Podcast injected commercials question

General Discussions
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So one of my favorite things about using Plex for all my media is only having to use one app. I commute and listen to a lot of Podcasts on my daily drives.

My main concern is recently I am getting a lot of (what I call) “injected commercials” into/in-front of my podcasts. Is this Plex doing it? or is it the URL’s I’m using to put them into Plex?

Most of the Podcasts I listen to “dry read” their sponsors into the podcast, now I’m actually getting extra commercials and they are getting geo-specific to my living area.

Is this Plex doing it? I am only thinking it is, since they add commercials into the Webshows.

2

For all I know, Plex doesn’t inject ads into any of the online media sources. The exception being Plex’ video on demand service – which are paid for by those ads (“Movies & TV on Plex”).

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In the past I’ve tried to watch things like All About Android from the Twit Network in Webshows and had produced commercials for PLEX itself, put into the middle of the shows and the Twit Network does all dry reads of sponsors in all of their video podcasts.

I didn’t expect it then (so I just watched them on the Twit website) this is why I’m saying/asking if it is a Plex thing.

I just assumed that since I bought the Lifetime Plex Pass, I’d only have to deal with the podcasts’ own dry read ads. This is only started happening within about a month. Doesn’t happen with every episode, just seems to be getting more frequent lately on random podcasts. I can listen to 2 episodes from the same podcast and it only happens on one of the episodes. I’ve had it happen on 2 out of 3 podcasts (different podcasters) I listen to daily and have had it happen on one podcast anywhere from 1 “injected commercial” to 3 in one hour and half podcast episode.

Am I going nuts?

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I’m told Plex isn’t adding any ads – so “no Plex thing”.
Could be your source or the way you have linked those podcast episodes (e.g. if they’re hosted on a platform that tinkers with the episode).

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Ok thanks I’ll look into that.

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I listen to a lot of podcasts. Like it or not podcasts make their money by either subscription or ads. The thing that I’ve never understood is that if a user like me is actively blocking or not listening to ads, what do you get by trying to go around my blockers and stuffing the ad under my nose? Do you really think I’m gonna say “Oh geez, you got me. Now I must buy this product” or do you think I’d be more inclined to say “Idiots! Now I will never buy your product!”? I’d say the latter.

But with podcasts ads are sorta different. If the program is short and say daily (e.g. MarketPlace Morning Report) I will hear the same tired ads over and over and over again. Didn’t like it the first time, still don’t like it the 100th time!

I use Podcast Addict which has this interesting feature where you can trim off the 1st or last <n> seconds of a podcast. This works well for some podcasts that put their ads or even intro/outro stuff at the beginning or end. Would love to see Plex incorporate such a feature but IMHO in my getting the Plex player to default to FF/REW of a configured amount rather than skip to the next/prev episode is paramount. I cannot use the Plex player for podcasts until this is implemented.

Still, podcasters like Leo Laporte put their ads directly into their podcasts. Leo and his podcast hosts read them directly and they are quite long. He sometimes has a service that, as you say, injects a geographically accurate ad like the auto dealer down the street.

Still, other podcasters (e.g. Freqonomics podcasts) try to keep listeners listening by putting some friendly banter or an announcement by the podcast host at the end of the episode so you’ll be sure to listen.

I must say, I have purchased some of the products peddled on podcasts when they’ve sufficiently interesting me. But I sure as heck do not need to hear about that same product thousands of times.

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Y’all bringing back the whole Linus VS. Louis debacle lol

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That makes sense but “sense” has NOTHING to do with soliciting. (advertising)
If people in general never bought things that are intrusively advertised the advertisers would cease spending the money. The advertisers see increased sales and they then ignore any negative feedback. That is the only explanation for the proliferation of calls about my auto warranty (I do not own a car and have not for over 10 years) or asking for dinero for “The Police benevolent society” (A fake charity that simply collects money) or just about any advertising for “services” and many even for products.
The fact is that intrusive advertising works and generates income. If it did not make money then the ads would stop because they generally cost money or time or both. Also threats and such have no effect on advertisers. If it costs more money than it makes advertisers will stop advertising but it does not so the advertising continues. We, at best, can only do what little we can to reduce the problem but unless you can hit their bottom line there is no real way to stop advertisers.

I use an ad blocker but ads get through.
I block every spamming number and yet I still get spam calls.
I use just about the strongest junk main filtering I can but junk mail still shows up in my inbox.
I do not answer the door if I do not recognize who is there. This actually works as long as I obey my guidelines.
There are billboards all over and there is nothing to do about them but I do not drive so, at least, I can totally ignore the ads there.

In other words ads are here to stay and you cannot really avoid them. All you can do is ignore and/or block all advertising sources as well as we can and work to ignore the rest.

Note: I have an ad-blocker on my browser (FireFox) but I have noticed a strong trend that sites are using advertising techniques, like popups, for necessary content. That is they are circumventing ad-blockers by forcing all or part of ad-blockers to be turned off on their sites. In fact I am beginning to doubt that ad-blockers are really effective for normal usage. They are the only way for me to use some sites as the loading of the ads are very very slow and it is set so that the rest of the site only loads if ads load first. But I am unsure if using ad-blockers are still worth the overhead.

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Leo Laporte has his Tech Guy program as a syndicated program on radio stations. How the hell do you expect the radio station to make money for themselves if they can’t offer their customers the ability to promote and market their products in between breaks? Literally advertising and marketing… and propaganda has been a thing for hundreds of years. It ain’t going anywhere. YOU have the option to skip or Adblock if you wish, but that’s up to you and whether or not it should be simple and easy to do is questionable since advertisers usually HOPE that their money was spent in a way that allowed more views or impressions of their products or services.

Everyone has certain favorite brands that they all remember from their childhood… and that’s because it was psychologically driven into you in one way or another. It’s not going away. Leo Laporte probably wouldn’t have had the studio he built just by working a hourly job behind a desk. He had advertising help him and the help of crowdfunding from listeners who believed in his business.

At the end of the day, if YOU don’t have the will power to ignore it, and you can’t stomach the ads, then find another tech guy or another podcaster who informs or covers topics that don’t feature advertising.

I’ll leave this here:

Vid 1

Vid 2

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LIke @tom80H said I bet it’s the publisher messing with the file. Compare the same episode from a few sources and see if you can find a clean source.

I do not listen to a lot of podcasts, but the ones I do follow have never included an ad that was not obviously part of the original program… that would be INFURIATING, haha.

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There’s a lot of evidence that measuring the success of an ad campaign is fraught with problems and it’s very hard to show conclusively that it worked. It doesn’t work on me, doesn’t work on you and it doesn’t work on most people. That’s why response rates from such ads are terribly low.

As for spam filters, I wrote my own. Nobody gets through unless I allow them in.

I never said that there’s some magic thing that would stop all ads or even most of them. I merely said that I find it foolish to advertise to somebody who is actively blocking your ads. IOW, hey ad man, you’re wasting your money on me.

As for adblockers uBlock Origin seems to work well. Oh, there are some sites that say they saw that I was using an adblocker and they require me to turn that off to view their site. My response is always the same - Really? I’ll go elsewhere then.

uBlock Origin’s also cool to block non-ad segments of web pages that you’ll never use. For example, I block a lot of ■■■■ on Facebook pages because I’ll never use them so I don’t care to see them.

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I will answer your question with a question… You ask how can they make money if they can’t advertise to me. My question to you is how can the advertiser make money merely by showing me an ad? The answer is they can’t. If I’m not gonna buy their product or service then advertising directly to me is a waste of time and money for them. You all seem to think I want advertising to anybody stopped. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that there are people you want to advertise to because they will probably buy your product/service and there are people like me who will never buy your product/service and by forcing your ads under my nose when you know I’m blocking you will only increase my resistance. As an ad man, you should move on to somebody who is more likely to be interested. It’s in your best interest to do so.

I’m also saying that advertising people should be mindful about how their ad comes across. In podcasts, especially ones that are frequent, consider that constantly bashing your ads over your potential customer’s heads over and over and over, causing them to hear the same ads all the time will often cause such people to look for ways around the droning and again, you will not be effectively advertising to them.

Examples of products and services I will not use: Any female only product - I’m male. Products for which I have no interest - wedding cakes, baby diapers, strollers, etc. The list can go on and on but the point is not that these things shouldn’t be advertised rather they shouldn’t be forced advertised (through my adblocker or insisting that I turn off my adblocker) to me. IOW you’re wasting your time and money here.

For Leo’s embedded ads I just FF through them though I did say that I have heard them and have even purchased some products/services before, which leads me to another category of wasted ads - I mean if I already use say service X I really don’t need to hear ads about service X again and again and again.

13

While I agree that ads do not sell like advertisers want people to believe the nature of the beast is that it really costs no more to send adds to a million people than it does to send it to one. Once the add is designed, recorded or printed or whatever is needed to get it ready then the money, at least most of it, has been spent. That is mostly true except for TV or radio ads where you must buy the time but the real money spent is spent in getting the ad ready for distribution.
So, even if the result is poor and the majority of people will ignore the ad it costs nothing of importance to simply send it to everyone or send it to just one or two and spending the time and money to discover who “might” be receptive is simply too costly.
There is one site that I allow targeted ads and, guess what, their ads are actually less suited to me that the random ads that get through my protections. My tentative conclusion is that targeted ads do nothing but create revenue for those that are making and disseminating them. In spite of, and maybe because of, studies showing they work I think they really do nothing more than the simple product exposure ads that I have seen from time to time. That is I guess advertising supports large segments of out economy but it is not effective in any rate to match the money spent.
Although, if I could find them, I might buy from Acme Manufacturing because their product placement in Road Runner cartoons makes me want their product.
Also “Product Placement” actually works. Look at the boost Taco Bell got after the release of Demolition Man. where both the movie visuals and the dialog kept repeating “Taco Bell” as if it were a natural occurrence in the plot, which it was, mostly.

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What they neglect to consider is that they are also spending their Goodwill. IOW their reputation could be spoiled by continually annoying their customers with useless ads. Indeed many businesses now advertise to you by email but they are using their support@company.com to do so. I shut down such ads with my homegrown spam filters which work off of From address. In this case, I will no longer be able to deal with support since they are using the same email for their support and ads. This pisses me off so much I then refuse to do business with such idiots. I mean how hard is it to create marketingads@company.com?

15

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

That is what advertisers count on. They REALLY do not care if most people ignore them and they do not care if most people actively hate them. The only thing they care about is getting MONEY and they get money by getting enough people to buy things.

There is also the quote by George Carlin: "“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

That is all advertisers want or need. They just want to sell “things” or “services” to stupid people and they get plenty of money. We can be as offended as we want but the advertisers don’t care. They just want money and they believe their current methods work just fine and they will change nothing unless people stop buying “things” or “services.” In that case they will convince the people with the money that it was not their fault and the convince those same people to fork over more money.

It is also well to remember that the lesser half of people also represent a large part of those that are advertised so we have stupid people advertising to stupid people for products that, mostly, never live up to the hype and that makes “stupidity” a survival trait. Isn’t it WONDERFUL???

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I just got a look at the replies but I’m heading somewhere but the opposite of this is being on the receiving end of these mass adverts and a thing called JUNK MAIL, something that has never been fixed either by the mailing system nor in your email box. You will continue to be bombarded with this till you die. Stop thinking that these mechanisms are just suddenly gonna be pulled as options. As long as money is to be made, the mechanisms will still exist. Had we fixed the whole junk mail in the American mailing system, I reckon we wouldn’t have had so much paper waste, people would enjoy receiving things in the mail, and the postal workers wouldn’t feel so darn defeated when mass piles of unprocessed mail can’t be sorted in a timely manner. It may be a waste of money and time for the people on the delivery and receiving ends, but the USPS offers businesses to use mailing lists and bulk mail the opportunity to purchase zones in which they can target their audience. Those numbers mean opportunity of exposure and runs the risk of being ignored, but that still accounts to exposure nonetheless.

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Are you an NFL fan, or of any sport? Cuz honestly, you can’t be a viewer of any modern day sport and not have advertising shoved in your face every second of viewing it. I watched the Daytona 500 with nothing but advertising and people who watch sports have had to grow accustomed to the brands that are displayed on and off their screens. It’s literally part of the ecosystem, the economy. It’s not going to die cuz you want it to. The only way you’re gonna enjoy anything in modern civilization is by closing your eyes and even your ears.

I will say I have recently made it known that I’ve watched my fair share of unsolicited marketing on my local OTA Buzzr affiliate. They pass nothing but adult incontinence, male ED, and medicare/medicaid insurance ads and I don’t fit that demographic whatsoever but I am mindful that senior citizens are. In order to “CIRCUMVENT” as what you have demonstrated by your various comments in the thread, you and I are merely finding ways to go around the advertising, whether that by skipping legally or through extraction of them in differing forms (commercial deletion). Either way, there will be an influx of these advertising, no matter where you go. It’s essential to the economic stabilization of business.

VHS’s decades ago had advertising of upcoming releases to VHS or movie theaters as previews prior to the viewing of the film. DVD and BluRay media locked you down as a licensed owner of the physical copy of the disk you legally purchased and inserted locked adverting at the begining of each play of the disc. It’s nothing new and will continue to be a driving force until the companies decide it’s time to end it. NFT’s are merely the new inception to this concept. There will continue to be a new form of advertising, whether you like to be fed it or not. And there’s tons of YT channels that solely dedicate themselves to the rememberance of advertising. Companies enjoy that their brands can be recognizable and somehow people foolishly tie them in with their life in some form or another.

18

Holy hand grenade, Batman! I didn’t mean to cause such a deep debate about people’s feelings about being forced to listen/watch advertising. But damn I love a good discussion!

I watch the videos you posted and my takes are…

  • Linus is an idiot for trying to compare ad-blocking and piracy as the same thing (even if it’s the “arrrg” variety).
  • Louis (from what I remember of his video’s on right to repair and building shopping in NY) has always used common logic when looking at most tit-for-tat arguments and hasn’t stopped with this one.

To sum up my feelings, I will say this…

If you are going to give me some “free” content that I want to hear/watch and I can stomach the ads (YOU as the creator put into them) you’ve got me. Will I buy what your selling? Not likely (hasn’t happened yet). But should you over saturate your content to the point it’s over half ads, I’m out. (looking at you True Crime Obsessed and YouTube).

But I shouldn’t have to listen/watch some (what I’m calling) “inserted advertising” that someone else is adding to the content (to get a little side money the creator isn’t seeing) by slipping it in front, in the middle or end of a file they are just acting as tunnel for, that has nothing to do with the content creator, is nothing more than a “destination fee” and that is just bullshit.
Please don’t use the argument that these people are helping me get the content I want so they should get something crap. The internet is so full of RSS feed link curation pages that you can never tell who the creators are actually using (after some quick investigating, I believe this might be my problem for the “inserted ads” I’m experiencing). The creators’ don’t care, because to them, it’s free advertising/promotion of their content, but in the long run the more advertising hitchhiking on will possibly cause them to lose listeners/viewers.

I also understand I could pay for the “ad free” content and support them better, but
A) I’m a cheap SOB
B) Didn’t tell you to give it away free to begin with
C) Don’t respond well to peer pressure

I see podcasts/videocasts as the new Radio/OTA TV I have the equipment to listen/watch it and will deal with the advertisements that come with it. But I shouldn’t have to deal with another third party just interrupting the signal to add their own advertisements into it also.

I use Brave as my browser and it does an excellent job at stopping the ads “injected” on every YouTube video I watch on YouTube’s site, but funny enough if the linked YT video is on Reddit, it won’t block the ads. I find that funny.

I’m not looking to start editing the files of the podcasts I listen to, to not have to listen to any ads, I just don’t want “more” than it originally had. I’m not going to use a different app so I can try to circumvent the ads either, as I’ve said before “I just want one app to use for all media”.

:rofl: I’m currently re-watching the entire “Chuck” show and the product placement on this show was top shelf stuff. I had forgotten how much was in there. The blatant rip-off of “Buy More” from Best Buy and “Nerd Herd” from Geek Squad to the actual Subway, Nvidia, Cellphone’s, Xbox, Roomba, etc. The show is pure gold.

19

I actually was thinking of two movies when I type that. The second was “Terminator II” and the product was Pepsi. There is a scene, maybe more, where a “Pepsi” can was prominently placed. After watching that movie I was leaving the theater and my date asked me to get her a Pepsi. I also heard several other people ask for one. I even heard on person go to the snack bar and ask for a Pepsi. The clerk informed them that they only served “Coke.” At the time it really did not impress me much but, all these years later, I now see what happened.

I would even go so far as to say that “product placement” can, if well done, be almost as effective as the “subliminal” tricks that were tried a long time ago.

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