I wish the later could be possible. I have no idea how podcast-ads work but lately i noticed some podcasts giving me seemingly location-dependent ads. (about something in a nearby major city)
either everyone is getting advertisements for a very dallas targeted ad, or are the podcast companies making several versions of the podcast and serving different ones to different people? sounds like a lot of extra work to me, but I suppose its not hard to automate stitching a few ads into an audio file.
I agree - actually I've gotten into the habit of trying to track down the original RSS feed for each podcast I listen to. Often the link shared by the podcaster will be to rehosters like Google Play or iTunes, or lesser-known services, that have tracking and probably the ability to insert custom ads. The worst is when they make the elitist move of only linking iTunes, making their podcast unlistenable (on mobile at least) to most people worldwide.
But most of the time the original file is getting pulled by the rehoster from an unprotected RSS feed, and these can be easy to find. You can get the RSS feeds for Soundcloud, as an example. Others are hosted on Libsyn.com, and you can often find them by searching for the podcast name and "site:libsyn.com" in the search engine of your choice.
That said, I don't listen to podcasts enough any more to say whether this is a universal solution at all. Actually, the fact that podcasts have unblockable ads is one of the main reasons I no longer bother.
There’s not a universal solution, in part because many times the dynamic ad-insertion is something the podcasters themselves want (or it’s one of the terms of using a certain podcast host).
I have a podcast with a podcasting network that sells our ads for us. To my knowledge, they don’t do any dynamic ad insertions for older episodes (though if they did, I wouldn’t necessarily be upset, provided they were inserted the right way), but plenty of podcasting networks DO do that and it’s something the creator’s endorse because it means they are getting paid more money.
There are third-party podcast apps that rehost feeds and may add their own stuff to the content — that’s another issue entirely — but most dynamic ad-insertion stuff is happening with the permission/consent of the people that make the podcast, either explicitly or as terms they agreed to in order to get hosted/have ads sold on their behalf.
That's a fair point. Whatever service is originally hosting the content might well be doing the dynamic ad insertions too. My assumption is that in at least some cases while the ads are desired by the podcaster, they aren't inserted until a later stage by an aggregator. So there's some hope of getting at the original source.
At least, when I've been able to track down sources, they seem to be mostly hosted on generic CDNs, which gives me some hope that the same file is being served to all listeners.
That’s generally the case — and depending on the hosting system, that could change too. The really huge companies in the space (Art19, Stitcher/Midroll, Wondery, Megaphone, Podbean) are all doing dynamic ad insertion on different scales — but given the way the RSS feeds are constructed, I don’t know specifically how the dynamic aspect works for each provider.
I do know that early on, companies who did this stuff (like NPR, who was really early to this game and has been doing some type of dynamic ad-insertion for more than a decade) often had separate versions of the audio file. So you could have an ad-free version of the file (maybe for users in certain geographic regions, if an ad-buy was specifically targeted) and then other versions of the file with ads built-in — and an algorithm would determine what version a user accessed based on a variety of parameters. If that’s the case, yeah, you would probably be able to figure out if multiple versions existed and then request the ad-free version from CDN or whatever.
At this point, it’s my understanding that most of the dynamic insertion is happening server-side — where ads are inserted based on campaign timing and maybe geo-targeting) at the point of the download or stream request (though I imagine even here, most of what is served is coming from a CDN, I just mean the initial request). That way, the download/stream always has “current” ads, even if the show itself is years old. (I don’t know how often they update those different versions — I would imagine you have 6-week campaign as an example where all episodes get an insert and are then cached on the CDN and then after the campaign ends a new file is generated and cached). That isn’t to say you couldn’t potentially still get access to a copy of a file without inserts — but I bet it would be a lot more difficult.
dynamic ad-insertion is
something the podcasters
themselves want
Is DAI really more profitable than the host doing the plug?
I always assumed the sponsor plugs some youtubers put into their videos [1] would be much higher impact than dynamic pre-roll ads, and would therefore command a much higher price.
I'm a bit late to the thread, but if the difference is "the same person is reading the ad" some of what i think are dynamic ads are being done in a similar way. most of the ads within podcasts i listen to are read by the hosts anyway.
When there are ad spots in the middle where i imagine it could be pretty easy to cut in an ad dynamically. Some podcasts do a little music fade in/fade out before and after an ad, which is usually a script or something from the advertiser read by the podcast host. I assume the the transition and ad are mostly done dynamically? although i have no way of knowing for sure.
Presumably at some point advertisers aren't willing to pay for out-of-date plugs, at which point it might become profitable to cut out the plug and replace it with other ads dynamically.
It’s called dynamic ad insertion. Online radio stations use it all the time for localized ads based on IP address. Did some work for a set of radio stations in the way of building a diagnostic web player for the metadata in HLS streams debugging their new ad system. (Using HLS.js which I have to say I’m grateful for as it’s a brilliant library)
So they don’t have to stitch together one new audio file per local but place metadata markers in the audio file metadata that prompts ad insertion. These usually have a marker for length and the systems handle number of plays and placement spots. Don’t know as much about that end. HLS being a chunked format would allow the files to be stitched back together on the client end as well with ads in place.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing this. Also wouldn’t be surprised if many Podcasts are broadcast via HLS as it’s native in Apple software and Apple devices. Someone else with more knowledge would have to confirm or deny that, though.
No HLS in podcasting because of its legacy but just-in-time building of audio files with some caching is plenty fast. Some folks who do this use old internet radio streaming technology with the max buffer size set to infinity, but most of the time it's operating with plain old mp3s.
For sure? Not sure that HLS is bound to AAC (though that’s the standard) as it’s just the container format. Could be transmitted MP3 10s chunks split and added metadata encoded by the distributor. Either way if you’re right about the JIT and buffering it would be trivial to stitch some ad markers in at that point.
But I’m sure independents/lower-volume shows at the very least operate like you’ve said. Makes sense.
The guys on .NET Rocks have talked a bit about this & being able to tweak & update ads over time. One big reason is people still listen to their old shows & they would like those ads to still have value.
I believe the host of your podcast files that people download will send different audio files to different people with different ads targeted in.
either everyone is getting advertisements for a very dallas targeted ad, or are the podcast companies making several versions of the podcast and serving different ones to different people? sounds like a lot of extra work to me, but I suppose its not hard to automate stitching a few ads into an audio file.