Spotify dynamically injects ads into podcasts. I was listening to an episode of the Conan O'Brien podcast from 2018 and got an advertisement to be safe from Covid by enjoying an ice cold Miller Lite at home.
It was extremely unsettling until I realized what they were doing.
They replace the ad breaks that would normally be in a podcast. (Like when the hosts say "we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this episode"). It's not an unskippable ad like you get when listening to music using the free tier. It's inserted directly into the audio stream.
Edit: I guess it's possible the Conan podcast is doing that somehow and not Spotify, but I've never had something like that happen when using the Apple podcast app.
Are you certain it was Spotify that did that? Unless you downloaded the episode in 2018, it could have easily been the Conan podcast. Podcast episodes aren't immutable, they're just a url. I've seen podcasts that update the ads in their back catalogue to whoever is paying them at the time the episode is downloaded.
I've also noticed some location specific ads, which isn't that surprising if you think about. There's nothing stopping them from serving you a different mp3 file depending on your IP geolocation.
When I listen through the apple podcast app I get ads that are clearly from 2018 though. Like for events that are long gone and over. Ads that don't match the year of the episode have only ever happened to me in spotify.
> Spotify Podcast Ads are powered by Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), which leverages streaming to deliver Spotify’s full digital suite of planning, reporting, and measurement capabilities. Spotify Podcast Ads offer the intimacy and quality of traditional podcast ads with the precision and transparency of modern-day digital marketing.
It was extremely unsettling until I realized what they were doing.
They replace the ad breaks that would normally be in a podcast. (Like when the hosts say "we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this episode"). It's not an unskippable ad like you get when listening to music using the free tier. It's inserted directly into the audio stream.
Edit: I guess it's possible the Conan podcast is doing that somehow and not Spotify, but I've never had something like that happen when using the Apple podcast app.