Why do all podcast ads seem sketchy?

Yet people still say "Oh well they can't do anything about the ads"

The hell they cant. One of your sponsors is slowly becoming illegal across the country and you still shill it to your listeners? Jeff and the gang speak of journalistic integrity what they do but then want us to spend our money on trash like this?

They should do better.

It's a really interesting line between endorsements and ads on a podcast. On the one hand, there are clear benefits to delineating a section as advertising and subsequently reading the ad copy as such. Entertainment may vary but it does not confuse it one bit that the product being talked about was a paid advertisement. On the other hand, it could be that a given product is really good but because the way the Bombcast advertises, they rarely comment on the product in addition to the ad copy so there's no actual endorsements. Some podcasts have more direct experience with the products and it can be more reassuring that someone can vouch for the product, hence it being more of an endorsement.

I have a feeling Jeff and co. decided a while ago that they were going to be as clear cut as possible with the ads, which has its consequences when certain products like DraftKings enter the mix. I knew from the moment they started reading those ads that they felt the same way I did about them but I also know its them making the most out of it. I'm sure they're looking forward to not having to read DraftKings and FanDuel ad copy just as much as we do.

On a side note, could you imagine how amazing it would be to have a premium podcast where they cut loose on DraftKings and other such sites?

DRAFT KINGS. WELCOME TO THE BIG TIME.

Nothing is sketchy when Brett says it.

@lordjezo: Not necessarily illegal. They'd just need a license.

And these ads are sponsorships, not endorsements.

Me as a listener of the podcast should be under the assumption that these guys who I listen to weekly and watch multiple times a week and are talking to me personally about the products they are shilling that Jeff can be trusted. If he is telling me to buy something I should buy something.

I don't do this but that's advertising,it's why ads use celebrities on TV or in print, we want to be like those people and hear what they say and do what they do.

Here is the Bombcast, folks who say they have integrity, wont take payola for video game reviews, have made comments about not going to some events because they were way too lavish and if it was a free trip maybe they would need to write a good review. These guys we are supposed to trust are telling us to spend our money with criminals and scammers. They don't have ads on their show with other people from the gambling websites telling us to use the product, the actual guys who we tune into are speaking to us.

@lordjezo: Maybe they respect you enough as a listener to let you decide if you want to spend your money on gambling or not. They literally could not make it more clear that they are *advertising*, not giving you their own opinions. I don't see how it's a matter of trust.

And this whole rhetoric of "Draft Kings is scamming people out of their money" just reeks of classic "I know what's best for you better than you do" pretension to me. It's fucking gross.

The most recent Giant Beastcast has an ad for Draft Kings "Fantasy Esports" betting, which somehow feels even dirtier than betting on regular sports. I hope Giant Bomb can find slightly more reputable advertisers than this.

With the way Vinny was reading it I just imagined Austin silently shaking his head in disaproval the whole time.

Agree with the first point.

Second statement about "Draft Kinds is scamming people" is 100% true. That statement is a fact and it shouldn't upset you so much. It certainly isn't pretentious. Let's maybe not resort to BS like calling that gross, when it's the complete opposite.

@sravankb: "my opinion is fact and yours isn't"

And this was that week.

They should just go ahead and do cigarette ads on the podcast, i'm sure plenty of listeners smoke, and you don't have to buy Marlboro just cause jeff reads an ad from them. And cigarettes are perfectly legal!

Like comeon, money on the table. Lets profit more off people's vices.

Really not blaming the gb crew for this, i'm sure the ads got passed down from higher up, and these betting sites are EVERYWHERE, but maybe start looking for a better advertiser.

Sadly if you watch the John Oliver video you will note that most media companies in the US have massive stakes in both Draft Kings and Fanduel. I'd prefer if Giant Bomb didn't shill for what is totally gambling.

Maybe get Nature Box back on the phone or something. They seemed cool at least.

Yea, absolutely, i'm sure the draft sites pay a boatload but there's a moral cost with that income I think.

Those snacks can be pretty addictive though. Kids these days getting high off Chipotle Maple Almonds... it's killing America.

You don't have to purchase what they advertise.

You also don't have to listen to the advertisements. Go premium or fast forward.

This really shouldn't be that big of an issue...there are beer commercials on TV all the time, and drinking and driving can kill someone. Draftkings and FanDuel are temporarily legal gambling outlets you don't have to use, and only harm the individual who makes bad life decisions.

I have no problem with it. In fact, I hope they sponsor the GOTY content if it makes GB money.

Now, Crunchyroll? That's a sleazy organization.

just saw the john oliver bit.

i really do hope the bombers distance themselves from this thing. not because some kind of moral outrage or anti-corporate agenda- moreso because i think it's intrinsically more difficult to be credibly critical of chance-based video game business models.

it's harder to take their editorial voice seriously if on the one hand they criticize roulette-esque mechanics while accepting advertising dollars from an abstracted form of the same thing. yes, you can draw a line and say "well they're talking about video games, and fantasy sports aren't games." but it's the same money-extraction method, no matter where it's applied- and to be critical in one field versus another (presumably because you care about one and not the other) is somewhat myopic.

not saying draft kings is the devil, nor do i think it should be destroyed. just think it's increasingly messier to transact with them, especially when an editorial voice is involved. best to avoid it entirely.

@craymen_edge:

I know your post is over a month old, but hell yeah, TESD. One of my favorite podcasts out there. And I agree, they have some of the best ad reads around, but I also probably wouldn't buy any adspace with them because of their reads. They are hilarious but sometimes it goes sooo far off topic that I don't really think it'd be worth the money. When they did that 5 day I remember that bike shop that bought a slot from them, saw zero increase in traffic and still continued to buy ad slots though. Anyway, I dont see a whole lot of people talk about TESD and got excited when I say you mention them.

I'd rather see Draft Kings ads than EA or Ubisoft stuff

i fully support the bomb crew peddling whatever terrible wares they have to offer as long as they're getting paid enough to continue talking about bullshit every week for my amusement. they could start selling canisters of carbon monoxide with the tagline breathe deep(tm) and i wouldn't mind because i'm a grown ass man who doesn't want to pay for anything other than video games and stree overlord.

Secret Hitler's pretty sketchy

I honestly believe its a fault of the medium. We are used to strangers, or sometimes celebrities pitching items to us on tv or radio, but with podcasts, I feel the audience has a deeper connection to the podcasters. Especially with shows like the bombcast, we as the audience learn to know and trust the 'caster's opinions. Then, when they start pitching an ad for a product that they are getting paid for, it seems like a good friend is lying to us.

This is especially true with the ads for Draft Kings and other obvious scams. I can imagine the guys going on a rant about how insane some of these online fantasy sites are, if not for them being sponsored by them. I kinda wish they'd go back to doing ads for squarespace and naturebox.

For what it's worth, I don't think I've heard one of the ads for a gambling site in several weeks (unless they just came back and I haven't heard it yet). I think those things get bought in chunks, so they were probably obligated to sling that trash regardless of their feelings on it for a set period of time as soon as the contract was signed. Seems like they heard the feedback pretty quickly and have switched over to more respectable, and honestly more relevant, ads.

i cant afford my premium subscription anymore because of a crippling stree overlord addiction

Ads are Ads. they will never go away.

They should go back to being sponsored by Zojirushi.

Digital trading cards... I think they should keep an eye out for better services and products but hey, they do a wonderful job turning what would otherwise be a painful 3 or so minutes into something entertaining.

I think the way they present it in some sarcastic tone makes it even sketchier aside from the questionable premise of some of the services. I still listen to the normal podcasts for the ads though.

For whatever reason I like their ads (for their humour value), so I get the regular, not premium feed.

That said, OP clearly isn't Australian. Gambling ads are HUGE here, so Draft Kings seems perfectly 'normal' to me. That's probably the 'sketchiest' company advertising. Crunchy Roll, Loot Crate, the Snack Mix (?) and Mattress company just seem like stuff no one wants.

I still don't understand fully what fantasy sports is. I only started hearing about it when these ads popped up for the podcast.

Is it like, virtual football games or something? Like some A.I.s the play against each other, or some computer that says "yo, this season, by our calculations based on the stats of the team you bet on, your team lost!" Like that stupid PF grade virtual battle stuff in MGSV?

I don't do it but it is basically picking individual players and making a team out of them and your team "Wins" by having those players do well in real life you get points for them doing well. It's real dumb and it blows my mind watching smart intelligent people get roped into it and don't even realize themselves what they are doing, my cousin is an extremely smart guy and he straight up told me it's not gambling I...had no words.

@evilsbane: So I put John Smith in my virtual football team. And then John Smith does well in a real game of football, outside of the game; which gets me points. (Sorry, I know I could just look this up on Wikipedia).

@kasaioni: Basically, you hold a draft with a group of people each taking a turn picking players from the NFL (or NHL or Esports teams whatever your group is into) until you build a full roster.

As those players play real games their performance is graded based off of their stats for that week and your fantasy team is awarded points.

You're paired against a guy in the league each week and your teams compete whoever wins the most weeks during the season will win the pot of they're playing for money (Like on draft kings but groups of friends or coworkers will do this as well privately) or a fancy dinner or bragging rights whatever it is.

It used to be for people that were super into sports statistics but ot kinda just balloned from there.

Yep, those fantasy sports ads started popping up everywhere, when I started hearing them on the bombcast I was dissappointed. Who am I to tell to tell stupid people how they should waste their money, maybe it's fun as hell. Crunchy Roll seemed liked a fine choice, truecar can be helpful, nature boxes are probably pretty good, but the daily fantasy thing just feels like something that shouldn't be legal but somehow is.

@lttibbles: Okay. That's a real strange thing to transform into an insanely popular vehicle for gambling.

Er, I mean, vehicle for skill. Like Mario Party.

while draft kings is kind of sketchy it's not impossible to do fantasy sports without putting any money up, like a season-long session with a group of friends. it's not like it's some new thing that draft kings or fan duel made popular, stuff like fantasy sports and march madness brackets have been around for longer than those sites. i fuck around with fantasy hockey on yahoo because my friend always needs one more person, and i don't pay anything to lose with the worst players because i don't know what i'm doing.

The problem with the daily fantasy sites is that they are raking in millions of dollars and only the very elite players, people who spend basically all their time doing this, will get any money out of it. John Oliver's bit on sites like these was informative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq785nJ0FXQ

Also, I'm glad the bombcast has moved away from these types of ads.

haha i'm sorry that this is from like half a year ago but everyone you listen to that relies on advertisements to continue producing content is a 'sell-out.' sorry the world doesn't revolve around good feelings and well wishes but people need to get paid to do the things they do and you believing that having to listen to a naturebox or meundies ad is a travesty is just fucking stupid. if you like what you're listening to then deal with the ads because that's how they make money. if not then make your own and see how long you last without the income.

@bartok I used to feel the exact same way! I've gotten way more used to it though and it doesn't really bother me now. Here's what I think did it: I realized that the people doing the advertising aren't great at advertising.

Jeff has a hell of an announcer voice, can make the ads funny, and add music to them. However, it's never going to be as polished, scripted, and produced as ads you hear on the radio or see on TV. The companies are paying random people that likely don't care about their product (thus, they're not as excited) to sell to the listeners. It's just a strange disconnect.

What's great about the Giant Bombcast at least is that they don't pretend to endorse the product themselves and they don't receive free product. Aside from letting the company produce and play regular radio ads on a podcast, I think that's about as clean and non-sellout as we can get. When the podcast hosts start talking about how much they personally love the product, it's hard not to lose a bit of respect for them; it's super fake sounding.

@sublime To be fair, I don't think he's being nearly as dramatic as you make him out to be. To me, it sounded like he was just wondering why podcast ads sound so weird. I've not listened to Bill Burr's podcast so I can't say for sure, but if I heard him publicly, personally endorsing underwear, I'd think it's super strange and out of character. Hence why I like the GB ads.

Podcasts are a great advertising outlet for any product, especially other media IMO. Legendary Pictures saw the value in them and picked up Nerdist. I have a feeling it's cheaper to advertise on them, and the listeners are likely (just an assumption) to be the kind of consumer with disposable income and willing to part with it. They get the added bonus that the people doing the advertising are already on a more intimate level with the listener.

Now if this had happened four or five years ago I might have agreed with you. But podcasts have come a long way.

@jrayder: The Nerdist reminds me how much I hate how that crew and Joel Hodgson (save for Kumail because he is hilarious and seemingly has no part in this) are turning that MST3K reboot into something that I feel goes against the original spirit of the show but that is a rant I don't have the energy to start.

I guess because I've been around podcast since the beginning. I'm still weary that most advertisers still need to use promo codes to pay podcast on commission instead of you know just looking at the listener demographics and downloads and paying based on that. A show like Giantbomb should garner higher advertising rates than say Hollywood Handbook but less than a Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

I guarantee a popular podcast like a Comedy Bang! Bang! or a WTF w/ Marc Maron get comparable or even better ratings than Saturday Night Live. Yet you don't have Lorne Michaels telling you to give a promo code when you buy something from one of their advertisers.

@bartok:

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.

People gotta get paid for the free product they produce, y'know? I feel like the whole scene is in a state of transition right now with monetizing podcasts. But certainly, vote with your subscription and your voice will be heard, I imagine.

I will say I did use the Squarespace promo code, I think from this podcast years ago, and I'm using it as a portfolio site that hosts my games, photography and writing, and I don't have to worry about building shit from the ground up and servers.

I could teach myself all that, in a week or so, but not having to worry about maintenance is pretty nice. So I guess I'm part of the advertising problem?

I still don't get why America seems so intensely weird and squeamish about gambling. Is it just the lingering influence of the puritans and religion?

Cause yeah, just like the aussie poster above, being in the UK where betting is just behind beer, drinking and eating curry as national pastimes and advertising for it is everywhere, I don’t see what this big problem with gambling ads and sponsorship and such is.

@deerokus: Betting on sports should totally be legal and regulated by a gaming commission. Hell it's the only thing that makes me give a shit about college basketball.

Most people's beef with Draft Kings and FanDuel is they skirt by a legal loophole requiring regulation by claiming to be a game of skill. Technically there is skill involved but the same could be said of most casino style games where knowing the odds plays in your favor. They also have misleading ads that make their service out to be no more different than your typical fantasy sports league which is a lie.

i think in a vacuum- absolutely nothing is wrong with any of that. but i do think the bombers get into strange territory when they'll criticize a game's business model for being exploitative and akin to gambling (think any game with loot packs or pay-for-random-drops), and then at the same time accept business dollars from an organization whose model IS essentially gambling.

it's not like they're eating babies- but it does make me wish they were a little more mindful of their sponsors and who they're taking money from. especially given the podcast's importance to the site and the relative newness of the ads.

I hate to necro a thread that has probably caused some headaches for the mods, but I stumbled across this today and thought it should be shared with this community. I'm pretty sure that Lumosity was advertised on the bombcast at some point, so just trying to circulate information to allow people to make informed decisions.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lumosity-pay-2m-settle-deceptive-ad-allegations-36100097

This doesn't necessarily qualify for a "shady" ad, but instead of starting a whole new topic:

Regarding the latest ad on the Beastcast for Credit Karma: Thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you can get free credit reports directly from each of the three major bureaus at least once per year, and again each time you are denied credit or suffer a negative action against one of your accounts. There are other reasons you may be granted free access to your credit report as well. There are also numerous active (and free) communities on the internet where people get together and discuss credit and how to improve it.

You should never have to pay anyone to get your own credit score. When getting your credit report directly from Equifax, TransUnion, or Experian, you don't even have to provide a credit card. Now, this CreditKarma site (and others) may offer some kind of monitoring service for a monthly fee that may or may not work as advertised, but please, don't pay them just because you want to see what's on your credit reports.

There are plenty of businesses that advertise all over the place that seem to suggest that the only way you can learn about and improve your own credit is by paying a service to help you do so. This couldn't be farther from the truth - there is nothing any of these corporations can do for you that you can't do for yourself with some time and the cost of postage. You can even do things like place a freeze on your credit files for a very small fee to essentially completely prevent identity theft, which provides a far higher level of security than any monitoring service alone can offer.

@mike:

From my understanding of CreditKarma and similar services is that they only provide an estimation of your score. That's not to say they're inaccurate. The actual number Equifax/TransUnion/Experian is using may only be off like 10 points or something. I've also noticed that many banks are offering credit reporting services as well.

Also, I've been using CreditKarma for a year or so. It will give your score for free. I use it as an easy way for a monthly checkup on my score.

There a big difference between the service that credit karma is offering (regular ongoing estimates of your credit score without hard credit inquiries) and the once a year credit report than you can get for free from the government t at annual refit report.com. I'd suggest that anyone read up on the topic before diving in either way.