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Comment by amrrs | Hacker News Reader

I know we don't want to see / hear ads. But at the same time, these ads on the podcast are making livelihoods/income for those content creators and If we strip that off of them, saying I don't like ads but hey I do like your content. Where do you think we can have the line?

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My dream would be that people that are fine with ads should have them, while people against should be able to subscribe to the content. Like Spotify actually, but radio does not offer that.

Is this sustainable?

Sam Harris' podcast runs entirely on donations, so I think that model is at least viable for certain audience demographics.

I agree, it definitely is sustainable for certain types of content. However, even NPR has donation campaigns where they are running ads for themselves and they also run ads for other companies that support them. I guess if they were forced they could change this habit.

> Sam Harris' podcast runs entirely on donations

He seems to be shifting away from that. There is a "private feed" that will "increasingly carry content that will not be available on the public one" (from first 20sec of Making Sense #168). So yeah, he either wants more income or just donations isn't that great.

Their need to make a living is not a legitimate excuse to brainwash me.

If they cannot find an ethical business model, then they must go out of business.

I guess not every single ad is about Brainwashing. If that's the case of your wish, then every single company on the planet would go bust because every company would be selling something to you through ads or pitches at some point.

I hate Display ads because they're content heavy, irrelevant and suck my personal information. But podcast ads are not targetting nor using my cookie or phone id. It's just some content creator is getting paid to get the word out and in fact the podcaster would make it clear that this is an AD unlike in many other platforms where inline and native ads are common.

> But podcast ads are not targetting nor using my cookie or phone id.

You say that, but there are products to allow dynamically insert personalised ads server side when you download a podcast.

Podcasts are RSS feeds. Not "like" RSS feeds, literally RSS feeds. There are are dynamic ad inserts on some (usually from bigger companies), but they're limited to GeoIP and time. The OP is absolutely correct in that podcast ads cannot use cookies or device IDs.

This is in large part why we're starting to see companies make "podcasts" that aren't podcasts at all, requiring proprietary players. At that point they really don't need to sell ads against their shows, because they're collecting data on you in a way that a podcast you're listening to on a typical podcast player absolutely cannot.

I fail to see how RSS feeds can't still use cookies? Once you've got a cookie then the feed can easily add tracking links or a unique mp3 file with personalised ads inserted. It's trivial to do this with a web server.

Edit: This assumes using a web browser to access the feeds. Obviously cookies won't be kept with an app.

I would not cry over companies going bankrupt that sell products that I need to see ads for to realise I need or want them. Not every single company would go bust for many businesses provide things people need or want without having been exposed to ads.

Edit: Corrected autocorrect

So the only companies you would want to exist are the ones that have monopolies (or close to) in their markets? I would much rather see marketing from competitors, so I could at least have a launching point to do my own research.

Presenting ads and marketing as a line of defense from monopolies is disingenuous.

Maybe it will cause improvements in how ads are done.

I buy lots of games of certain genres. I'm always wanting to know about similar games in those genres that match my taste. But almost all game ads are for the major big games that I generally either don't buy or already know about and will buy ad or not.

Ads that inform me of new games that meet my taste will easily convert to sells far beyond the rate of standard ads. But such ads rarely exist at all, the closest thing being sponsored reviews but even those I generally have to know about to look up.

But at the same time, I want these relevant ads without giving up medical information, health information, relationship status, political views, or similar such information.

I'd like to give a shout out to one pod caster in particular that might be of interest to this audience: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

There are ads, but they are spoken by the host in his normal tone. No loudness tricks, just one minute reading the copy. I suppose OP's tool won't detect this unless a human tags all the spots.

Second, the ads are focused to the audience and may actually be useful sometimes: hosting companies, SAS tools, etc.

You just described most podcast ads. The majority are read by the host(s) and are target at the audience. It doesn't make them better.

If ads were less invasive we’d tolerate them for sure. The problem is that they devoure any medium completely with an excessive quantity of ads, volume bumping, flashing banners, page hijacks, dubious js and are really innefective to begin with. If they were more expensive and used more sparingly they’d be tolerated. But they’re not and people are fighting back.

Podcast ads are so easy to skip. Don't even have to open your phone, just fastforward using headphone buttons.

I don't know about podcasting, but for music, streaming royalties are so abysmal that I can't feel guilt about blocking ads on those services. If I want to support an artist, I'll buy their music on Bandcamp, where I know they'll get the majority of the purchase price.

The "line" can be different for everyone. For some, all ads is bad and should be block, for other some ads are good and shouldn't be block. You should fight for your own preffered line, wherever that is.

In the reality there are no one "correct" line. The line is just the equilibrium between this opposing sides.

The line is different for all people. I love the concept of ad blockers in all forms of media. Why should I be forced to take in your ads? I can already skip them with a quick 2 or 3 taps of the skip button, why should I be forced to do that while I go about my day?

They get money on downloads so they have no idea whether i listen to the ad, skip through them manually, or use this.

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