There’s Still No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Now that it’s here, though, I’ve been smiling for a week. You’ve no doubt read about this whole website ad-blocking kerfuffle, and how publishers are screaming that if their ads are blocked they won’t be able to afford to offer free content.
Well, let’s just say all that content isn’t exactly free.
Advertising Math: 9 = 0
In a recently-published article, “The Cost of Mobile Ads on 50 News Websites,” The New York Times analyzed how much ad content came along with a page download from 50 news websites and then projected the impact on a mobile data plan. In the case of the Boston Globe website, the Times pegged the cost of one month of downloading the ads on the Globe‘s home page at the equivalent of $9.50.
I’m not an expert in this, but it seems that if I’m paying the equivalent of $9.50 a month to download ads I don’t want, then that site is hardly free. Granted, the site’s not getting the money (my wireless carrier is), but I still feel it coming out of my pocket. And don’t tell me that I pay for that data whether I use it or not. Then that $9.50 figure represents the cost of content I might have downloaded, but didn’t, in order to stay under my plan limit. No, those ads are the cost of admission to read what the Globe considers free.
Podcasting Math: 2 = 28 or Maybe 58
What this discussion ignores, of course, is that the impetus to block ads didn’t come from the Times‘ analysis. Ad blocking became an issue when consumers grew tired of looking at content they found lacking in value. Which brings me to why I’m smiling.
I won’t revisit my arguments as to why podcasting, with its host-delivered, personal advertising, is superior to web ads when it comes to branding a product and persuading consumers to take action. I’ve written about that before. I will point out that in addition to this power to brand and persuade, podcast ads cost the recipient far less than the ads that haunt web pages. A podcast streaming at 128kpbs (and you can easily get away with a lower bit rate) requires about a megabyte per minute of content. Two minutes of commercials in your podcast costs a listener 2MB of data, and in return you give your listener 28 to 58MB of content (for a 30- to 60-minute episode). That’s a blip compared to the ad-to-content ratio the Times‘ article reported.
Sooner of later, smart marketers will rethink their podcast strategies and look at independent podcasters with host-delivered commercials rather than buying the large podcast networks exclusively.
If there are any marketers reading this blog who want to know more about why that’s true, contact me here. I’ll buy lunch.
