Could AI Make Podcast Advertising Obsolete?

What if your listeners could ask AI to remove

every ad from your podcast and have a clean version ready just

a few minutes later? Well, guess what? Adam Curry tried this, and

the result raises a big question for anyone making a living from

podcast advertising, and that is, what happens when the ads

can simply disappear. So we're going to look at what this could

mean for podcasting, why creators may want to diversify

beyond programmatic ads, and some practical ways to earn

support from your audience. Plus, we'll take a look at AI

saving you time and choosing actually what you want to do

with that time. Hit it, ladies.

The SOP Singers: The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005. I am your award-winning

Hall of Fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so very,

very much for being here. If you're new to the show, welcome

aboard. This is where I help you launch, grow, and monetize your

podcast. Today, we're going to kind of talk about monetization

and some things that are going on with technology that really

have me thinking: What is 2027 going to be like? The website is

schoolofpodcasting.com. That is hosted at PodPage.com, and if

you go over to SchoolOfPodcasting.com and use

the coupon code Listener, you can get an either monthly,

quarterly, or yearly subscription, and of course that

comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So here is the deal.

We're gonna get kind of nerdy a little bit, but I was listening

to a show called Podcasting 2.0, and the guy that basically

invented or co-invented podcasting is Adam Curry, and

he's talking every week. They kind of talk about things that

they are trying in podcasting. In fact, they're kind of if you

look at them; they're a little bit like the crazy scientists of

podcasting, and then there's another group called the Podcast

Standards Project, and they will look at the kind of crazy ideas,

and they're not really crazy; they're just you know they're

out there a bit sometimes, and they will then implement or at

least try to get everyone to implement one. So, long story

short, if you wonder where transcripts in Apple came from,

that actually started as a podcasting 2.0 idea. So, Adam

Curry, and this is where things get nerdy. We all know about AI,

but there's this thing called you ready? We're gonna get our

nerd on model context protocol. All right, and this is a way

that you can tie AI into other projects, and so Adam tied his

AI tool into the back end of podcastindex.org, and that is a

huge database that your podcast should be in, and by doing that,

he was able to pull all sorts of data from that database. But

what he was looking for was he wanted to see if he could just

via programming have the begin. advertisings from a show

removed, and have the AI bot send it to him minus the

advertising, and this is what he did.

I want you to get the latest episode of Ed

Zitron's Better Offline podcast, but strip out all the ads at the

beginning. So let's let's see what happens. Let's see what it

does.

And eight minutes later, his bot contacted him to

let him know it was

done. Here we go. Done today's better offline

Anthropic's $413 billion burden with the opening

ad block removed. The raw file was 12 minutes and 36, but the

actual episode is only 638. Really?

Yeah. So if you're wondering why do people

want to cut out ads, number one, most of the time they're

irrelevant, and the other thing is it's 50% of your content is

ads. Are you kidding me? Give me a break. Let's continue. The

rest was dynamically inserted as I stripped the full

two minute and 54 pre roll movie promo Odo Brilliant Nissan

Levi's and verified the new file opens on Ed's hello. Welcome to

this week in better offline monolog. Heads up, there's also

about three minutes of ads after the sign-off. Zep bound chase,

etc. Say the word, and I'll trim the tail too. Here we go.

The SOP Singers: Awesome media.

Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline

monolog. I'm your host, Ed Zip. Boom, Shakalaka.

I'm telling you, you nailed

it. In the future. You future

man, it's over.

Yes, it's over.

I'm sorry, but it's over.

But it's not over for podcasting. No,

it's over for ad. It's over for the podcast

industry.

Possibly, yeah.

Not possibly, definitely. I'm telling you that

is that is the that is the end. I'm I'm without words, and I too

like Dave Jones, his co-host. Thought, oh man, if you're

making a living from advertising, this could be a

problem, but Adam was still somewhat optimistic.

But we will have payment mechanisms that will be

employed. It will happen because otherwise the content won't be

able to be made. People won't be able to get paid. But the the

plumbing is there, so this is going to happen,

and it might just be that the money in podcasting

goes from stuffing your content, you know, basically doubling the

size of your podcast. So if you have a six-minute podcast, you

have six minutes worth of poorly paying ads, which is why you

have to have 50% To maybe we're going to start to see more and

more subscriptions, and so for my friends that make a living

from just advertising, you might start working on a plan B. It's

going to be interesting to see where this goes. I don't know,

but it's kind of scary. Here's Adam. I have accepted this in my

life. It's okay, but I'm not going to hold back and say this

is horrible because it's ruining the podcast industrial complex.

You know, I don't care. That's not what I do. What I do is I

tinker and connect bits and bobs and gaffer tape. This is how

podcasting came to be. It's the exact same thing, and the

following week, because we all, myself included, were like, "Oh

man, we're doomed. What's going to happen to podcast

advertising? And Adam came out the next week and said, "Wait,

wait, wait! You guys are all you're missing the point he was

trying to make. Adam is very excited because the one thing

that people talk about in podcasting that is missing,

which by the way, it's not, is discoverability. When somebody

says, "Yeah, there's no discoverability in podcasting,

what they're saying is, "Nobody's discovered my podcast.

There's a little thing called word of mouth that works just

like an algorithm, and it doesn't change all the time,

which is even better. But he was really excited about

discoverability-the fact that you could use this technology to

say, as he said, "Hey, go cut out the beginning ads. You could

say, "Find me a show about blank, blank, blank, and you

could make your own search engine, basically. And what was

interesting is the following episode, he explained how his

bot had gone back out and got the next episode. I think it

either got it or offered to go get it. I forget to be honest

with you, but nonetheless, it was like, "Hey, you like this?

Do you want more? And so that's interesting. But again, if I am

someone who is solely dependent on advertising, I would be a

little worried. I was contacted by a company that wanted me to

mention them. If you noticed, I'm not mentioning them because

it was some sort of app that would cut out the ads, so

somebody's going to do this, and I believe there's already a

company that is. And the reason I don't like that idea as much

as I hate ads, and we'll talk about that in a second. But the

reason I hate that is you're helping people in in some cases

do fraud. You're selling advertising. You're you know

you're getting paid for advertising from a company, and

you tell them I'm going to get you in front of X amount of

1000s of people, and then however many of those don't

actually hear the ad. Well, that's that's fraud, and that's

why I'm not crazy about that idea. Now, the other thing that

came out of Podcast Movement Week or Podcast Week or whatever

we're calling it, the first two days were the business side, and

one of the themes that I heard was, "Hey, if you want people to

listen to your ads, here's a novel idea: make Better ads,

yeah. In fact, I hear so much about Bill Burr, who is a very

famous comedian. He just sold out Madison Square Garden, so he

is a famous dude. But he's famous for just talking about

the ad in his own unique style, and in some cases. Not really in

a complimentary fashion, but people, the advertisers, will

still say, "Get us in front of your audience because it's

getting the brand out there. And some people may buy it because

they go, "Well, it can't be that bad.

And probably one of his most famous ones was for Sherry's

berries, and first of all, he re he's reading the letter he got

from the company, and he's like, at this point, you should have

received your box of Sherry's berries, which he hasn't. And

then later, it's like, be sure to spell out berries so people

know how to spell it. So he's reading all the parts that he's

supposed to just you know read and then say what it says to do.

Here he is explaining how this went down with the company.

Well, I did it for years without doing

sponsorships. So when I started doing reads, it felt weird to be

this guy just saying whatever I was thinking and being funny and

all that. To all of a sudden be like you know the Chrysler

Cordoba, blah blah blah blah blah. It just felt weird, and I

was just like, and people are going to have the ability to

just fast forward through this and skip it. So I didn't feel

like the comedy should stop, and so I always you know I'll just

throw in a Boston accent. I'll just do something to get them to

listen, and with the Sherry's berries thing that I did, I I

hadn't read the copy, and it was so like homophobic yet

homoerotic. The whole thing, it just was so ridiculous to me.

Like I couldn't believe it was true, so I legitimately started

laughing. And I remember they were calling us saying, "Take it

down, take it down, and I was just like, "Yeah, tell him you

didn't get to me. Like I'm I'm I'm not taking it down. That's

hilarious, and I don't give a because I got all this other

stuff. You know, once again, one of those moments. I'm

self-employed, so you know I don't need some

chocolate-covered strawberries people to pay my rent. I didn't

put myself in that position, which I very easily could have.

I didn't, so I said I'm not taking it down. But what they

learned, because they're a cool company, what ended up happening

was people ordered this stuff because I said I was going to

get in trouble, and then it turned out evidently they were

delicious, and they sold a bunch more. So what ended up happening

was was companies that were younger and kind of understood.

It's like oh this guy's he's making fun of us and he's

singing songs and he's cursing and all this type of stuff. But

people are listening and they're buying this stuff.

Now something to keep in mind that was back in

2013, and now they've got all sorts of robots that are, you

know, doing transcripts of your show to make sure your brand

safe. And I still think brand safe equals boring in many cases

because the English language is weird, and I won't get into that

now, but I know I've seen in the past where if somebody you know

in a they don't understand slang, so when somebody says

that's the bomb, they get confused. So something to think

about when it comes to again, if you are solely only earning

income from advertising, that might be something you want to

expand your portfolio, and that's what we're going to talk

about next.

The SOP Singers: All

right, so I mentioned that I feel that

podcasters will start to move away from the programmatic ads.

Now, programmatic ads are the Geicos and the Progressives.

They're not host read because the price of those, depending on

who you talk to, is somewhere between $1 and $7 per 1000

downloads. And I've always said the best, most profitable way to

make money with your podcast is to sell your own product and

service. And I've used this example: if you buy my book,

Profit from Your Podcast from me, I make $12. The rest goes to

my publisher, etc. etc. Whereas if I had a five-dollar CPM,

right, five-dollar programmatic ad, I would have to get 2400

downloads to make $12. So what's easier, getting 2400 downloads

or selling a book, a single book, to an audience that you

are trying to attract that would really like your book? But the

second way I can see people because they're like I don't

have a book I don't have a product I don't have a service,

and this is where you can get into what we called

crowdfunding, where you're basically using what I call the

PBS method. PBS is a channel here in the states that's public

broadcasting system, and they break about every 20 minutes to

beg you for money. Now the whole point of that is, hey, if you

like this James Taylor concert, you should buy a T-shirt or a

whatever. They're always pimping something. Get the James Taylor

hanky, whatever. And in theory, people buy this stuff. That then

enables them to keep going. So I looked at some of my favorite

premium, like if I wanted to do a premium podcast, and these are

Captivate, Buzzsprout, Supercast, and Patreon. And when

you look at these, it's fun with math, kids. That's right.

Captivate takes 12% of the revenue, but they also add, and

everybody adds this. Typically, the credit card processing,

which is typically 3% 2.9. If we want to get technical, plus 30

cents per transaction, which ends up being 14.9% plus 30

cents per transaction. This is in USD. Buzzsprout is 15% but

they basically are including all those fees. So where Captivate

was 14.9% plus 30 cents, Buzzsprout is 15% If you look at

Supercast, which is one of my favorites, it's 59 cents per

subscriber per month. But there's the again 2.9% plus 30

cents. That's the processing fee plus a point 7% for recurring

billing. So when you add that all together, it's 59 cents per

subscriber plus 3.6% plus 30% And Patreon typically their most

popular kind of version is the 10% This is on their standard

plan. When you add in all the stuff, it's 12% plus 30 cents,

and boy, is this exciting! Numbers, kids! Yay! Hooray! So I

also looked at PayPal, and it really depends because of

Supercast how much the the smaller amount you get, like if

I say $5 and you pay that 59 cents, that's 10% But if

somebody gives you 10% now they're the best choice. And so

keep that in mind. I asked, hey, if I got you know a a $5 fee

monthly, I would basically the fees for Captivate are $1.04,

Buzzsprout is 75 cents, Supercast is $1.07, and Patreon

is point nine four, so basically 95 cents. You can see we're

talking pennies here, except for Buzzsprout, which is a quarter

cheaper. So you end up keeping with Buzzsprout $4.25, where the

worst is Patreon at $4.06, and if you looked at $10 again, the

best would be Supercast now because it's a higher number. So

remember, they were 59 cents per person with Buzzsprout at 850,

Captivate or I'm sorry, Patreon at 841 and Captivate at $8.21.

So depending on, and the only time that really matters because

we're talking 875 versus $8.51 or 21 cents, excuse me, per

person. But when you then multiply that by 100, et cetera,

et cetera, so it might be something you think about, and I

know I have. You've heard me talk about podcasting

observations. That is my newsletter that I was just

playing with, and it's $4 a month. And I was surprised that

people signed up almost immediately when I did that. Now

I'm not retiring on that money, but that's the point I want to

talk about here.

Instead of relying only on ads, maybe have crowdfunding where

you can get an advertising-free version or bonus content. Or

here's a novel idea: just let people give you money because

they like you and they want you to keep doing this, and so my

newsletter right now is going through Substack, and I just

looked at it, and this is where I have come to crush your souls.

I have 2400 subscribers. Wow, that's impressive, and some of

those people do join the school of podcasting, so that counts as

a lead magnet, I guess you could say. It's a way for me to

communicate with people that say, "I want more information

from you. Now, of those 2407 people, eight of them are paying

the $4 a month. So when I look at that number, I usually say

you can expect 3% of your audience to pay for something

that you're offering. In my case, when I divide eight by

2407, that is point 3% Again, sometimes soul crushing when you

look at these, but the gross annualized revenue, according to

my dashboard here in Substack, is 70. It's up 73% from $227 to

$393. I guess that is the the yearly income of this. So I will

not blink at $400. I will take that and thank you to all the

people that go over to podcasting observations and sign

up. But that is what I call a hose in the pool, and we all

want the giant fire hose. I get that, but that is a little bit

of money in the pool. You could again have a premium podcast

where one of the most popular shows, and you can see this by

going over to GraphTreeOn.com and then going to Advanced

Filtering and say just show me podcast is called Chapo Trap

House, and here's the thing: they average right $4.21 per

month per person, but they have 46,000 people, and they make

$194,769 a month, and you're like, "Well, how do I get some

of that money? You start back in May of 2016, and this is where

people like, "No, I need to make that money now, or "I don't

know, maybe six weeks from now. Nope, they started back in May

of 2016. It is a political show, and what they do, from what I

understand, is again they have two episodes that are free and

two episodes that are not, and then they have those people who

are willing to pay $4 a month for that. Now that's $4 is

probably after the fee, so it's probably really $5 a month, but

that is something to think about in terms of, hey, I want to make

money. It's not a matter of what one way should I make money with

my podcast. Do them

The SOP Singers: all.

Another way you can make money with your

podcast, and again, these are ways for the person that's like,

look, I'd like to at least break even. So I see where I've made

$129 in 2026 from Amazon. That is off of 122 items that have

been ordered. So we're just going to kind of say, actually,

I see up here it's 134, roughly $1 an order because people are

buying microphones and such. But I set this up once, and it's

things I know my audience wants, and when they buy now,

occasionally you will get that person that buys a an $80

microphone and a $2,000 flat screen TV-that's a nice little

commission. Doesn't happen a ton, but it is an option. Just

be very careful. I use a thing called Genius Link because

Amazon's terms are insane. Like I'll just-I'm saying this as an

example-you will get booted from their program if you say, "Hey,

shop using my Amazon link. It helps support the show. Even if

you're like a celebrity, Jay Moore's a comedian. He was in

Jerry Maguire, and he used to have. He called it his son's

college fund, and would say when you you know shop for that it

helps support my college fund and they boot him. I don't know

why you're not allowed to say that, but that's why I use

Genius Link. I also can go in and see through that particular

tool what people are clicking on. And right now it's Tom

Webster's book. The audience is listening because I talk about

that along with the book story worthy, but again, this is not a

way to quit your day job. But it is a way that you can earn a

little bit of income. And as there are a lot of people in the

podcasting space that listen to this show, please remember Pod

Page has an affiliate program and it pays nicely.

The SOP Singers: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If

you just wanted to have a donate button, I kind

of like buy me a coffee a little better because it makes it easy

to make reoccurring payments. So if somebody goes over, they buy

you, you know, $5 worth of coffee. It's easy for them to

say, hey, make this a reoccurring donation. I think

they take a little more fees, but it's easier. Both PayPal and

Buy Me a Coffee and Supercast and Page, really anything, will

integrate with Pod Page. All right. As I peel back the

curtain here, I'm just letting you know what I'm saying right

now. This is the second time I'm recording this because I did not

make any bullet points for this, and I'm just proving myself

again. I need bullet points, but thanks to my money, my buddy,

my. Muddy, whatever is a muddy is, we're going to leave that

in. My buddy Neil Vallio, he did an episode about getting to the

point and the fact that many people, and this kind of comes

from radio, repeat the same point over and over. So I'm I'm

going to make my point, and in the mortal words of James Brown,

hit it and quit it. So we started talking about AI at the

beginning of this, and I have used Claude number one to teach

me Claude. I would go to Claude and go, okay, what else should I

be doing with you? And it gives me stuff to play with. But one

of the things I did, I do the podcasting in six weeks course.

That's free. Go to podcastinginsixweeks.com. We've

got a waiting list there. It'll be starting in November, and I

take my hour long class. I take the transcript. I throw it into

Claude. I say, "Hey, here are my branding colors. Make a kind of

summary sheet of all the main points, and make a list of all

the URLs that are mentioned, and it's absolutely gorgeous. And I

was like, "Wow, that saved me a lot of time. And so, I just want

you to think here. I want you to slow down and think about this.

Okay, so I spend $20 a month on Grok, and what it's doing is

it's saving me time in certain places? My buddy John Germengo

of boomerbunker.com, and he's got a new show Over 50 Overhaul

that I got to tune into. But John is having an absolute blast

playing with AI, and he was explaining how it does all these

things for it. And I should use this for maybe a question of the

month, but I just want you to think about this because we're

so quick to knee jerk reaction on this, and the the thing I

want you to think about. Okay, great. You're spending $20 on

AI. What would you do with the time that you saved? And the

knee jerk reaction is, "Well, then I would do things on social

media, and I would do a newsletter, and it's all about

your podcast. And I get that. What I want you to do is before

you go jumping into that, stop and look at your life. What do

you want to do with your life? And so right now, I have

discovered that it is much harder to lose weight when you

are older. What I did in my 30s just ain't working anymore. And

so, when we get if we get AI to save us some time, before you

plunk down the $20 on that, you might want to ask yourself. We

all know there's more things we can do with our show. I want you

to slowly and specifically and consciously ask yourself. Wait,

maybe I should be asking, what would I do with extra time in my

life, because if you, as in your life, is under major stress,

it's going to show up in your podcast, and I know this from

personal experience. So it's just one of those things. If

you're like, I need to get into AI, and we talk about AI quite a

bit at the School of Podcasting. Again, my point, and I'm going

to hit it and quit it.

If you had, and this is not the question of the month. I just

want you to think: if you had more time, what's the part of

your life? Maybe it's more time with your spouse, or your kids,

or your dog, or maybe you're going to get back to that other

hobby you had, or whatever it is. Think about that because

that's important to you. And the better you are, the better your

podcast can then rise to the occasion.

The SOP Singers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mentioned podcasting in six weeks. You can

see links to that in the show notes, or just go to

podcastinginsixweeks.com. And for the record, if you wonder,

is that the number six or is it s i x? I bought both. That's the

joy of having numbers in your domain. But this is something

we're having a sign up list because we're not sure if we're

going to keep doing that. If you're not familiar with what's

going on? We've been doing a lot of experimenting this year at

the School of Podcasting, and I just wanted to say that if you

are interested in that, it may not be happening in 2027, and

this would be the last one. And we're going to do it around the

holidays. So if you want to have a podcast ready to go in

January, check out podcastinginsixweeks.com.

The SOP Singers: Yeah, yeah.

Lastly, we started off talking about is

this the end of advertising and podcasting, and I don't think so

because a remember Adam was tying into the back end of

something that's pretty geeky, but in the future again I don't.

Think it's going to be the end of advertising? We still have

radio, we still have newspapers, and things like this take time

to really completely filter out. And I keep hearing how there's

billions of dollars in podcast advertising, and I just don't

see as much as they argue and fight about different ads and is

it ad safe and all this other things. I don't see that

particular group of people that see that much money on the table

going. Well, we're just gonna let them do that. I can see some

sort of way that they will fight back, and that's where I say I

think 2027 is going to be a very very interesting year in

podcasting. Now, if you're ready to start your podcast now,

forget this six week stuff. Go over to schoolofpodcasting.com.

Use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a

monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. And don't forget

that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Next week, we're

going to talk about editing. I actually appeared. I sent in a a

quick blurb, a voicemail to the Buzzcast over at Buzzsprout, and

I got a little wordy. And I know Kevin and Albin and Jordan, and

they kind of joked about that. And so I'm going to take that

clip and go. This is also about feedback because you know what?

They made a really good point. And so we're going to talk about

editing because I hear people that spend three hours editing a

podcast. Well, you're doing something wrong, and we're going

to use that clip to help understand great ways to edit.

So until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.

Seriously, no bloopers. Nope, not this week. See you next

week.

Yeah.