Then you are faced with the start or end dilemma. If I put it at the end people might tune out and miss it, at the start it stands out like dogs your know what’s.

It was important to both of us that the listener knew it was an ad so they don’t think that it is a straight out endorsement. To that end we script the ads and use it as a “bumper” to something else.

That said actually doing them is difficult. None of us are voice talents. But we do our best.

Perhaps Cam, instead of doing “live” ads. What about doing some scripts and making an effort to *sound* dynamic it may be better received by your listeners. Record a number of these. If you really want to use some effort put some backing music in. Then cycle through them for each show. OR What about getting the kids in on the act? Maybe they could add some appeal to your ads?

Ben: watch what you wish for…a) personalized ads mostly suck (maybe someday they won’t, but not today…and what “listeners behavior” do you want beyond the fact that I like this podcast, anyway), and b) too many more ads, and I’d be bidding Cameron a fond adieu, as much as I love him. The radio-style ad model is relevant, but this ISN’T radio. There’s way, way, way too much choice, much of which has no ads, or ads at Cameron’s present level, to start dumping ads in live mass media does. There’s no scarcity issue in podcasting that keeps me from just flipping away (and the cable TV model is useful, but again not perfect. There’s still a large capital-intensive investment required to build even a cable network. Not so for podcasting. [Cam: I realize you've definitely got money on the table, of course...but a) you're trying to own the entire thing, and b) you've got LOTS of content]).

Ads are fine, in moderation. Just don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Ben – who are you working with you bastard? You should bring my anything first. Time you bought be brekky.

My 2c worth is you should have more ads than you do. Without the revenue how would you survive?

From what I understand, intros are worth more than outros, price-wise, and I can live with even a whole minute and 10 seconds of ads. Even at the front. I don’t even skip through them!

Now, if you started heavily seeding the interior of the podcast, say every 7 minutes of so (sound familiar?) that’d be a pain in the ass. I know you occasionally have an internal one, but it usually sounds like you’re dealing with a sound issue or something, and just take the opportunity to throw a quick thing in. Again, no big deal. I WANT you to end up gangsta-rich, Cam…you provide me tons of value, and I can put up with a couple of minutes of ads an hour for that. I haven’t listened to terrestrial radio in months, and that makes Ken a very happy nerd. TPN is a big part of that.

So yeah, I feel my co-listeners “”pain”…but if we think about the value that we get from TPN, I think it’s a pretty damn good bargain. I’m certainly not going anywhere!

WRT the integration issue…isn’t that partly due to the fact that you have a fairly sophisticated ad insertion system, Cam? Eventually, it would be able to do customized ads for a given d/l, based on IP address (kinda sorta location), etc…right? I’m guessing that’s the reason that you don’t “wire” the ads directly into the show itself. I’m sure the smoothness could be tweaked a bit, but again, IMO, they’re over before I really even notice them. No biggie.