Advertisements Are Unnacceptable

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  thw0rted · Member · September 25, 2025 at 12:12 pm

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  All of you who bought the app back in 201X, be aware that the app has changed owners twice since then and the subscription model is evolving. A Big Mac costs eight dollars now. If you get angry every time a $4 purchase a decade ago doesn’t get you unlimited support for the next half-century, you’re going to spend a lot of time angry. Enshittification is real, but also live web services cost money to operate. At some point you’re going to have to meet the devs in the middle.

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  mlotz1 · Member · September 25, 2025 at 12:28 pm

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  I get that you aren’t speaking to me directly, but I’ll just say that, for my part, I completely agree about rising costs and meeting in the middle, but this wasn’t it.

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  staff-dexter · Staff · September 25, 2025 at 12:32 pm

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  Just an update here.

  We have removed the banner ads, and they will not be displayed to app purchasers in the future. Thank you for your continued support of Pocket Casts.
   
  If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to us.

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  jzmelton · Member · November 18, 2025 at 1:11 am

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  I’m paying for nothing. The number of ads inserted into shows is ridiculous.
  
  The fact the shows with the most ads are available for free with no ads on other platforms is more that sufficient evidence that the problem is with Pocket Casts, not content creators.
  

  I’m going to get a refund. I’ve paid for nothing via a bait and switch fraud scheme.

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  mikerockwell · Staff · November 18, 2025 at 4:51 pm

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  I’m paying for nothing. The number of ads inserted into shows is ridiculous.

  Pocket Casts does not insert ads into episodes at all. If you’re hearing ads in episodes, that is something fully controlled by the podcast creator and their host and/or ad partners. You can find more information about this here:

  https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/ads-in-episodes/

  The fact the shows with the most ads are available for free with no ads on other platforms is more that sufficient evidence that the problem is with Pocket Casts, not content creators.

  Could you give us some examples of podcasts where this is the case? It may be that the podcast is using the incorrect feed on our platform, they may have some sort of ad-free deal with the other podcast application, or something else. But we’d need to do some investigation to know for sure.