I thought my podcast needed a new mic, but a listener's email last month changed my mind

For like a year, I was sure my audio quality was the thing holding my show back. I was saving up for a $400 mic, thinking that was the fix. Then, in late March, a guy named Mark emailed me and said he loved the show but the ads in the middle of my stories were really jarring. He was right. I looked at my numbers and saw a 30% drop-off right when the first ad break hit. So I moved all the ads to the very start and end. My listen-through rate went up by half in just two weeks. Has anyone else tried changing their ad placement and seen a big difference?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_zara28d ago

My old gym had these super loud ads on the radio every ten minutes. It made it impossible to focus during a workout, people kept complaining. The manager finally switched to just playing music, and class attendance went up like 20% the next month. People just hate having their flow interrupted.

finleyw5824d ago

Spot the same thing everywhere now, @the_zara. Companies keep breaking our focus for a quick buck and it just makes people leave.

john_flores28d ago

Read a study a while back that basically said our brains really hate being pulled out of a story. It makes total sense that shoving an ad in the middle of your podcast would cause people to leave. Moving them to the bookends is such a smart fix. I bet a lot of creators don't even realize how much their ad placement hurts them.