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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> But where do the ads go?

If we look to podcasts as a model — 490K new episodes in the last 90 days, delivered to users and to aggregators alike via "not dead yet" RSS — ads are placed inline with the content. There is no RSS-related "pact" that precludes the relationships you mentioned.

Related analyst estimate: "US podcast ad spending will surpass $2 billion in 2023 and will account for nearly one-third of digital audio services ad spending." https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/us-podcast-adver...

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I work in this space (podcast ads) and the podcast ads tech maturity is years behind other media, like video, due to RSS. This lag is also reflected in that advertisers generally spend less on podcasting.

RSS makes it very difficult to measure the performance of an ad. Most players in this space wrap a publishers hosted podcast link with their own tracking link, and the main metric of engagement is a download. Downloads themselves are a pretty crude measurement and don’t hold up to something like minutes watched/listened.

Placing ads into the audio directly also just isn’t as performant as streaming it into the media like in video. Publishers and advertisers want more fine grained control over where the ad is placed, when it’s placed, and how it’s consumed by the listener. Podcast ads currently don’t deliver on that.

> podcast ads tech maturity is years behind

... and? From the perspective of whom?

> Publishers and advertisers want more fine grained control over where the ad is placed, when it’s placed, and how it’s consumed by the listener.

There you go.

Ad tech is behind when it comes to podcasts? Who fucking cares. Not the audience. Podcast advertising is the closest thing to traditional broadcast ads for TV and radio—when ads were still inert instead of sentient. There's not a damn person on this side of the divide that sees the things you mention as being a significant downside. Not having the self-awareness to realize it is pure déformation professionnelle; this entire comment reads like a burglar lamenting the fact that people keeping their money in the bank instead of at home under their mattresses makes it harder to break in and take it.

The podcasters care? Because if the advertisers can't quantify ROI and audience, then they're less likely to spend their money with you, and your potential revenue is capped.

You, like the previous commenter, are stating the obvious. What's mystifying is the general tone suggesting that what either of you are saying is supposed to be insightful.

The link I think you’re missing is the strong impact podcaster revenue has on what podcasts are produced and the audience that consumes them.

If that's an argument you want to make, then perhaps you should make it.

Yes--there's also plenty of money being spent on newsletter advertising. I make about $2k/month in revenue from that myself.[1] Publishers have lots of flexibility on how to monetize; you can do ads, or paid subscriptions, or a mix of both.... I'm planning to do paid subs + free with ads for Yakread.

[1] https://thesample.ai/

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