The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The Truth About Podcast Ads, Life After the Military, and Scott’s London Tips

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Scott explains why podcast ads still work and what makes them more powerful than traditional media. He then offers advice on rebuilding purpose and community after leaving the military and shares his favorite ways to do London like a local. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [e-mail], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Taylor Swift's latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, has only been out a week, and the discourse could not be more divided. Some critics are calling it fake and cringe, others are giving it five stars, but almost everyone assumes its autobiography. What if they're all wrong? What if every Easter egg, every lyric is just part of the performance? I'm Charlie Harding from Switched on Pop. Join us as we listen closely to reveal how the life of a showgirl is in confession, it's craft. Hear it on Switched on Pop wherever you get podcasts.

Welcome to Office Hours of Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your. mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to Office Hours of Propton Media.com. Again, that's Office Hours of Propton Media.com, or post your question to the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. First question. Our first question comes from user Impressive Detail 407 on Reddit. They say, Scott, regarding advertising revenue growth, you often document the valuable and elusive

audiences reached via podcast. But where is the innovation and personalization and podcast advertising. I fast forward passed 99% of audio ads while consuming about 15 hours of podcast programming per week. Why is a 90-plus-year-old radio ad model with host reading sponsorship blurbs and branded content being attached like a parasite to the shows we love? Okay, so I believe that podcast revenue is or advertising is growing faster than any ad-supported medium. The average CNN viewer is a 62, 64-year-old white female. She is smart. She is smart. She already knows who she's voting for. She's not spending money on stupid shit like $8 Frappuccinos or Panorai watches or Van Cleef and Arpell.

She's past her mating year. She's not trying to impress anybody. She's not going to buy $1,200 Manola Blonix, right? The average podcast listener, if you were to distill down to one person, is a 34-year-old kind of ethnically ambiguous male. That dude is stupid. What do I mean by stupid? He's in the midst of his mating ears and will spend money on irrational high-margin things that signal his value as a mate, a cool new Audi, a Panorai watch,

James Purse T-shirts that cost 80 bucks when it's $3 a cotton because he is still trying to express himself to potential mates and impressive friends. He's coming into his prime income earning years. He's enjoying spending money. Also, he's up for grabs politically. People that age, mostly, especially males, mostly vote based on who they think is going to be best for them economically. And on that issue, it flips back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. So what's happening?

Money is coming out of the cable news network, and it's going into podcasts. And there's still very few places you can reach a young man with advertising, because most young men are on Spotify and Netflix and avoiding advertising altogether. Now, in terms of the technology, you're right. People can skip through ads and a lot do. But the difference are the innovation, if you will, with podcasting versus traditional advertising, is Fareed Zakaria or Thomas Friedman on CNN in the New York Times, respectively. They refuse to read ads. And their host institution, CNN and the New York Times, think it is journalistic malpractice for the journalist to read an ad. It's unseemly, it's not pure, whatever. The reality is, if you're used to my voice and you're here, it means you sort of trust me, sort of like me. And so when I tell you that I love Amex, I love Apple products, I love Viori, I love that every one of my company uses Adobe products for all of our creative work. I mean, it's just that I wear on. I mean, I can go through the list of things that I do, right?

That I, you know, all my cars my whole life, since I got some money, we're either Range Rovers or, or Mercedes or BMWs. God, I sound like a douchebag. Anyways, you know, the airlines I fly, everything, if I can speak to it credibly, if I can say, no, I actually do love Warby Parker glasses, which is what I'm wearing now, right, then the brand loves that because it gives them, it's just much more authentic. It's much more real. It's much more impactful. So the innovation is host readovers. I don't know if the targeting. I think the targeting is probably a little bit better. You just get different ads in different regions. So I think the ad insertion is probably a little bit better. Although, I bet TV is now doing that. What I think the real innovation is, is one, the host readover, and two, the ads and the content are more impactful because it's more intimate. What do I mean? When the TV's on oftentimes is in the background, you start seeing an ad for, you know, a pharmaceutical to get rid of your toe fungus, you literally just screen it out. If I'm in your ears and you're listening to my voice right now, you feel as if we have a relationship

and you feel as if we're friends and there's more trust. So, and then the seamless handover to the host readover, the barriers don't come up as quickly. There's just more trust, there's more penetration. The beach has already softened. Your wet matter's already sort of open to listening about, you know, what kind of products I like, what kind of supplements I take, et cetera, you know, that I, you know, that I like T-Mobile or whatever it is, right? Or that I like MintMobile, right? And I'm trying to think of the advertisers that I've used. My point is, it is, there is innovation there, And more importantly, we are, people are actually listening to our ads. It's our audience.

And increasingly, it's our reach. So if you add up the audio downloads and the views on YouTube of this pod, it'll be about $200,000. The average CNN show, I think it's 160 or 180. So we're actually getting the same reach now as CNN with a more attractive audience, with a more intimate format where they're actually listening and tuning in, which means $47 CPMs versus 15. Is there room for improvement and targeting? Absolutely. But right now, the innovation around podcasting is simple. People are actually tuning in. They will listen to the ads. The audience is much more appealing. And the format of host readovers and it being a much more intimate format

make the ads more resonant. Thanks for the question. I think this stuff is super interesting. Thank you. Question two, Alex from D.C. Hey, Prof. G. My name is Alex. and I'm located in the D.C. area. I love what you do, and thank you so much for the podcast that you and the entire crew put together. They're incredibly insightful and have helped mold my personal and professional experiences and perspectives. So my question to you, I'm prior military and recently got out. When I was in the military, I didn't love the bureaucracy of it, but I love the people that I was surrounded with. The old adage is, you love the clowns, but you hate the circus. There,

I felt like there was a deep sense of community and that there was a goal behind everything that I was doing. If I wasn't doing the mission actively, then I was helping mold the young Marines that I worked with into better Marines and better people. Transitioning into the private sector, I found it very difficult to have that same sense of mission and purpose. Maybe it's because I don't really love where I work, but what advice would you have for somebody that misses the identity and the community that they want to be involved with. How can I be more involved in work and how can I build a better sense of community? So when I come into work, I feel like I belong here. Anyways, thank you so much for your time, and I hope that this question is insightful. So it sounds passe or cliche when people

say thank you for your service, but I really do mean thank you for your service. One of my big regrets is not serving. My father took me to Annapolis, who wanted me to go in the Navy, mostly such that he wouldn't have to pay for my schooling. And it was one of those moments where, where I realized, like, we're different than anyone else. I didn't have the grades to get in. And then someone said you needed to get a letter from your senator. And I'm like, I don't even know who the senators are in California. And I just felt like an imposter that with my dad,

I was never going to get into Annapolis. But other ways to serve. But I think young men such as yourself that have served and young women, for the rest of your life, you know, your life kind of had purpose. Anyway, I don't have an easy answer for your question. I would imagine that waking up and being responsible for defending your country and learning how to use weapons and learning how to train young men and women such that they felt like they could depend on each other for their safety and their lives and the history and the community, I don't know how you're going to get that, you know, working at the headquarters of Chick-fil-A. I don't, you know, I think a lot of our former, a lot of our veterans really struggle with how to find that sense of purpose and mission. And I think one of the reasons that the military continues to attract some of our, you know, some of our most talented, our best and our brightest is not because of the money.

You know, the money is okay. It's not good and it's definitely not great. But because you do get that community. You do get that sense of pride of serving the agency of something better. Now, the question is, do you have to find that community at work, or can you find other communities, whether it's a church group where you get to have an influence on young people, whether it's staying involved in the military somehow, whether it's getting involved in a situation or things where you can help young men, whether it's being a coach, whatever it is. You have, it sounds like some of your skills were from helping others and having a sense of community. And I'm not sure, I don't know the situation. It'd be great. if you get that from work, but if you don't, it doesn't mean that there aren't other places to establish community. So without knowing much about your work, if you hate it and there's no sense of community there, then, you know, I would suggest looking for another job at some point. Don't leave until you have another job because it's easier to find a job when you have one. But I don't know if I have any real insider on how to get that reward for you get from community at your work, not knowing anything

about your work or the specifics there. What I would say is that I think there are a lot of people who get that reward, that community compensation from other parts of their life. Their church, their sports league, nonprofit work, working with young people, helping others. And then friends and the community around whatever it is, your temple, your riding club, your sports league. But I think trying to mimic the community you got from your day job while serving, trying to mimic that in the private sector is going to be a real challenge. So I do think that being in person is a much better way to, I think the office is a feature, not a bug. So I don't know if you're working remotely, but maybe trying to find a job where you get to be in person.

I think community is largely a function of proximity. So that's one thing. Are you in the office enough? But I appreciate the question. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Sacks Fifth. Avenue. Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Sacks is where you can find everything from a stunning David Ehrman bracelet for her or a sleek pair of pheragama loafers to wear to a fancy holiday dinner. And if you don't know where to start, Sacks.com is customized to your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays. Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Sacks Fifth Avenue. Prop G comes from Pipe Drive.

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That's PipeDive.com slash PropG, and you can be up and running in minutes. Fox Creative. Support for this show comes from AWS Generative AI Accelerator Program. My name is Tom Elias. I'm one of the co-founders at Bedrock Robotics. Bedrock Robotics is creating AI for the built world. We are bringing advanced autonomy to heavy equipment

to tackle America's construction crisis. There's tremendous demand for progress in America through civil projects, yet half a million jobs in construction remain unfilled. We were part of the 2004 AWS Gen AI Accelerator Program. As soon as we saw it, we knew that we had to apply. The AWS Gen AI Accelerator Program supports startups that are building ambitious companies using Gen AI and physical AI. The program provides infrastructure support that matches an ambitious scale of growth for companies like Bedrock Robotics. Now, after the accelerator, about a year later, we announced that we raised about $80 million in funding. We are scaling our autonomy to multiple sites.

We're making deep investments in technology and partners. We have a lot more clarity on what autonomy we need to build and what systems and techniques and partners we need to make it happen. It's the folks that we have working altogether inside Bedrock Robotics, but it's also our partners like Amazon, really all trying to work together to figure out. what is physical AI and how do we affect the world in a positive way? To learn more about how AWS supports startups, visit startups.aWS. Welcome back. We're on to our final question, which is from Reddit user, due confection 98. She said, where did they get these names? And due confection 98 says, Hi, Scott. I'm making my first solo trip to London. In three weeks, you've dropped many

tips about great spots to eat and drink in New York City, but I don't recall any London suggestions. I'm planning to catch a match, probably Chelsea, and spending the rest of my three-day adventure eating and drinking, all the best the town has to offer. What area of London will be lively, but not too touristy, and full of college kids? Best neighborhoods to spend an afternoon getting lost while walking the streets. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. All right, welcome to London. So first thing, you've got to get. you've got to go see a Premier League game. It doesn't matter what team. It doesn't matter where you sit. It's just if you want to understand UK culture, Premier League football is arguably our

best export. And our, listen to me, like I'm a, like I'm a Brit. You just see, it's just so much emotion. It's so much fun. And it really doesn't matter the team, but plan, but just get tickets. In terms of hotels, there's just some of the Firmdale hotels do an amazing job at a decent price point. Go online. I used, when I was more budget conscious, I used to use hotels tonight. If you have the money, then definitely try. I mean, like the Connett or the Rosewood, the new Rosewood is just absolutely spectacular. Sort of the people absolutely love the lang. There's some beautiful hotels here, but they're very expensive. Try late night, the Connit Bar, if you have, if there's any way you can get an inn at either the kind of the hot members clubs or Mizana Stel, I've heard for it. I don't know if you're connected enough to get into places like that, but they're very kind of classic British. If you have time, go out to the country side and you don't have to be a member but stay at Soho Farmhouse, which I think is spectacular. sort of this super cool take on the Cotswolds also Maison Manor and you don't have to be a member to book a room out there but if you have enough time to go spend a couple days in the Cotswold it really is beautiful I think the Tate Modern is incredible the Royal Academy of the Arts is beautiful I'm not into museums and I think they're great if you're into war I love the British War Museum I think that's fantastic restaurants I'd go to Jim Kana maybe sketch I love Grangers or Granger and Co I think they do a great job again for dinner

hide the neighborhoods shortage is kind of edgy mayfair is kind of lux and I would say that hamstead is more sort of under under the radar if you will but I also think just walking my favorite high street because I live close to it is Marlebone High Street just walking up and down there in terms of kind of high-end retail I love sulfur If it's nice, I would definitely take a walk in Regents Park and just marvel at the Rose Garden and grab some coffee and just kind of let the day go by. But I would begin and end at a Premier League game. I just think they're incredible. Some logistical tips when you're coming in, absolutely take the Paddington Express into town from London's Heathrow Airport. But I just think walking around

any number of these neighborhoods, London, I feel very safe in London. Take the tube, except for ones, take a London black cab because the cabbies themselves are just hilarious. But welcome to London. It is one of the great tourist cities in the world. And I think it's, despite all the ship posting about it, I actually think New York and London are both in sort of golden ages. I think they're just great places to hang out. Anyways, welcome to the United Kingdom. And if you can, go gunners. Read for Arsenal. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours ofprochummedia.com. Again, that's office hours ofprofgeamedia.com.

Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Gallery subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Janair. Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Propgeepod from PropG Media. Thank you.