S12, a note about gambling ads

0:00 Hi, folks, it's Tz your favorite podcaster. I hope you are enjoying the new season the app on the phone. I want you to take a moment to give you an update about an issue we're having with the ads this season. Some of you have written or commented to say that you're hearing gambling ads. This is something I very much do not like. Here's what I can do about it and what I can't. The first thing to know is the ads on this show are programmatic. A machine inserts them automatically per listener the moment you hit play. I never hear them, and they're different for every person listening.

0:43 Before this season aired, I went into my ad settings to try to turn gambling off. There are a few categories pregnancy, sexuality, politics, and illegal content, but there is currently no gambling category in Spreaker. My hope was that the illegal category might catch gambling ads, but alas it does not. Why is there a category for illegal content in the first place. For example, say you wanted to sell illegal drugs online and you wanted to run a campaign for it, why didn't that automatically disqualify you from doing business with Spreaker in the first place. Also, What is more bizarre is that Spreaker frames it to me as an upsell. It says, if I enable sensitive categories, I can increase my revenue. Each ad gets its IAB category from the advertiser. Spreaker doesn't inspect the ad and sort them into bins, so nobody tags themselves illegal, which means the honest answer to what campaign would air under illegal content is we have no verified examples of one, which means and checking the box to allow illegal content ads to run on a podcast does essentially nothing because there are no illegal content ads to pull from. After

2:13 some research, here's what I believe is the root of the problem. IAB stands for the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Illegal Content category. IAB two six was designed to work in the opposite way that Spreaker is using it. It wasn't meant for advertisers, it was meant for publishers. So say a website or a podcast talks about spyware, pirated content, copyright infringement, weapons, regulated substances, anything of that sort. The site gets flagged and the advertiser chooses whether they want their ads to show up in those places. And it's an old taxonomy system IAB two six as a category was removed outright in the two point zero system.

3:07 Version one point zero has no gambling node at all. That is a named, documented problematic limitation of the IAB content taxonomy version one. It has no nodes for common things like tobacco, gambling, cannabis. So what happens is a sports book to clears itself as sports or business and finance both are technically true, and neither of those are blocked. An advertiser can pick a category that seems valid and the system allows the add through. So here's what I'm doing now, reaching out to Spreaker asking why they're running on a taxonomy one point zero with a known gambling gap.

3:55 I don't want to run gambling ads on this show. I don't want to run them on this season. I don't want to run them on any of my seasons, and I apologize that you have to hear them. The only way for me to guarantee zero gambling ads right now is to shut off programmatic ads entirely. And those ads are part of how I keep this show running. This is still a very very small, independent show. I did the math last year, and I counted the hours I put in and the money we got out, and I make about fifteen dollars an hour doing this. I could make more money at my day job, but I love doing this and the fact that I can make any money at all is something I'm truly grateful for.

4:42 But if I shut off my ads, I'm not sure if I can keep making the show. So as I said, I am reaching out to Spreaker. I'll keep you updated, and I want to add a real offer here if these ads are a threat to your recovery message and I'll give you the episodes free of ads, no questions asked tapes from the dark Side podat gmail dot com. Thank you for letting me know about this and staying with me through it until next time. Well you know what to do.