Lizardsquid, maker of noises @lizardsquid@computerfairi.es

@boobs_idiot@octodon.social I've been wondering this too

@madewokherd that does seem to be what they're claiming, yeah

@Nine the podcast is played via a downloaded mp3 file. As I discovered after some research: the ad is spliced into the file as it's being downloaded, and the ads are chosen based on Algorithms™

@quirk I thought Stitcher only does it through their platform? (as in you have to use a stitcher streaming app to access a podcast)?

This inserts ads into mp3s that are downloaded onto people's devices, regardless of what app they use.

@madewokherd oh sure, I'm not saying it's super complex

(although that approach also would cause problems - if the files have different id3 tags, then mp3 players might not display things consistently)

The thing they're claiming to invent is the *dynamic* advertising part, where it figures out what ad to insert based on region, time of day, and other collected information about users.

@madewokherd it has headers for each frame, so it looks like this:

header data header data header data header data ....

if your ad is a single frame, you can insert it in as a (header data) set just before another header.

But if you try and insert it in the middle of a data section, then you get problems, because you'll have:

header data header da [header data] ta header data

Then the sync points don't match up, and you get errors in playback

@Jo my podcatcher is perfectly happy downloading from there, maybe you should double check

@Jo this is a BBC sounds podcast called "Murmurs"

@madewokherd (also it's a little more complex than cat, because you need to tweak the header as well, otherwise playback can malfunction)

@madewokherd the thing that they claimed to invent is inserting targeted ads at download time, instead of less targeted ads at release time

One of my main issues with this is: I sure hope the BBC has an archiving plan in place.

It's highly likely that Acast will go out of business before the BBC stops producing podcasts. What will happen to these downloads then? Will they still work, or will everything break?

So the BBC has partnered with a company called Acast, which claims:

"Acast’s sophisticated, contextual targeting uses dynamic insertion technology—which we invented—so brands can reach the right audience, in the right way, at the right moment, as many times as they require."

So the ads are inserted at the time of download, rather than at the time of production (the selling point of this being that a podcast's back catalogue can include modern ads).

I'm listening to a podcast from the BBC, which says "this podcast is supported by advertising outside of the UK" and then plays an ad.

Except the ads have all been specifically for Australia. I assume they're not just spamming all listeners with ads for Australian banks, but then my question is this:

How do they know to send Australian ads to my podcatcher?

How do they insert specialised advertising part-way into an mp3 file?