Lots of popular podcasts are long. Really long. 1.5 - 2.5 hours long. I don't know about you, but I think that's nuts. Half an hour is a much more manageable length for a podcast.
Why aren't there very many good 30 minute podcasts?
It's the ads, stupid. It's always the ads.
You can have 3 sponsor reads in a 2 hour podcast with no trouble. Even if the ads are a disrespectfully long 3 minutes1 each, that's 9 total minutes of ads - just 7.5% of the total episode length.
Now try that in a 30 minute show. You're looking at 30% of the entire show as ads. No one is listening to a podcast that is 30% ads2.
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Some unnamed shows have ads as long as 6 minutes each. That is beyond disrespectful of the listener. ↩
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Except valued listeners of All the Good Ads. ↩