Podcasts flow naturally and pleasantly into a listener’s day to day, advertisements flow naturally and pleasantly in and out of podcasts, and persuasion ceases to register as persuasion, becoming instead a benevolent suggestion from a trusted friend, an invitation to a communal experience, an opportunity to affirm that you are loyal to the community, that you “get it,” that you belong. The danger of this is that ads, host-read or not, are profit-driven, and they deserve more skepticism than a friend’s words would warrant. Advertisements are not our friends — even if they seem to spoken by them.
the intimacy of audio is one of the affordances of podcasts. This is the cloud from that silver lining.
This is an interesting point John, and one with which I regularly wrestle. I must confess I do find ads intrusive, but lean towards accepting that price as the cost of accessing a podcast for ‘free’. Is it the same kind of Faustian pact as handing over my personal data for ‘free’ access to Google services? I dunno.