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It also doesn’t help that so many creators - even legitimate ones - now use injected ads that they don’t verify at all. I remember listening to an episode of B

It also doesn’t help that so many creators - even legitimate ones - now use injected ads that they don’t verify at all. I remember listening to an episode of Better Offline a buddy sent me and anyone who knows about Ed knows that basically half his crusade is against bad AI implementation/“slop”/etc. He’s broadly against the current LLM rush. First ad when I fired up the podcast episode was yet aother injected ad for yet another AI agent company as generic as the rest. Literally the organizations he’s railing against and calling wasteful. It was clearly because he handed off the advertising to one of these injection services. Sidebar: these ads tend to perform terribly. Actual ad reads by the host(s) are the only thing that lead to meaningful conversions in podcasts.

rchaud 1y ago
If they post the episode on Youtube, download an audio stream of that file instead. No ads injected there.
genewitch 1y ago
where are the ads injected? I use a couple of podcast "apps" and neither inject ads, all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast, even pre-roll and post-roll ads.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  That’s a (good) choice by the shows you listen to. There are plenty of ad injection services for podcasting, pretty sure Acast (popular hosting service) has it built in for instance. Search “DAI podcast” or “dynamic ad insertion podcast.” The biggest giveaway is when the ads are dropped in the middle of someone talking. Pretty much any hits that are manually added are led into by the hosts if it’s mid-show.
- fknorangesite 1y ago
  > all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast Yes, but those are dynamic too: if you go back and download old episodes, for example, you'll get the current run of ads.
  - genewitch 1y ago
    No, that's incorrect. Not one of the podcasts i listen to re-master their mp3s, the checksums stay the same. In fact, most of the podcasts i listen to have no ads at all. I wonder if there's some misunderstanding, here. If i go watch like an LTT video where they had a sponser, 5 years ago, that same "native ad" will be in the video. I'm specifically saying that the podcast apps i use do not inject ads, but podcasts themselves will do native advertising, i consider these completely different things. https://podcastindex.org/apps https://podcastindex.org/apps podcasting 2.0 app index.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      Just to be clear, are you just saying the shows you listen to don’t do DAI, or are you doubting that DAI exists at all? I only ask because of your comment before the one I’m responding to here. It almost sounds like you think it isn’t possible or that no one does it.
      - fknorangesite 1y ago
        Right? I'm confused. Saying "oh the ads are in the audio file" is exactly like saying that "the ads are in the html file." It's not like the client app is inserting them. I mean, I guess I can imagine an exceptionally-scummy podcast app, but that's not what we're talking about here.
        genewitch 1y ago
        when i use either of my podcast apps, it fetches an mp3 file (or streams it) and there's no additional ads (read this as "no additional non-native ads") that "change" when i listen again in a year. This means the podcasts that i listen to, i suppose, are not hosted on hosting platforms that inject ads. Because, as i think needs to be reiterated, podcasts are just mp3 files. you can host them with caddy, or nginx, or apache, all pointing at some file(s) in ./www/html/mp3/ One does not need to host it on "Acast" or other "podcast hosting providers", a podcast is just an mp3 file, which can be automatically fetched by anything that can download both rss and mp3 formatted files. at a certain point, one has to ask themselves if whatever media they're ingesting is worth the scum.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
Cool Zone Media podcasts kinda famously get farmed ads that run counter to their content. they claim they do what they can to influence that (ahem... Washington State Highway Patrol and all the gold scams come to mind) but i wonder if signing their souls away to ihm removed a lot of their agency in that regard. and if you've ever listened to one of Robert's (CZM executive producer and host of some of their flagships) other podcasts you might understand why companies don't want him doing ad reads.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  What an un-fun reputation to have! I’m not even against pre-recorded spots by whoever the sponsor is if that’s his deal though the conversion rate on those are not as good. It’s just the completely random ads that the podcaster(s) don’t even know are playing on their show. The entire reason advertising on podcasting was more effective in the 2010s and early 2020s was because there was a little more trust with their listeners, there’s a relationship at play even if it’s parasocial. If they were actively reading on air, I assumed that they vetted the company and it at least passed the smell test (though plenty sure didn’t, I would say the bar was a little higher than other media formats).

rchaud 1y ago

If they post the episode on Youtube, download an audio stream of that file instead. No ads injected there.

genewitch 1y ago

where are the ads injected? I use a couple of podcast "apps" and neither inject ads, all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast, even pre-roll and post-roll ads.

Forgeties79 1y ago
That’s a (good) choice by the shows you listen to. There are plenty of ad injection services for podcasting, pretty sure Acast (popular hosting service) has it built in for instance. Search “DAI podcast” or “dynamic ad insertion podcast.” The biggest giveaway is when the ads are dropped in the middle of someone talking. Pretty much any hits that are manually added are led into by the hosts if it’s mid-show.
fknorangesite 1y ago
> all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast Yes, but those are dynamic too: if you go back and download old episodes, for example, you'll get the current run of ads.
- genewitch 1y ago
  No, that's incorrect. Not one of the podcasts i listen to re-master their mp3s, the checksums stay the same. In fact, most of the podcasts i listen to have no ads at all. I wonder if there's some misunderstanding, here. If i go watch like an LTT video where they had a sponser, 5 years ago, that same "native ad" will be in the video. I'm specifically saying that the podcast apps i use do not inject ads, but podcasts themselves will do native advertising, i consider these completely different things. https://podcastindex.org/apps https://podcastindex.org/apps podcasting 2.0 app index.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    Just to be clear, are you just saying the shows you listen to don’t do DAI, or are you doubting that DAI exists at all? I only ask because of your comment before the one I’m responding to here. It almost sounds like you think it isn’t possible or that no one does it.
    - fknorangesite 1y ago
      Right? I'm confused. Saying "oh the ads are in the audio file" is exactly like saying that "the ads are in the html file." It's not like the client app is inserting them. I mean, I guess I can imagine an exceptionally-scummy podcast app, but that's not what we're talking about here.
      - genewitch 1y ago
        when i use either of my podcast apps, it fetches an mp3 file (or streams it) and there's no additional ads (read this as "no additional non-native ads") that "change" when i listen again in a year. This means the podcasts that i listen to, i suppose, are not hosted on hosting platforms that inject ads. Because, as i think needs to be reiterated, podcasts are just mp3 files. you can host them with caddy, or nginx, or apache, all pointing at some file(s) in ./www/html/mp3/ One does not need to host it on "Acast" or other "podcast hosting providers", a podcast is just an mp3 file, which can be automatically fetched by anything that can download both rss and mp3 formatted files. at a certain point, one has to ask themselves if whatever media they're ingesting is worth the scum.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago

Cool Zone Media podcasts kinda famously get farmed ads that run counter to their content. they claim they do what they can to influence that (ahem... Washington State Highway Patrol and all the gold scams come to mind) but i wonder if signing their souls away to ihm removed a lot of their agency in that regard. and if you've ever listened to one of Robert's (CZM executive producer and host of some of their flagships) other podcasts you might understand why companies don't want him doing ad reads.

Forgeties79 1y ago
What an un-fun reputation to have! I’m not even against pre-recorded spots by whoever the sponsor is if that’s his deal though the conversion rate on those are not as good. It’s just the completely random ads that the podcaster(s) don’t even know are playing on their show. The entire reason advertising on podcasting was more effective in the 2010s and early 2020s was because there was a little more trust with their listeners, there’s a relationship at play even if it’s parasocial. If they were actively reading on air, I assumed that they vetted the company and it at least passed the smell test (though plenty sure didn’t, I would say the bar was a little higher than other media formats).