I wanted to weigh in on this topic given my role with Escape Artists as their primary bookkeeper and accountant over the past four years. alllie makes a very valid point and I agree that advertising could be a very slippery slope.
But to be honest, Escape Artists has very good traction on that slope and we have no plan to slip.
During 2010, advertising revenue, primarily from Audible, made up only 3.5% of our total revenues. The remaining 96.5% came from all of you and your AMAZING generosity, especially during this rough economy. This small portion of our revenue pie has no significant impact on the our mission to provide fun and entertaining genre fiction at no charge to our listeners. What it does do, is give us a little bit of breathing room in case donations are low during a given month. That’s really about it. So please know that we’re not getting rich off of our ad revenue.
Now, the content of the ads is another debate and, again, a worthy one to have. I don’t want to say “Trust Us”, even though I stand by that sentiment. But I will say that we take our sponsorships and advertising campaigns very seriously and have, in the past rejected offers with advertising partners who offer products that we did not feel was compatible with our audience’s interests. Each of our editors maintains the individual right to refuse a campaign if they don’t think it’s a good fit for their magazine. Which is to say that just because Escape Pod takes on a advertisement, does not mean Pod Castle or Pseudopod must also.
But ultimately, our biggest judges of if advertisements are appropriate for the podcasts is you, our listeners. If we get a slew of complaints about the advertisement for Jimmy’s Sluggo-Cola, the odds are that we won’t renew that campaign once the initial run ends.
So, thanks to Alllie for bringing this up, and to the rest of you for the topic. We at Escape Artists encourage you to let us know if you don’t like something. We can’t promise the world in any given situation, but I can promise that we will listen very closely.