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Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers (news.ycombinator.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 26 points 6 months ago (9 children)

I have heard this before from rando Reddit posts where it turns out they were listening to podcasts that just had the ads baked into the broadcast.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Nope. Had it happen to me: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25040771

    TLDR: I know it because the ads were German but the podcast is in English.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    TLDR: I know it because the ads were German but the podcast is in English.

    That can still happen and happens to me too, despite using a no-ad FOSS player, so the ads are definitely from the podcast, not the player.
    Dynamic ad insertion is absolutely a thing in podcasts. If you access/download the MP3 file on the server from a German IP address, a German ad will be put in at the specified ad break before you/your player downloads the file.

    So a different language ad doesn't mean it's from Spotify.

    (PS: By the way, using a VPN connected to a country where not many companies make podcast ads works basically like a podcast ad blocker. I route my podcast player through an Albania VPN and have like 80% less ads than before. The remainder is "classic" podcast ads that are inserted as a static part of the MP3 file, no way to get rid of those.)

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    No.
    It was literally an ad break done into the stream.
    The WAN show does not speak German. And they have their own sponsor section. So no way for anyone other than the creator deciding to insert a ad-break during upload of an episode (or getting it suggested by Spotify).
    This is assumedly exactly as YT does it.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Yeah I get that but the way I experienced it is that ads can appear in a podcast in any of the following three instances:

    • Podcaster themselves record the podcast, may or may not add advertisement (self-spoken in their language)
    • Podcast network which the podcaster is a member of adds ad break time codes, in which later ads are inserted, dynamically based on the listener's location (pre-spoken, usually in the local language of the listener's location, sometimes personalized)
    • The podcast player/platform (Spotify, Pocket casts, antennapod etc) adds advertisements (also pre-spoken and in local or app language, more often personalized)

    The podcast player's ads can not be distinguished from the podcast network's ads, except that they have a higher tendency for personalized ads (given that personalization is enabled in the privacy settings) or if the player declares it as an advertisement in a place where the podcast can't. Or if you know that a podcast is on an ad free network. Other than that, you don't really know if it's an ad by Spotify or the podcast's network.

    My point is that, unless your player is explicitly declaring an ad as such, you cannot diatinguish a podcast network's ad from a player ad. The only proof I have to know it's a network's ad in my case is that my player is open source and ad free. If I used a closed source commercial player, I wouldn't know from who the ad is coming when it's in my local language.
    I'm German too and got German ads on english podcasts, but I know that the player didn't insert it, so you can never be too sure if it's Spotify adding them either.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    They do serve ads on podcasts. Not all of them though. It used to be that they were separate, so that you were shown a different "now playing" screen. I first noticed when it happened on otherwise ad free shows, like Lateral. Not sure if that's the case now? Some of the podcasts I listen to jump in length from the episode list to the "now playing" screen, which is weird. Don't know if it's because injected ads or not though, or if they're even from Spotify. I haven't seen those ads that are on a new "now playing" screen in a while.

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