The White Subaru Hell Loop

Search Engine investigates an automotive mystery

Happy Friday,

We’ve got a new one for you!

A mortal human being finds himself stuck between two impressive organizations: the DMV, and an internet start-up called Carvana. He has a problem, but each side insists only the other can solve it. Search Engine’s crack automotive team investigates.

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A note about an ad snafu

Hello! I’m sending this newsletter out earlier than I would’ve, because when I listened to this episode first thing this morning, I was surprised to hear an ad for Carvana. Carvana, the company we are covering in this episode.

This was a generic ad, not one with my voice. Still, Carvana was not approved by us as an advertiser on our show. In fact, when we learned last month that generic Carvana ads were appearing on Search Engine, we asked our ad sales partner to block those ads from the show. Our thinking was that we were reporting on a company, and we did not want to confuse listeners with advertising from that company. Obviously!

We were assured by our ad sales partner that this had been dealt with.

And yet today, this morning, the ads were there. I have not gotten good or clear answers as to why this happened.

What I do know is that this isn’t because those advertisers are insisting on appearing on our show specifically, but instead it’s because of something that is going wrong on the back end.

When I know more, I’ll share more. And if people are curious, I can talk at more length about advertising at Search Engine on a later newsletter¹.

This is a big deal to us, and I’m sorry for any confusion this may have caused. To say it plainly and clearly: our reporting is fully independent. We are not for sale. Anything that could create even the impression of anything else, is not okay.

I feel confident we’ll be able to come to a good resolution on this with our ad sales partner. But to be honest with you, this is a week where I feel quite buttressed by the fact that a third of our budget comes directly from listener support. It’s part of why I feel comfortable rejecting ads from some advertisers, it’s also why I feel confident that no matter what, we’ll navigate this situation to one that the team feels at peace with.

Also, the ads were removed pretty early in the morning, so for the people reading this who didn’t hear these ads who are like … why did I get such a long email about an ad I didn’t hear? I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please tell me about hell loops you’ve found yourself in.

Yours always,

PJ

1. (This problem we’re having this week has to do with a kind of ad called a DAI ad, these ads tend to be sold at higher volume. DAI aren’t read by me, they make less money for our ad sales partner. They’re generically sold ads that cover empty inventory on the show. I can’t tell how much the median Search Engine listener wants to know about this stuff.)