Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company? | Hacker News Reader

Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company?

girdley.substack.com

93 pointsyarapavan48 comments

VPNs are very high margin products (50% of revenue is cashflow, the author points out). But they suffer from higher churn rates than most SaaS businesses. Switching costs are essentially free, it's hard to differentiate your product from someone else's in a meaningful way, discounts and promos abound, and achieving any kind of lock-in is next to impossible.

Therefore, they advertise a lot. We here on HN probably get a lot of sampling bias because we are more likely to listen to tech related podcasts. If we listened to fashion podcasts, we'd hear different ads.

VPNs also have a unique problem where the people that really need their product don't have the facilities to subscribe to one. To illustrate this, most of the countries in Africa censor the web to varying degrees, but the credit card penetration rate on the continent is only at 4% right now. So VPNs have to advertise to the people who don't need VPNs, but can afford them. And that's why you hear them talking about how everyone at Starbucks is snooping on your web traffic as if https isn't 30 year old technology or hyping up their "military grade" encryption (i.e. AES-256 run of the mill stuff).

Source: I work for a VPN company.

I particularly like the spin that the Youtube channel We're in Hell uses to advertise their VPN. Example: https://youtu.be/H_JQAx5uXB0?t=308

"You're still not sure if you are as cheap or as evil as you could be. That's where SurfShark comes in!"

Many youtube videos not even aimed at tech audience are sponsored by node vpn

The "surfing without a VPN is dangerous" mindset is pretty pervasive even beyond the tech community.

I see VPN companies sponsoring YouTube videos with a segment in the video itself, it's not targeted ads, it's a literal 2 min segment inside an edited video.

They choose which videos and content creators to sponsor. They're more likely to sponsor Linus Tech Tips or MKBHD than Christen Dominique's "Clean Girl On The Go Makeup Tutorial".

That's still "targeting" certain demographics.

Right. You'll see them sponsoring creators like Wendover Productions, Kurzgesagt and others. Not tech channels, but have a tech adjacent audience who are more likely to convert into customers than someone who doesn't know what VPN stands for.

The biggest actual market proposition for mainstream arguments is unlocking region locked content, so it isn't really 'techy' people that are targeted here, but younger consumers of international media.

Yeah but that's mo different than choosing to advertise on this old house or another TV show. It's just advertising, not targeted.

I read the article twice just to make sure I didn't miss it but I believe the article isn't the headline "Why is every podcast sponsored by a VPN company?" which then goes on to explain why podcasts are (might be?) a good advertising channel. The article is literally the headline, a summary of the VPN biz and... that's it. Nothing specific about podcast sponsoring or how that channel differs from any others. lol

But what crazy business eh? :)

There's a sponsored message at the bottom for a non VPN company. Ironic.

... and a lot of those VPN companies are probably VC-funded.

Tom Scott made a good video on the uses and non-uses of VPNs [1]. VPN advertising has changed since that video to downplay "security", but what I think is odd is that they've replaced that with advertisement that basically is "violate the terms of service of Netflix".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

Glad I'm not the only one that got the feeling this video impacted the entire VPN advertising space. All of us techies have been screaming this from day one and many tech-focused creators even talked about this publicly, but the ads kept going. Tom Scott seems to be in the perfect position where he has the technical background to understand why the ads were wrong, but also has a much wider and more general audience that includes many other creators.

I'm guessing many creators learned about just how blatant the lies they were selling were for the first time from him and put pressure on their sponsors to chill with the fear-mongering. And even those that knew and lied regardless were probably scared that their audience now knew too, so shifting away from these talking points was in their best interest too.

TL;DR: Tom Scott is awesome and he did a lot of good by making that video

Tom Scott's current VPN ads are an interesting balancing act.

He generally opens with him using the VPN to get around geo-targetting in a way that isn't in violation of TOS. He does a huge amount of travel, so he does run into poorly designed websites that try to be helpful and serve content by location sometimes.

He doesn't say outright that such opportunities are rare, and normal people may never encounter them. He does say that before using VPNs to get around restrictions by streaming services users should make sure they're not in violation of any TOS. He never talks about security.

I hope someone does a similar takedown of Masterworks (fractional art investing). I've seen way too many financial planning or finance adjacent podcasts regurgitate Masterworks claims completely uncritically to a way too impressionable audience.

If He didn’t want them shorn, He wouldn’t have made them sheep.

Could you list the erroneous claims made in Masterworks ads? I’m not affiliated with them in any way other than as an interested potential customer (and I’ve seen the charts on their site, but haven’t made any deposits)

I kind of wonder how much NordVPN paid him to make that "actually VPNs are great sometimes" ad with the robot head.

They had to be gunning for it for a while.

> violate the terms of service of Netflix

It's a technical solution to a business-created problem.

And Netflix and VPNs probably create incremental business for each other.

There are a couple companies or industries that seem to dominate large sections of the digital ad market for videos, podcasts, live streams, social media, or other content creator focused markets.* They aren't all VPNs, but VPN is one of the main categories for sure.

Not sure why these companies have a larger advertisement budget or why they are choosing those platforms over other more traditional ad opportunities.

Some examples: Audio books / podcasts (Audible), shaving supplies (dollar shave club), sports betting (Draft Kings), crypto and crypto betting (Stake), VPNs (Nord), online classes / tutorials (Skillshare), etc.

*At least based on my own anecdotal online media consumption.

Some of those obviously have negligible marginal costs. I think the ones that are less obvious, like shaving and mattresses, exhibit the same characteristics.

I haven't heard this from a reliable source, but I read somewhere on the internet the founder of Dollar Shave Club bought a warehouse of low quality razors from a company that went bankrupt and misrepresented them as custom premium products. I don't know anything about that situation anyone wouldn't see by googling basic terms though.

Or perhaps that’s just what Big Shave wants you to think!

> Some examples: Audio books / podcasts (Audible), shaving supplies (dollar shave club), sports betting (Draft Kings), crypto and crypto betting (Stake), VPNs (Nord), online classes / tutorials (Skillshare), etc.

It's been awhile since I've listened to podcasts like that, but two other heavy advertiser I can recall are: online mattress companies and SquareSpace.

I've also noticed that newspaper-affilliated news podcasts often are full of advertisements for CEO podcasts (which appears mainly meant to pump up the CEO's prestige/name recognition).

My experience has been that every podcast is sponsored by a another podcast. I'm not sure where the chain ends.

I do a podcast.

A lot of that is a tried and true method of promotion for those coming into podcasting without a big following elsewhere to try to convert.

We started with a fairly large social media following that we could promote with, but others without such an existing audience are better off advertising on similar shows. After all, that's the draw of podcasting as a medium... advertising efficacy is pretty high.

Is that more the case for particular categories of podcasts? Because I haven't noticed this myself. I mainly listen to stand-up comedian/general comedy podcasts and the usual advertising suspects are Raid Shadow Legends, NordVPN, etc. Other than recurring guests/hosts, the podcasts I watch seem mostly disjoint from one another.

it's especially annoying when they start to advertise each podcast on each other's feed and you get a sort of quadratic spam across every channel.

What sort of post-apocalyptic hellscape did you find these podcasts in?

I mostly listen to fiction podcasts, and other than mentioning related podcasts/magazines in author/narrator bios, they don't really sponsor each other. (Some do have sponsors; all have patreons, merchandise, etc.)

Are you hitting a Spotify "coordinated destruction of all that is good and holy" effect, or is it some genre-specific thing (like drop shipping cryptobro podcasts or something)?

I'm honestly curious, despite being snarky.

it's an endless abyss. the intent is to trap you in the world of podcasts, so that you may never get out.

seriously though, i am listening to a lot of scifi audio drama and i really appreciate it when i learn about other series with related themes. so if there is one kind of ad that i don't mind it is that. i much prefer that over ads for vpns, mattresses or "cook your own meal" food deliveries.

Yeah; I'm a particularly big fan of the artist/voice actor bios that mention related podcasts.

Excuse me while I talk to my dial-a-therapist while chopping onions on my new tube-packed mattress.

I can't wait for one of the VPN companies to turn "bad" with some revelation that they were secretly mirroring all traffic to <insert country name here>.

From then on, every one of their sponsored videos will be forever tainted with the embedded, unmodifiable advertising segment. YouTube is not television, the content creators can't simply switch out the ad for another sponsor after the fact.

Why have you written they are “cash-flowing”!! It’s not proper. They are ‘spending’!

Why? "sponsored by VPN" is the most common ad platform they can sign it up themsevles and have a good returns. And usually the new sign up have 80~100% cashback for the first time...

IME the things advertised on podcasts are the same ones advertised on late-night TV and the Home Shopping Network back in the day. Unregulated supplements, mattresses, other Shopping Networks, and... apparently VPNs? Podcast advertisers are filling the bottom of the barrel, and hearing something advertised on a podcast mostly tells me that its sellers are shady and/or desperate.

If I wanted to vacuum data to analyze at a grand scale, I would start a VPN company. Being able to tie user to website with accuracy to the minute for ad analytic decisioning would be extremely powerful. No TLS interception required. All dns.

> Today’s Sponsor: Near > Near makes remote hiring simple and affordable."

Why are all the 'influencers' not sponsored by VPN companies sponsored by hiring made simple companies, or delivery meal companies or Raid: Shodow Legends?

If all these VPNs make such huge margins, and if barriers to entry are so low, then why hasn't someone undercut them?

Intelligence agencies will shut you down if you compete with them.

Wouldn't this tip their hand, exposing them as such agencies? A simpler explanation is there's a lot of money sloshing around trying to corner new or lucrative markets.

VPNs used to be $10 a month not too long ago. Now there are a plethora of options for $2 a month or less.

They aren't. It just seems that way because the ones that you listen to are.

exactly, there's always the endless ads for manscaping ball shavers.

A few months ago, this article would have been titled, "Why is every podcast sponsored by a shaving company?" or "a mattress company" or "some other company".

Meal kits. But in none of those cases would it be weird to ask why (so many people on podcasts want to send me overpriced food I have to cook myself.)

I personally feel like the VPN ads have been somewhat dominating for a number of years, FWIW, at least in the area of podcasts (well, I'm watching stuff on YouTube) I have cared about.

My stepmom sponsors my podcast. Brazzers made an episode about our arrangement.

Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I suspect that the stereotypical podcast listener -- that is, those who spend hours listening to productivity experts bemoan some new methodology (i.e. productivity porn) rather than spend the time doing what they need to do; or those that believe memorizing factoids is the same as understanding -- think they're more clever than the average person and can somehow use their using a VPN as a status symbol.

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