why I dismissed them outright when looking for a better shaving method.

@bartok said:

Haha, I had this exact same reaction. Holy shit, is that movie ever good.

Seriously though, Stamps.com, Lootcrate, and DraftKings sound like a fucking racket.

Most companies I've seen advertise on podcasts have actually been more than reputable.

You might just feel like podcasts are a weird niche market and that's all those small, perhaps a little sketchy companies are able to get, while the bigger ones go for TV, radio and big websites. I wouldn't entirely disagree with the assumption, but it seems to me like podcasts are becoming the new radio.

Edit: reading your other posts, you're probably just used (like most people) to expensive, highly produced and rehearsed advertisement compared to the more improvised way podcasters do it.

@monkeyking1969: Are you trying really hard to be funny?

Podcast ads can become annoying to listen to because it's either forced comedy (unlimited anime) or somebody putting on their radio voice for 2 minutes to talk about Audible. I never like listening to them.

The only podcast I know that does advertising spot-on is the Mega64 podcast. They frequently insult the companies that advertise them, relate their products to insulting things (for example, slavery and vomit) and bring them up at very inopportune moments (for example, after a serious discussion topic like death or injury). It's hilarious. All of this makes me actually enjoy when the sponsors are brought up and firmly plants the product in my brain in a way less nefarious and sketchy way. The sponsors don't seem to stop them, so I assume it's a revolutionary strategy.

I just think they are hilarious. Most of the time the ads are pointless as well, as I can't really do much with most of them here in Norway. I do have a few Loot crates and their content around (my bobblehead Groot is guarding my left speaker for instance) but I subscribed there before the Bombcrew did some ads for them. And since I know from experience that Loot Crate is awesome, I trust that the other stuff they do ads for are awesome as well.
Kinda fun hearing Jeff doing Loot Crate ads though, seeing how he is very vocal about not needing and not liking that kind of "crap" anymore.

I'd buy whatever Jeff tries to sell me in a dark alley.

...Just not anime. I don't really care.

I think they seem 'sketchy' because the bomb crew, especially someone like Jeff, caring a lot about Loot Crate or whatever seems doubtful. For people who have been listening for a long time and know who they are, their fake enthusiasm for the product seems like sarcasm.

Jeff has talked fairly candidly about the difficulty of justifying the huge time expenditure that making the Bombcast requires. If some dumb ads keep the GB train profitable, then whatever. I'll skip through them like I always do and let Stamps.com think they got one more impression.

I do wonder what these guys' success metrics are, though. It seems to me that the average podcast listener - those millenials that marketers hate so much - is almost prohibitively jaded toward standard ads. Plus, with super personality-based content like the Bombcast, the audience's imagined closeness with the hosts might even be a detriment. The more familiar with Jeff I am, the more laughable the notion that he gives a shit about some overpriced swag box... But the advertisers have more data than I do, so who am I to tell them how to grow a business.

I think today's world where most anyone with a lick of savvy are able to deftly avoid most/all TV advertising makes people forget how gross, sketchy, or downright deceptive most advertising is.

I enjoyed the Bombcast ads a lot more when the crew were basically just adlibbing - nowadays it's mostly Jeff reading the advertiser's lousy prepared script in an over-the-top fashion so there are less chances for hilarious pseudo-commentary being slipped in between the lines.

Seemed like every single podcast I listened to that week was advertising that special; so I checked it out; I didn't last 5 minutes, worst garbage ever put to video. I lost major respect for TESD for actually vouching for it and saying it was good.

As long as they aren't shovelling shit I don't mind the ads, just don't personally vouch for obvious garbage.

Obviously someone reading an ad is not going to have the same quality to it as a fully produced ad distributed by the company. but at the same time, you wouldn't listen to that.

Program-read ads have been a thing for literally a hundred years. Get over it.

Of all the ads they have, Draftkings is the fucking worst.

Everything about that sounds like a spam email. At least the other ads are actually trying to sell you a product, not treat you like this is your first time on the internet.

@grantheaslip: People actually like that loot crate crap. There are youtube videos of people just unboxing it. not paid at all.

Same. I don't find them to be especially offensive or anything, just awfully boring and clearly on a tight script. That, and Brad simply can't adlib as well as Vinny could.

So if you are an expert on what really matters in life and what doesn't, why aren't you out there helping relief for tragedies instead of being on the internet?

I hope that's an exaggeration, the whole joke of Burr's ads is that he reads the copy verbatim, fucks it up at least two-thirds of the time, and ends up swearing and insulting the product. I honestly listen to his podcast because of how much I love his ads

It seems more to do with your view of podcasts than your view of the ads. Seems like advertisement on podcasts seem sketchy because maybe you don't see podcasts as mainstream or legit enough? Just a thought could be wrong, but I know i feel the same way about ads in free games. They all feel like sketchy click bait with a virus on them, even if it's for another game or app.

I've had a NatureBox subscription for about 4 months now. Maybe that makes me a sucker, but I'm a sucker eating super tasty snacks.

@grantheaslip: Loot crate just seems like a variation of the whole Fruit of the Month thing that has been around for ages. Some people like stuff like that. I don't know if I would pay for it myself, but I do know some people who would enjoy it as a gift. Seems pretty harmless overall.

@zeik: I'll admit - when Vinny said on the BeastCast that this month's Loot Crate was themed around "Cyber" and would have Terminator stuff in it... I contemplated getting a 1 month subscription for about 15 minutes.

I didn't know First World Problems was still a thing. I never get tired of people bringing this shit up on A VIDEO GAME WEBSITE.

@joshwent It makes total sense for Lucy to be shilling cigarettes because if you ever heard Lucy in the later years of her life she had the rasp of someone who genuinely loved cigarettes. She found the perfect sponsor.

I hate using such an overused word like "sellout" but it just really nails how I feel about Bill Burr shilling for these internet companies. I know George Carlin was a conductor on Thomas the Tank Engine and did commercials but he was able to keep that Carlin separate from his stand-up act. Want to know why? Because George Carlin didn't take breaks from his HBO comedy specials to do adverts.

can you honestly listen to these ads and tell me they're not hilarious and totally in character for burr? He curses, insults the advertiser, calls the listeners cunts and still demands they buy the product. The whole point is how transparent he is, he says he does the ads just to get money and does it so lazily that it ends up being just as funny and genuine as his stand up or the rest of his podcast.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVF3odQUBOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NAMTnpS1fI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNe1i20yA4c

It's because Jeff's announcer voice sounds completely disingenuous when you know his personality.

"Fly by night"

Brad is that you? :)

The only ones i found a bit skeezy are draftkings.com and the ralphie may special. Well maybe not the last one but you could sense jeff's (hilarious) derision in his voice. Draftkings.com sounds like something run on the side by a drug cartel (maybe exaggerating a bit but it seems a touch slimy by nature).

The only times I find em sketchy are when they're weaved into the actual podcast, where it's like "hey, let's have a casual conversation about this product we're sponsored by." The way GB does it is great. Separate bits that are clearly advertisements.