Podcasts are a rising type of leisure, whether or not they’re factual or fictional. However, with 1000’s of podcasts starting from true crime phenomenon Serial to surreal horror-comedy Welcome to Night Vale, it may be onerous to face out from the gang.

Now, it seems that some podcasts are quietly boosting their obtain and listener numbers via the usage of free-to-play cellular video games.

Bloomberg experiences that podcast publishers are using an organization referred to as Jun Group to routinely set podcast episodes to obtain when gamers view adverts, both to skip a tough degree or win in-game foreign money.

“Every writer, each content material creator, has invested in advertising to advertise themselves for the reason that daybreak of time, and that is simply one other approach of doing it,” mentioned Jun Group CEO Corey Weiner.

Although downloads are all the time an necessary metric for fulfillment, it’s value noting that the overwhelming majority of podcasts depend on promoting for monetisation. More downloads can result in artificially inflated metrics which may end up in more cash for the writer as listening to part of the podcast may end up in the advert impression being counted.

Ethical considerations

“Not all impressions are created equal,” mentioned Pace University advertising professor Larry Chiagouris. “I’m not saying [this tactic is] not ethical or illegal, but it raises issues. If someone is trying to play a game and that’s the purpose of this interaction, they may just be eager to play the game and are not that interested in the information being shared.”

A Deepsee research into the act revealed in August, highlighted Subway Surfers particularly. To date, the sport has been downloaded greater than three billion instances. Over a two week interval in August, a number of publishers used the sport to rack up downloads, together with names such because the New York Post and IHeartMedia Inc. Representatives for each corporations declined to remark when approached by Bloomberg.

At current, this practise isn’t unlawful, however as Chiagouris notes it does elevate moral points.

“I think that the standards bodies, the people who are involved in deciding what a play of a podcast is, could decide to raise the bar on what constitutes as a play of a podcast,” mentioned Weiner. “Even if you raise the bar, [the ad] is still going to exceed the bar. So, in fact, I actually suggest let’s raise the bar because we can hop right over it.”

We host our personal podcast right here on Pocketgamer.biz, delving into the cellular gaming trade.