You are implying that the current ad model, with a small number of high-value crafted announcements, doesn't work. I suspect it does. Gimlet has been pretty open about how their revenue exceeds their expectations and put them under pressure to grow their offering faster than planned.

Yep! GiantBomb is a video game website with some interesting personality. Something like 80% of their content is freely available with banner ads on the site and typical interstitials on their podcasts. For $50 a year, all ads disappear, the extra 20% content is available, and you get authenticated RSS feeds for the same podcasts minus ads that go into Overcast nicely. I love subscribing.

While that's an extremely niche website, I would happily subscribe to NPR, for example, in return for ad-free podcast feeds.

I mourn the death of the RSS reader and really really want RSS to continue to be an open model for distributing podcasts. But that being said, a business that handled premium subscription sales and also ad-sales for a publisher could do the unenviable work of inserting ads and distributing multiple feeds for free or premium users.

Yes

yes, paying $6.95/mo for about a year now for just such a podcast, http://www.artiequitter.com

Yes, and I do donate to some of the podcasts that allow me to.

Absolutely