Tag Archives: advertising

Leo Laporte Shits on a Sponsor… Again

The TWiT-Sponsor relationship illustrated

It’s no secret that Leo Laporte has a love-love relationship with his sponsors. He wouldn’t be able to take all the vacations he does if they didn’t buy ads. More importantly he wouldn’t be able to endlessly brag about all the vacations he took if they didn’t buy ads. So why does it seem that Leo Laporte is always trying to sabotage this one-sided teet suck-fest?

Hilton Goring wants us to stop following him around

Leo Laporte has a marked history of constantly shitting on sponsors. Over the years we have compiled a list of victims, including but not limited to: ZipRecruiter, Rocket Mortgage, and Ring. It appears that the latter two learned their lesson and severed ties. Still others eventually realized their return on investment wasn’t coming and cut their losses. And as we noted at the beginning of this year, roughly 40% have already jumped ship.

Iain Thomson, Journalist @TheRegister and Guardian of the Turds

It was just a matter of time before Sophos became the target of Leo Laporte’s ire. We think this is related to TWiT losing long-time sponsor ESET NOD32 back in 2013. Since then Leo Laporte has consistently shitted on home antivirus software on his radio show. Watch the video above to see the two-faced Leo Laporte both praise and shit on Sophos in the same week without even realizing it.

We are working on getting more posts up more quickly. Thank you for your patience. If you see anything newsworthy please (1) visit our chat room, or (2) leave an anonymous comment below, or (3) submit a tip by clicking on “Feedback & Tips” to the right.

Leo Laporte Shits on Sponsor Ring.com

Time capsule of the last time Leo learned something new about technology.

Leo Laporte used to crow far and wide about how much he loved “the Ring video doorbell” on all of his shows. He did one of his signature ten minute ads any time he was given the chance — and the dollar bills.

We had concerns about the company, given that Father Robert Ballecer claimed he was able to write some Python scripts to intercept the video from the Ring doorbell, which is supposedly strongly encrypted with TLS.

If a fake priest can break your encryption, how good can it be, unless the fake priest is lying?

The love affair has come to an end. Like the many, many times hosts on the TWiT network have shit on sponsors, Ring.com is now a target.

In the clip above, Leo Laporte claims that Ring didn’t pay their bills, perhaps slandering the company if that isn’t true.

Here’s how TWiT co-host Katie Brenner disrespects sponsor NatureBox on air.

And here’s how TWiT host Tonya Hall disrespects sponsor ZipRecruiter on-air.

And here’s how TWiT’s TNT host Mike Elgan trashes sponsor PayPal on-air.

And here’s how Leo trashes previous sponsor Citrix ShareFile on-air.

And here’s Leo making fun of Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

So, if you choose to do business with TWiT as a sponsor, know what you’re getting into, and know that #soup loves to show his email on screen all the time, including the phone number of his soon-to-be stepchild (withheld because we are not monsters).

Caveat emptor. You might be thrown under the bus next, and be assured, the humiliation will be televised.

Lisa Laporte Explains Exactly What Is So Fucked Up About TWiT’s Advertising

Guest SubmissionThis post was a comment from the wonderful evilpants. Many commenters thought it should be promoted to its own post, and we always listen to the very constructive feedback offered by our readers.


By: evilpants

Good grief, I just read the page on their site directed at new advertisers:

Advertise on TWiT.tv

TWiT has been an ad-supported network for almost ten years and we have helped hundreds of companies grow their brands and increase their customer base by educating our audience about their products and services through ads on TWiT.tv. Our advertisers are a mix of start-ups, established brands, and those that we helped become established brands.

TWiT reaches a highly-engaged, tech-savvy audience as one of the world’s largest Internet broadcasters of live and on demand technology shows. In 2012 we established our own sales team because we wanted to work directly with our advertisers on super-serving our audience. Our sales team currently has 65% of sales in-house and is led by our CEO Lisa Laporte who heavily vets potential advertisers before allowing them on our network. Our in-house sales team has an in depth knowledge of our shows, direct access to our hosts, and works closely with our advertisers to create the best ads for our audience.

We are always interested in new advertisers who have products and services that will directly benefit our audience. If you are interested in advertising on the TWiT network then email advertising@twit.tv

There really is no one at TWIT who has any idea how to write marketing copy, and no one who knows how to address marketing people.

Even this sentence’s construction is sloppy and lazy:

Our advertisers are a mix of start-ups, established brands, and those that we helped become established brands.

Just look at that. They have three types of advertisers: 1) start-ups, 2) established brands, and…. um, 3) established brands. That’s a really stupid way of writing. If you know how to write English, and if you’re aiming to show that you understand what you’re saying, you’d say something like “Our advertisers are a mix of start-ups and established brands. Many of those have become established brands thanks to their partnership with TWIT.”

It’s only a small point, but I guess I’m saying, these people can’t even get a basic piece of marketing spiel right. It’s not just that sentence, it’s the whole thing. It’s written by someone who thinks they know how to write, but clearly doesn’t.

And the fact that once again they felt the need to say “our sales team… is led by our CEO Lisa Laporte” pretty much tells you who wrote the page.

Finally, they make a point of saying that Lisa Laporte “heavily vets” potential advertisers. For what? Ethical reasons? Equality reasons? Diversity reasons? They don’t bother saying. It ends up sounding like TWIT is a smarmy spoiled child. If they’re bothered to explain what the purpose of the vetting is, it would make it a positive thing – but the fact that they don’t, makes it a really negative thing.

What advertiser would want to be put through a “heavy vetting” process? Oh please, please let us advertise with you 🙁