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Spotify’s Ad Skip: Smart Feature… or Indie Podcaster Nightmare? · Your Mic

• 0:00
  In this episode of Your Mic, I'm joined by my friend Frank Raciopi, podcast journalist for Forbes magazine and owner of the Earworthy newsletter. We're going to be talking about the new definition of a play, Spotify's ad skip, and why chasing big numbers might be the stupidest thing you can do as an indie podcaster. Quick note that Frank will be a panelist at Illuminate.
• 0:23
  It is the ultimate creator experience happening October 3rd at the Health Museum in Houston, Texas. And you get a discount code when you tap the link in the description. One of the biggest things that I think has really jolted the podcast industry has been the whole amp definition of a play. And I'd love to get your thoughts on that as someone who covers a lot of indie podcasts.
• 0:49
  Oh, Freddie, first of all, thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for asking me and thanks for allowing me to be on the show. I appreciate it very much and great honor, of course, as always, to talk to you.
• 0:59
  And yeah, I've done some work with Forbes on AMP originally in their first couple of documents that they put out. And I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that their stated goal is to find some standardization within the industry. And that's a laudable goal considering that podcast came from very...
• 1:21
  decentralized origins. And so, yeah, every industry has gone through that. I mean, TV did that right at the beginning. We ended up in the 90s with two formats for recording, Betamax and VHS. And so we've all been through that, media industries. And now I guess it's podcasting's turn simply because of the growth in the industry. Having said all that, and I think you would agree that people...
• 1:51
  for quite a while have been concerned about the download as the gold standard for podcast metrics. I mean, would you agree? I would definitely agree. I think that one of the most important proofs of concept for any show would be like the first thousand downloads, especially for an indie host who doesn't have some sort of institutional backing, someone who's maybe recording out of their closet and...
• 2:20
  trying this for the first time. But outside of that, a download can mean it. It can mean Frank listening to a true crime show for 25 seconds, and then he forgot that he has to go and cook dinner for his wife. It could mean Freddie listens to that same true crime podcast for the entire duration and then goes on to listen to the next three episodes. And so it's a wide array of definitions, and it's great to see some sort of standardization.
• 2:50
  Yeah, I agree with that. I think, and I agree with everything you just said. I think one of the issues I have, I don't want to dispose of downloads completely for a couple of reasons. And I'll give you my personal experience. So I have on my phone, I use Pocket Casts. That's my app. And I've tried several and it's fine for now.
• 3:18
  And so in my, as a matter of fact, I looked at it this morning before I went walking, in my downloaded section, I have 24 episodes or 24 podcasts, a couple episodes from the same podcast that are all loaded in there. And so it may take me
• 3:37
  three weeks to go through those, but I eventually I will get through them. And so, uh, you know, there's that lag time sometimes between people downloading and listening that you generally don't get with, uh, television shows or you don't get with music. Music I think is more immediate. So, you know, I'm concerned that, uh, just by, uh, ejecting downloads completely and going to the play.
• 4:06
  we're forgetting the fact that podcast works in a specific way, which is you can't have a play. You generally can't have a play. You can stream without a download, but downloads are a good first step. And they sort of, it's kind of like, I'll give you a baseball example. It's kind of like looking at a hitter and looking at their batting average and their on-base percentage. Both are important.
• 4:34
  One tells you more information than the other, but you don't want to just get rid of your batting average and just go to on-base percentage. So I think still having the ability to look at downloads as a valuable metric, but not the only metric, is important.
• 4:49
  And it seems like it's going to be more imperative upon the creator, no matter how big or small their show is, is that if they want to reach whatever goal they have for their show. Before we started recording, we were talking about the YouTube algorithm shift. And I think it's highly relevant for anyone who is considering launching a video component to their audio show is that, well...
• 5:19
  If you have a small show, it's going to be imperative for you to optimize your profile in such a way that you can actually measure your show's impact. Now, does that mean that Frank's show should strive for 100,000 plays or views or downloads per episode or per month, or is he going to be okay with 25,000 over the course of
• 5:43
  two whole years. It depends. Would you rather have, this was something that we had talked about before too, is that would you rather have a million plays on something and get absolutely no business, or would you rather, hmm, 10,000 highly targeted, very specific viewers or listeners, since we're talking about audio podcasts, targeted listeners, and then you have a 40 or 50%
• 6:13
  I would definitely go with a smaller number. Yeah, no, I agree with you. Actually, this is eventually gonna lead into a good discussion about the Spotify ad skipping because you're talking about targeted ads. And so, but you're kind of making the point that maybe you don't wanna do that simply because those ads are valuable to you as the creator and also valuable to the audience. If you're targeting an audience, so,
• 6:40
  For example, for me, I like vinyl. I'm a vinyl collector. And so if I got an ad for vinyl, for vinyl, for albums, I would definitely pay attention. I might be one of only 500 people that are listening to that, but I'm also motivated to buy. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think
• 7:04
  Yeah, that targeted audience part component is a big part of it. And I think it's really the currency for the independent or niche podcaster. I mean, really. And that's one of the things, one thing I'll say is that's one of the things sometimes I think independent podcasters are missing is they don't.
• 7:26
  understand their audience. They don't identify their audience. They don't understand what they're looking for to get out of the podcast. And therefore, they're not able to build a community and take it from listeners slash viewers into a community, which is really what you want to do. That whole rented space of YouTube and even to a certain degree, RSS is freedom. At the end of the day,
• 7:53
  One could still get deplatformed. So if you were able to have an offline community of sorts, a newsletter subscriber base, you're more likely to find that success, whatever that success is to you. And I think, again, it's incumbent upon the creator to really dial in what their set, what their specific goal is for their show before they ever even record their first episode. That way they're not in a world of hurt.
• 8:17
  three, five, 10, 20 episodes in, they're like, I've wasted all this time. I spent $700, $800 on gear, even though you don't have to do that. And for what? What do I have besides six months of headaches? And I think that for a lot of creators, especially independent creators,
• 8:37
  They go into the industry with an idea that this is information or that I want to get out to people rather than reversing that process and reverse engineering and saying, what is it that people either want to know or maybe want to get from me? And that's how I will design my podcaster and my show.
• 9:00
  And unfortunately, they don't go through that process. And therefore, they don't even sometimes use some of the analytics that are available. They're just looking at the back to the back to the downloads. They're just looking at the number of downloads. Well, in a lot of the hosting programs, you can slice that data, parse that data and find out completion rate, who's listening, when are they listening, so forth and so on. What's my
• 9:28
  What's my most played episode and so forth? Why is it the most played? But you really have to go through the process in order to do that. But the one thing I'd say about the 30-second play is I don't know exactly how they came up with 30 seconds. I realize that it couldn't be a lot less than that simply because, and I'm just about to say this, anyone can rig any metric that you can come up with.
• 9:57
  Absolutely. You know that there's this quick story I had read a couple hundred years ago in France. The king, I think it was Louis XIV, put a tax on buildings in France.
• 10:16
  The front inch of a building. So however wide the front of the building was, you got to pay a tax on that. Can you guess what people did in order to make sure their taxes were lower? Oh, I'm sure they made it look like they were a lot thinner. Exactly. Exactly right. That's one of the reasons why back a couple hundred years ago in Britain, they came out with the tabloid form of a newspaper because, again –
• 10:46
  the king had taxed newspapers based on one specific height of the newspaper. And so to get around that, they made the tabloid, which is more square. So I guess what I'm saying is even with something like a play instead of a download, there's still the ability to take that metric and then play with it.
• 11:10
  Oh, I get 31 seconds is a play, but 29 seconds is not a play. Right. But, you know, it speaks to the point of I think creators are always going to find creative ways to get their message out. And now it's even more important with –
• 11:28
  this new definition of a play, also with Spotify's new ad skip feature that they're using for a certain tier of subscribers. And that's a beautiful way to piggyback on this conversation. Yeah. Is that...
• 11:44
  Well, some of the other apps already have skipping features. Spotify is specifically naming Frank's show, Freddie's show, is coming up on an ad break, or this is a sponsored thing, or this is a Patreon, what have you. And so perhaps it's on us as creators to find different ways to...
• 12:07
  sell our stuff. Um, instead of you, you alluded to the CPM model, that model's broken. That's a whole other conversation. Um, but it's, maybe it's on us as creators to figure out ways to weave in those stories, uh, of our ad of the people who are investing their money into our shows. Yeah, absolutely. And the, the funny thing about this whole issue of ad skipping and podcasting is that
• 12:37
  When you think about it and go back into podcasting's brief history, you would remember this. Well, actually, you being from radio, you know the ad load on a radio station. And it's pretty hefty. In one hour, what's the typical ad load? 22 minutes?
• 13:00
  Okay, I don't know what it is now because radio is pretty much dead to me, but when I left in 2021, I would play in an hour's time, I would play between 15 and— Okay, let me give them a little bit of credit. As little as 13 and a half minutes—
• 13:16
  upwards of 16 minutes, depending on the time of day, day of the week, time of the year. So yeah, and day parts, so morning and afternoon drive, that would be an even higher spot load. So you'll be more likely to have those 16-minute...
• 13:36
  the 60 minutes ad hours than let's say two in the morning where all you're hearing is something for sex toys. And so, yeah, no. I mean, Frank, there are podcasts that I've listened to that it's obvious, obviously CPM driven or they're, they're doing that dynamic ad insertion because the levels will be so much lower than,
• 14:05
  than the actual content of whatever show is, you know, whatever the contents of the show is that I'm listening to. And it is jarring. It is so jarring. So when I'm happy, when I have a volume, when I have the volume up and it's all the way up, I'm in my car stereo. And then you hear, then you hear all of a sudden, did you know you could save 15% on your car insurance? I'm like, whoa.
• 14:29
  okay, you're making me almost crash my car. But that's just like a built-in byproduct. It's another problem that podcasters face with this whole garbage ad system.
• 14:45
  Yeah, absolutely. So going back to the origins of podcasting, in general, podcasting had two characteristics right at the beginning. There weren't any ads, and it was free. Today, roughly 20 years later, it's still sometimes free, but for the most cases, there are ads.
• 15:11
  But we talked about radio. I did an article for Forbes, and in it I looked at the ad load for broadcast TV. So I actually did this experiment. So I looked at the Big Bang Theory on TBS. It's 30 minutes long. It's 21 minutes and 12 seconds of content and almost nine minutes of ads. Wow.
• 15:38
  So and consider that years ago, TV shows had pretty long introductions and endings. The credits were rolled. The beginning. Now the introductions. Yeah. Ten seconds and they're ready to go. Partially, I think, because they just want to sell more ads. But that's a tremendous ad load of like 40 percent.
• 16:00
  And so now you take that. We'll get back to podcasting. Now you go to streaming services and remember their initial selling proposition. We don't have ads. Now, none of that is true anymore. They all have. Am I correct in that? They all have. Yeah, they all have ads. Every one of them. HBO Max, Peacock. They all have ads to different degrees. I remember when Amazon started Amazon Video and I have Amazon Prime.
• 16:30
  And originally, if you were a Prime member, no ads. Then they said, oh, well, you know what? We're going to back off that. There's going to be, what did they say? Two minutes of ads in a 30-minute show. Now, I mean, they broke into that ceiling. I can't imagine. I think I just watched something on Amazon Prime. An hour show, there was 12, 15 minutes of ads. But are you able to skip? Yeah. On Amazon Prime?
• 17:01
  As far as for streaming on Amazon Prime? No, no, no. Somebody will probably correct me on this, but on any of them, I have not been able to skip through. Like, let's say you start an episode of any streaming episode and just start pulling that bar down below.
• 17:23
  Eventually, wherever you drop it, even though you may have skipped over two ads, somehow it seems that they reload a bunch of those ads wherever you drop it. So there's no way to escape that. But I guess what I'm getting to is in streaming, just like in podcasting, the original expectation is no ads. No.
• 17:45
  Now they have ads. The same thing in podcasting is no ads. Now we have ads. So in doing a future article for Forbes on ads, I went and looked at 20 only audio podcasts to look at their ad load. No celebrity podcasts. No Spotify, iHeart, SiriusXM. Only either small networks or independent creators.
• 18:14
  The biggest load I found was about 10%. There's a couple. Pushkin, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company, I believe, is a bit higher than that in a few of them. But for most independent podcasters, it's very low. The other day I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever,
• 18:40
  She has a – she doesn't even have a pre-roll. She has a couple mid-rolls, and that's it. And one of the things that she does, which I like that you were mentioning, is she adds – she goes, now it's time for an ad. She plays a little noise. The ad comes on, plays the same noise, and it's back to the content again. And I like that she's able to do that. It gives it some –
• 19:08
  continuity, well, this is the content, this is the ad, hey, we're back to the content. Not like you were saying, sometimes it's like mid-sentence and they're bam. Right, exactly. And it's a completely different mix. So it could be super, super, super loud or super, super low. You turn the volume up or down, then all of a sudden the episode's back and you're like, wait a minute, what the hell just happened to my eardrum?
• 19:33
  And so that, I think, is real—that just kind of as an audio snob bothers the hell out of me, because I know that when I was producing in the radio world, in addition to being on the air, that was like a cardinal sin. You made damn sure that the levels were all—
• 19:54
  they were all the same or at least as close to the same as possible because at the end of the day, it's all about the end user who is the end user. It is the listener. And if you can't serve the listener, you sure as hell are not going to be serving the people who are investing in your radio show, in your TV show, and in our case, what we're talking about today, the podcaster. So, yeah, there are a lot of thoughts on that.
• 20:20
  What I'm particularly a fan of is the way that some podcasts have their ads baked in at the very beginning. I think it's...
• 20:35
  It might be the other stories, which is kind of a horror sci-fi podcast. It's fiction. And then there's, I think, the No Sleep podcast as well. It might be both of them where the ads are just geniusly woven in back to back. So in a traditional broadcast way, you'd have Geico followed by a screaming lawyer followed by a fast food restaurant, right? Three different ads, three different production houses, voices, whatever, whatever.
• 21:05
  And these shows, it's the same narrator telling one cohesive narrative between, I think, BetterHelp or BetterHealth is the—whatever the mental health app is, I think is BetterHelp. BetterHelp is BetterHelp, yeah.
• 21:22
  Yeah, that's one of the clients on one of those shows, or maybe both of them, but they would tell the story of that particular sponsor, weave it in flawlessly to the next sponsor, and then weave it into the actual episode contents. And by the time you realize you were just hitting the nose with an ad, you're like, that was actually genius. Yeah.
• 21:49
  Absolutely. There's loads of evidence that shows that host-rate ads are far more effective in selling a product and a service than any sort of programmatic ad. I get that.
• 22:04
  Big companies like Progressive and insurance companies, you know, they're they're carpet bombing ads because that's the that's the way their business works. Everybody who's listening who has a car needs car insurance. So they're not that selective on who the audience is.
• 22:21
  Because most of the times it's everybody. But, you know, that's rare. The other times, like you said, there's more of a customized view of what an ad should be. What worries me, two things worry me about the Spotify ad skipping. And I'm going to be honest here. One is I don't trust Spotify at all. I'm sorry, but...
• 22:41
  They have a very checkered history in podcasting. They really do. And the second thing is, especially for independent podcasters, when you sign up with Spotify...
• 22:53
  it's almost like a handshake with the devil. You have to be very careful of what you're giving away. I realize it's kind of the same thing with you too, but with these big companies, that's part of the problem is that you're, you're, you know, handing them at least the spare set of keys to your house that has your safe and all your money in it. And you're hoping that they're not going to break in when you're not looking. Sadly, sometimes I feel like companies like Spotify, yeah, they don't,
• 23:23
  they don't follow those privacy rules. So I am worried about the ad skipping. And then what you said, right in the beginning does worry me is that the promotional aspect of the podcaster that's in the show is also gets ad skipped. And I mean, that's the,
• 23:41
  For an independent podcaster that has like a thousand downloads, to wipe that out, is there one chance to say, you know, sign up and follow me on Patreon and you'll get bonus episodes? I mean, that's a key monetization tool for them that they would lose with ad skipping. If I could sort of on the same note, but flip it to the listener. And so thinking as a listener and as a fan of YouTube myself, I'm,
• 24:10
  I'm always going to weasel my way out of an ad break. And it doesn't matter how amazing Frank's or John Doe's or Joe Schmoe's ads are. I gave the example of the No Sleep podcast and the Other Stories podcast. But at the end of the day, if I don't feel like hearing ads, I will find a way. And perhaps, perhaps...
• 24:35
  Spotify just made it that much easier for us to weasel our way out of ads. Is it fair? Is it fair? I don't know. I don't know. I'd like to have a very strong opinion about it.
• 24:51
  I just know that at the end of the day, humans are going to want to avoid commercials no matter what. Spotify, I don't disagree with your assessments on this particular app. I also know that human nature is human nature, and people are always going to do what people do. Ad comes on the radio, boom, tune out. Ad comes on during the Super Bowl.
• 25:19
  A smaller chance of a tune-out, but let's be honest, a tune-out, unless it's an amazing celebrity-driven ad. Magazines. No one wants to read through magazines. If it's a 75-page magazine, it's nothing but ads. Are you really going to want to buy it? Hell no. It doesn't matter how juicy the cover of the National Enquirer or Cosmopolitan is. Not that I read either of those podcasts.
• 25:43
  publications. I'm only saying I have heard from Prince, but no, I think people are just going to, people will cringe at ads. It goes back to something Gary Vaynerchuk has said time and time again, marketers ruin everything.
• 26:00
  That's true. That's true. And I do have to say, and this is where I concur with you, and I feel bad saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I am an audio snob, and I will tell you that there's probably not a YouTube podcast that I watch. I listen to it while I'm doing something, but I don't generally watch it. I don't feel compelled to do that. So if somebody only has YouTube content,
• 26:30
  And they have a podcast and I will listen to their I'll look at it briefly. But after that, it's all listening. And having said that and admitting my my audio snobbiness, I also say it listening in audio to an to an ad, I think, is a different experience. So I'll give you an example. Every morning I walk six miles in order to listen to podcasts that I can write about and review.
• 26:57
  So when I'm walking, I have my phone in my pocket. And if an ad comes on, I generally don't take it out of my pocket and skip through it. I'll just, because I'm walking, it's outside, it generally...
• 27:14
  Today was a rainy day, but generally it's beautiful out, so forth and so on. Frank also doesn't want to get hit by a bus, so you're not distracted walking. There you go. Touche. Exactly. Yeah. So generally speaking, I will just let them play. Now, I can't say listen to all of them, especially because, especially in a lot of podcasting, it's the same ad. It's the same few companies.
• 27:37
  Do you remember, I know this is going down memory lane, I remember there was a time in podcasting where almost every other ad was for Audible. This is maybe 15 years ago, I'm thinking. Oh my gosh.
• 27:53
  You know what? That was before I got into podcasting. I was obsessed with radio at that time, but I believe it. Yeah, but I don't think that trend has gone away, though, Frank, because there were some – like when I was on the radio and I first got into listening to long-form audio content, it would seem like it would be the same advertisers over and over again, no matter who the host was.
• 28:17
  Oh, yes. Yeah, okay. And so to go back to the Spotify thing, as you mentioned, and I think we both read, this ad skipping feature is only for their premium subscribers. So would you estimate that they feel like they can increase the number of premium subscribers from free subscribers and that added revenue –
• 28:46
  will offset some of the ad dollars because they're actually ad skipping some of their spotify's own ads yeah i i would hate to speculate i will also say that it is so strange to to at least at face value it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot because why would you run why would you have this feature that in effect
• 29:12
  gives people the opportunity to skip over ads that you sold. Really? That's the part that's infounding. Imagine if you, Frank, were the CEO of a major corporation that dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Spotify, and now all of a sudden people have a chance to skip over that? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess we'll have to wait.
• 29:41
  at least for me, for greater minds to figure out exactly what they're doing, I suspect that it's a grab for more premium subscription revenue because I don't know. First of all, I have no idea what their acquisition costs are to get a premium subscriber. I don't know. That's available probably. So I'm not sure of the revenue difference between this premium subscriber and the free subscriber. And if it's
• 30:08
  significant enough. This is probably a feature that would attract a bunch of premium subscribers. Although it's kind of interesting, the streaming services offer basically the same thing, right? You can pay Hulu, you can play Disney+, all of them, Paramount+, extra money and there'll be no ads. Yeah.
• 30:32
  Right, because at the end of the day, once again, people will always gravitate to no ads. You know, when I listen to a podcast, Frank, I'm like, oh, you know what? I cannot wait to listen to Joe Rogan talk about Bluetooth. I cannot wait to listen to my Monday morning motivation. I don't know, here's somebody talking about...
• 30:55
  car insurance. It's just, I, I just don't, I don't necessarily enjoy the ad experience just in my own taste. And so there are things that I'm, that I work with to, you know, to try and make that experience better for some of our shows so that it doesn't necessarily feel like an intrusion on the, on the listener experience. And so it's,
• 31:21
  Listen, man, at the end of the day, the onus is on the creator. And so it's just even more important now more than ever to ensure that that experience is nothing short of pristine experience.
• 31:40
  for whoever hits play, whenever Frank hits play on every single sci-fi movie ever, or whatever it's called. That's it. But it's on the creators to make sure that that experience is flawless or as close to flawless as possible.
• 31:59
  Yeah, no, I mean, I agree. I think that going back to the Spotify thing, so going back to the streaming services, when they had those, they have those two tiers, which is ad and no ad.
• 32:13
  I think one of the things that I've read numerous times is what they originally thought was the higher price no ad tier would bring them greater revenue. What they discovered, and I read this specifically about Netflix, is actually their lower priced, which I have, I have their lower priced ad tier, brings them generally because of the additional advertising revenue, more money than the no ad, more expensive premium subscription.
• 32:43
  So that's why I find it interesting that if that revenue scenario plays out with Spotify, I'd be interested to see how that's all going to work out. Right. It'll be a very interesting next few months, especially if they end up rolling this out. And who knows? Maybe...
• 33:04
  Maybe rates change aggressively and then it's something that's available. Maybe the ad skip feature is available in certain tiers. I don't know. It's definitely an interesting development within the podcast space. And I'm here for it because I think at the end of the day...
• 33:22
  you'd be hard pressed to guess that or to, to, to say, or to presume that Spotify doesn't have, uh, at, at the very least the listener, um, the listeners interests in mind. And I know that there's,
• 33:36
  There's probably some disagreement in the podcast universe that it's Spotify just doing what Spotify wants to do. I'm not so sure. I buy completely into that. But it's definitely an interesting conversation, and I enjoy reading and seeing all the different opinions about it. Some feathers were ruffled this week, Frank.
• 34:00
  Yes, sir. Yeah, between that and the AMP announcement two weeks ago, yeah, there's absolutely a lot going on. If I could add, you know, one thing about the ad skipping is that podcasting and podcasters are in a unique situation. I don't think anybody else in any media has. There's been a plethora of data from Sounds Profitable, Tom Webster, Brian Barletta, measuring –
• 34:30
  ads on podcasts. They did a huge study on sports podcasts specifically. But podcasters are in the unique position of being a very trusted voice.
• 34:43
  People will purchase based on what podcasters have to say. That's not true in a lot of other media. I mean, no TV pitchman who comes on has that level of trust. And I don't know enough about radio to know if that's true or not. However, podcasting, that's gold for them. And they should certainly make sure they harvest that and make sure they don't lose that trust equity that they do have.
• 35:12
  The one thing about the ad skipping, again, is that it makes it sound like ads are necessarily a negative thing. As your friend said, marketing does screw up things. On the other hand, it's all part of the business model. And there's not a lot of business models that run without some sort of advertising. I mean, you know as well as I do, I went to see Spider-Man the other day. There were 20 minutes of ad before the movie started.
• 35:41
  That was never 10 years ago. There were hardly any ads. Now you have to wait 20 minutes after the movie says it's going to start to watch all of their ads.
• 35:53
  Okay, wait a minute, because it's been years since I've been to an actual movie theater, so let me just get this straight. You were sitting through 20 minutes worth of ads after the lights dimmed and they started playing trailers. Then those were ads that were baked into that, because what I was always used to when we would go to the movies was...
• 36:14
  You get to the theater, you pick your spot, you're there 10, 15 minutes early, and it would generally be like the same rotation of very, very funny ads. Typically, M&M's or Coca-Cola, very well done, cinematically themed, hilarious if it's the M&M's commercials with the different characters. But what you're... And that was before the trailers played. So we'd sit through maybe five or ten... Five or maybe seven minutes worth of trailers, which is amazing because...
• 36:43
  If the kids were a little behind getting ready, it was okay. Because if we got to the theater late, the lights were on, chances are we're halfway through the trailers. Do we get a good spot? Most likely not, but we don't miss the movie. So what you're saying is after the lights go out, Frank is sitting through 20 minutes of stupid commercials. Yeah.
• 37:05
  Well, and baked into the coming attractions, too. So here, since you haven't got to the movies, and actually I go a lot. My son and I go, and we just saw The Odyssey. We saw Spider-Man and so forth. Back rooms, we saw Obsession. Here's a good rule of thumb nowadays. Whatever time the movie says it's going to start, let's say it says it's going to start 3 o'clock. Okay.
• 37:29
  And if you purchase a ticket where you get your, where you have mostly you have your own seat, you already have your seat already, you know, you pick your seat, you could show up a half hour later and the movie will just start. And I'm gonna be honest with you. So we go all the time. When the movie time, state of time is starting, the movie's half full. As the, that time starts and it goes to 30 minutes, that's when the movie fills up. Because now people know, well, I'm not,
• 37:59
  I'm not going to wait 30 minutes. So they'll come in at the last minute for the last trailer and the movie starts. Anyway, we got a diversion. But so now, you know, when you go to when you go to the movies, take somebody to see. Oh, Minions and Monsters, especially little kids. Go 25 minutes after the start time and you'll be just when the movie starts.
• 38:22
  Well, that's great insight. Also, it proves the point, again, that we've been talking about, but in a movie context, that people will avoid commercials if they can. There you go. It's their version of ad skipping, isn't it? We'll just show up at the last minute and we'll miss all the ads and so forth and so on. I mean, actually, when you think about it, one thing on that is when you think about it, I mean, coming attractions have always been their ads and...
• 38:50
  They're just ads for other movies. And it's really, when you think about it, it's almost this perfect synthesis of ads because they're interesting to watch what's coming out. So it's not like you're bored generally, but it's still an ad. Yes, true. Absolutely. So that is hilarious. All right. Now you learned something out of this episode. Don't go to the movies if you ever go until 30 minutes after start time.
• 39:18
  I'm just going to stick with Netflix and Hulu and Amazon prime. I'm good. Um, there are a lot of other reasons why I just don't like going to the movies. Um, but, but this is a great way to, to land the plane, Frank. Um, this has been, uh,
• 39:33
  a great conversation about podcasting and some of the developments that have really shook the industry just over the past couple of months. I'm excited to see what the rest of 2026 looks like, particularly a specific date. And that will be October 3rd. It's the date in which my friend Brittany Alston from fun, love media. And I,
• 39:53
  Our joining forces for a creator event called Illuminate. It's going to be at the Health Museum in Houston. Frank is going to be one of our guests of honor. He's going to give a speech. We're going to have a panel with him, me, and Brittany. And we're going to be talking about what it means to be an indie podcaster.
• 40:10
  in 2027. So if you think 2026 has been a crazy ride with, uh, the amp definition of play with Spotify's ad skip feature with the YouTube algorithm shifts, multiple ones this year alone, um, 2027, I can only guess is going to be just as if not more insane, especially as technology speeds up. Um, and again, uh, it's going to be one wild ride. Frank, uh,
• 40:39
  I really look forward to having you join us in Houston for Illuminate and appreciate all that you've done for the indie podcast community. Freddie, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for inviting me in October to Illuminate. I am really excited to be there, be on the panel, get to talk to indie podcasters. I mean, that's the best part to meet people IRL, not over a screen. So I'm excited about that.
• 41:06
  And thanks for our discussion on the ad skip and on AMP. And there's no charge on the information about the movie start times, by the way. That's a freebie. That's a freebie. That's a freebie. You definitely have to check him out on the Earworthy newsletter. And then he writes for Forbes as well. So Frank is doing fantastic bang-up work.
• 41:30
  within the indie podcaster creator space. So please do check them out again, Earworthy and on Forbes, and you can find them on LinkedIn as well. Frank, thank you so much, my man. Thank you, Freddie. I appreciate it.