Dismal results for direct response ads
Faithful listeners,
For the past few months, you’ve all been putting up with a variety of direct response ads at the beginning of most episodes of the books you are listening to. These short clips gave you a customized URL attached to our site. Some decided to try those links out, and a few actually made purchases from the vendors we were highlighting, causing some money to flow our direction.
By “some”, I mean exactly $287.84 since 2007. Not what I’d call a home run.
In fact, I’m betting that branding value that the various companies received from having those direct response ads play was pretty damned huge — worth way more to them than the paltry sum we made from commissions on the sales.
So two things are happening: First, I’m ending the pre-roll ads I’ve been running. Maybe direct response ads can work for some podcasts. But they certainly don’t work — at least not nearly well enough — for podiobooks.
Next, I’m on the lookout for branding advertisers who will want to have their message run. We push out around 20 – 25K episodes of books every day, and I’ve yet to see a single email where someone was complaining about the ads. There are probably several reasons for that, most centering on the types of ads and the duration. They aren’t “in your face” and they are kept quite short. I’m assuming that you know we’re experimenting with revenue models and are OK with us as we work through the issues. So thanks for that.
But back to the second part. While I’m discontinuing running direct response ads, I’m quite interested in speaking with branding advertisers who want to reach our audience. Of course, being “interested” and being able to act upon that interest are two different things. So for now, enjoy the ad-free episodes, which should start up for tomorrow or the next day. It takes a bit to have changes filter down, so you may still hear ads for a while. But they are on the way out. For now.
E.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
“We push out around 20 – 25K episodes of books every day”
That is an astounding number. Way to go!
August 8th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Did having the ads on the site have any impact one way or the other?
August 8th, 2007 at 7:14 am
How would you define ‘impact’, Jason? It didn’t make much of a monetary impact when I had audio ads up front, as the article states. I didn’t get any hate mail and traffic looks fairly steady, so there wasn’t an impact to listenership that I can measure.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:29 am
I was referring to adding the here on the the site itself, and not the audio ads. Did adding the ads to the site help or have no impact?
Does that make sense?
August 8th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Ah. I see the question now, I think. So I’ll answer it in two ways:
Adding the small ads to the blog in unison with the audio ads didn’t have a noticeable impact on the success of the audio ads.
Having the Google AdSense code all of the site is productive, and is the main reason we moved the author contribution amount for donations up to 75%.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
My experience listening to your ‘preroll’ ads turned me off – on most of the books I listened to they were at full volume, then the book itself was (estimated) to be 6-12 db lower. I hate to have to switch the volume control while driving. The shortness of the ad was ok, but not the volume. I’ve heard that TV ads have boosted volume – so you can hear it in the kitchen, but on a podiobook in the car, or headset this is rediculous.
I’ll add that the volume on some of the books – “SUCKS” big time. Some thought should be paid to quality control. It appears to me that no-one at podiobooks ever listens to some of the books.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Getting even audio levels is difficult, no doubt. For us, it’s compounded further because we do not check every episode of every book. At best, we give the author some feedback about quality when they send us sample files, but we leave the final decision to them. Part of me wishes we could to more quality control, but a larger part of me knows that we’re just not set up to do it, and it might lead to even tighter control. Not sure I want that.
My hope is that people like youself who find books with poor quality help others that might come after and rate the books down. So far, most ratings tend to come from folks who like a book. Guess that’s human nature, and I certainly can’t make anyone give rotten ratings to deserving books if that’s not what they care to do.
A conundrum, to be sure. I’ve not experienced and issue with volume (I, too, listen at full volume), though it’s not a big surprise to me that some books have this issue.
E.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
I haven’t found the ads to be objectionable and realistically, although I made a small contribution to the site, the bills have to be paid (not to mention the staff). I hope that you find some advertisers who will appropriately assess the value of your audience.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I too had no objection to the ads. With respect to the response rate, I didn’t visit either of the sites because the products weren’t of any interest to me. My MP3 player doesn’t need any special cover, and I get all the exercise I need riding my bike whilst listening to Podiobooks.
Perhaps collecting some demographic information from subscribers and using that to identify likely advertising prospects could up the conversion rate.
I do like the idea of ad supported Podiobooks
August 10th, 2007 at 12:37 am
I too have no problems with the ads. it’s not to say that i don’t fist forward through them the majority of the time, but that’s not to say, that I don’t know every d&mned word of those ads by heart.
I like that I have the ability (politely requested by yourselves) to donate, and to tell a friend. To me that’s more important. Perhaps it’s the most important reason that I chose to give podiobooks.com my attention.
I’d really like to know how the donations are going? Have you already blogged about this? Can these authors make a living from your site? Do you the staff? I’ve noticed for the first time that i can donate to yourselves direct (above right). I’d really like to hear more. How is the site succeeding? Please, don’t just fold. I’d hate to see you not succeed.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:56 am
Hi, Evo,
The pre-rolls were not as hard to accept as I thought they would be. And yes, once I learned the ads by heart, I also fast forwarded.
One time I clicked on an ad to get to the advertising site, just to look at the item – and was disappointed. The link did not take me directly to the merchandise. I had to hunt around and, in the process, lost interest. True, I wasn’t planning to buy anyway, but the advertiser didn’t know that.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
[...] PodioBooker [...]
August 10th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Evo
While I applaud you for trying new things, plugs on audio books are a bit like the ads for other movies they stick on front of rental movie DVDs…anything from a bother to an imposition. Nothing much can come of them in terms of sales because the viewer is already pissed that he’s been trapped into paying attention. After all, time is money, and personal recreation time is the most coveted.
I know these things.
Best
John Klawitter