Ads are useful about 1% of the time, don't use them to kill your reputation

Imagine this: you put earbuds on, switch on the podcast and start doing chores, washing dishes, handling plants, etc. Anything that requires your hands to be occupied. After a while, when you are still in the flow an abrupt "and this is a good place to mention our sponsor begins". So what you are 18 minutes in? Clearly you would like to listen for a couple minutes about an unrelated sponsor with an unrelated product that is not targeted to you. Oh but that's not all. How about you listen about another unrelated topic and product another 36 minutes in. After all, that random internet blog post or "marketing" research might have said so. If you are doing a podcast, as a creator why don't you weight these two possibilities: a) Annoy your viewers with unrelated promotions b) Clearly disclose in the beginning the length and the nature of the promotion, any call to actions It is a bit like a good computer protocol: you either communicate clearly or send jumbled mess of noise. Why not build…