Ads for Podcasts Test the Line Between Story and Sponsor - NYTimes.com

For the last several months, Lisa Chow, a reporter for and co-host of “StartUp,” a podcast about starting a business, has been interviewing engineers at Ford Motor.

But Ms. Chow was not interviewing Ford employees for a news story. She was making an advertisement for Ford to run on her podcast, between news segments.

The goal of the interviews, Ms. Chow said, is to record “a funny moment, a revealing moment or a humanizing moment” — like the one she had with Katie Allanson, a Ford engineer who helped make a weighted suit that simulates the experience of old age.

In the interview, Ms. Allanson said about those who wore the suit: “I had a couple people tell me, ‘I’ve been really hard on my mom.’ That one really resonated with me as well, because my parents are getting older too.”

Podcasts — audio stories that can be saved and played on a computer or smartphone — have reached new levels of popularity, as illustrated by the success last year of “Serial,” a story of a 16-year-old murder case that was downloaded over 80 million times. New podcasts are popping up seemingly every week, and larger media brands — including BuzzFeed and The New Republic — are also trying out the format.

The uptick in popularity has made podcasting a rare cause for optimism in serious journalism. Podcasting often offers an in-depth form of reporting that advertisers want to pay for and that is attracting talent largely from radio.

Behind much of podcasting’s growth, though, is the embrace of ads in which hosts gush over products or even do reporting for advertising spots. That has led to a clash between those coming from public radio and those with a commercial radio background, with some expressing concern that journalists, who rely on trust, are using their position of confidence to push products.

The line between advertising and news has never been quite as sharp on commercial radio as on public radio. Commercial D.J.s and hosts have endorsed advertisers’ products since the medium’s early days. But because of Federal Communications Commission rules forbidding advertising on public radio, those journalists, who have flocked to podcasts, stayed out of the endorsement business — until the advent of stand-alone podcasts, which are not regulated by the F.C.C.

Audio | Native Advertising in the ‘StartUp’ Podcast Series Starting at about 11:50 in this episode of “StartUp,” the reporter Lisa Chow interviews an employee of Ford, one of the show’s sponsors.

“I’m utterly sympathetic to podcast hosts and entrepreneurs trying to fund their work,” said Jay Allison, producer of “The Moth Radio Hour,” a widely distributed radio show in which people tell true stories about themselves. “I confess, though, to feeling uncomfortable hearing public radio people in the role of pitch person for product, since I’m counting on them for something else.”

So-called native advertising — ads that echo the look or feel of journalism they accompany, like the one Ms. Chow helped create for Ford — has quickly gained currency at online news outlets. But native ads have perhaps no more traction than in audio journalism. On dozens of podcasts, hosts and reporters are responsible for producing news stories as well as advertisements.

“We try to make ads as compelling for the listener as the rest of the show,” said Matt Lieber, a co-founder of Gimlet Media, the company that produces “StartUp.” “We go to Ford and say, ‘What’s the most interesting thing about Ford?’ And that’s what we talk about in the podcast.”

The reliance on native ads has worked so far. For-profit podcast creators, which rely almost entirely on advertising for revenue, keep popping up, and Gimlet says it is breaking even. Networks like Gimlet; Panoply, from the online magazine Slate; and Midroll Media all started within the last three years. Last week, E. W. Scripps bought Midroll for a price the companies would not disclose. National Public Radio says its revenue from podcasting has tripled since 2013. Public Radio Exchange, another nonprofit podcast distributor, projects that sponsorship revenue — the majority of which comes from podcasts — grew ninefold from 2013 to 2015.

Audio | Native Advertising in ‘Theory of Everything’ Podcast Starting at about 17:35 in this episode of “Theory of Everything” the host, Benjamen Walker, talks about his personal experience with a mattress by Casper, one of the show’s sponsors.

In ads, hosts often discuss their own experiences using a product. In “Theory of Everything,” a general-interest program on Public Radio Exchange, Benjamen Walker has talked about the virtues of mattresses made by Casper and of an online history class he took on the Great Courses — products he came to like after advertisers gave them to him.

Advertisers are naturally attracted to being associated with well-liked hosts. “When the host is personally reading the ad and telling a story about the product in her own words, it lands with the audience in a different and more authentic way than a traditional ad spot,” said Mark DiCristina, marketing director at MailChimp, an email marketing company that is one of the most prolific podcast advertisers.

Mr. Walker and other podcasters say they draw inspiration from a tradition outside journalism: commercial radio hosts who are paid to endorse products on the air.

“That form of advertising is as old as radio itself,” said Andy Bowers, the chief content officer at Panoply. “I used to love old reruns of Jack Benny as a kid. His show was brought to you by Jell-O.”

The difference here, some in the radio world say, is not so much what the ads sound like, but who is delivering them.

“For serious journalists to be reading ads is a little problematic, I think, because the old firewall between editorial and journalism is completely broken down,” said Curtis Fox, an independent radio producer.

There has been opposition internally, with some podcast hosts resisting native ads. P. J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, the hosts of “Reply All,” a technology program from Gimlet, recently asked if they could stop explicitly endorsing products such as Microsoft Outlook. They said they would rather just talk about the experience of using them. Their bosses obliged, and now the hosts instead discuss their personal experiences with products.

Those critics — and some podcast hosts — worry about a slippery slope. The F.C.C. has no oversight over podcasts. The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising, has warned publishers to clearly label native ads but has not issued any guidelines.

That freedom has given organizations such as National Public Radio the chance to experiment with other ways of identifying their supporters as well as the responsibility of creating guidelines for themselves.

“You won’t hear overt promotion, such as endorsements, testimonials, specific product prices or calls to purchase,” Isabel Lara, an N.P.R. spokeswoman, said of the network’s podcasts. “But you may hear how you can engage the sponsor or its products or services a little more directly than what the F.C.C. would allow.”

At some podcast networks, including at Gimlet and Midroll, the hosts are given veto power over who advertises on their shows.

“It isn’t a daily occurrence, but there isn’t a week that goes by where we haven’t had to turn down an advertiser,” said Lex Friedman, who runs ad sales at Midroll.

Many podcasters say they also try to be clear with listeners about what is an ad and what is journalism, separating them with music and disclaimers.

But the distinction hasn’t always been clear to others recruited to help make the ads.

Last November, a Gimlet employee emailed Linda Sharps, a parenting blogger from Eugene, Ore., to ask if a producer could interview her 9-year-old son about a website he had built with the online publishing platform Squarespace.

Ms. Sharps eagerly said yes. Only when the interview aired did she learn it was for a Squarespace ad.

Feeling duped, she began posting on Twitter about the show’s advertising policies. Alex Blumberg, a co-founder of Gimlet and the host of “StartUp,” called Ms. Sharps and apologized, saying that it had been an error. Gimlet eventually aired an episode of “StartUp” about the story.

Ms. Sharps later said she forgave Gimlet.

“My son was a little bummed at the time,” Ms. Sharps said recently in an email. “I think his reaction was something like, ‘I’m in an ad? But I hate ads! I skip them on YouTube all the time.’ ”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/business/media/ads-for-podcasts-test-the-line-between-story-and-sponsor.html?_r=0&referrer=