
Show HN: I built a podcast app that skips over the ads - adskipprod
http://adskippro.com
======
danpalmer
I block ads on the web because web advertising networks proved that they had
no respect for user privacy, lacked security controls around their ad
delivery, and were targeting using data that they probably shouldn’t have had
access to.

Podcasts do not suffer from this. It’s much harder to identify a user, the ads
aren’t software, just audio, so security is better and there’s not much way to
see who is listening to the ads other than voucher codes/referral links (which
are inherently opt-in).

Yes I can always skip ads. Do I feel any security or privacy need to automate
doing this? No.

If/when podcast advertising goes the way of web advertising, then there will
be an eager market for this product, but until then let’s enjoy unobtrusive,
respectful ads from hosts we trust, with targeting done broadly by podcast
rather than personally identifiable information.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
Podcast ads suffer from the same issue as most other ads, which is that
they're primarily lies intended to manipulate your emotions and influence you
to act in ways that are against your self interest.

~~~
JasonFruit
You know, sometimes that's true, but sometimes they really do just communicate
what a product is and why you might want it. There are a couple podcasts I
listen to where the ads are almost uniformly worthwhile — for someone, if not
for me. Podcasts with obstreperous or manipulative ads tend not to be worth
listening to anyway; good podcasters value their audiences too much to insult
them.

~~~
TadeUX
I agree with Jason completely

------
rahuldottech
Cool idea? Yes. Good idea? No.

If we do stuff like this, the podcast industry will switch to a closed system
which would require you to install proprietary apps to listen to stuff. Likely
several different apps for different shows and companies.

As it exists today, it's a very open system, with publicly accessible feeds
and the ability to use any app. Don't ruin it. It's not hard to press the
"skip forward 30 seconds" button when an ad starts playing.

Edit: also, it's _super_ unethical to have a paid app that profits by taking
away any scope for content creators to monetize. Leaves a very bad taste in my
mouth.

Didn't realise it was a paid app at first. Shame on you, OP.

~~~
nickthegreek
So its ethical to manually skip the ads but not to automate the process?

~~~
pan69
Is it ethical not to look at a billboard when you're walking down the street?

Is it ethical to mute the TV when commercials come up?

I think it's just your choice, right?

~~~
alehul
This wasn't meant to be a question of ethics, but one of incentives— let's
view it from a standpoint of "will this ultimately be bad for society."

> Is it ethical not to look at a billboard when you're walking down the
> street?

This is fine, you're in a public space where somebody paid for an ad on nearby
private property, and society wouldn't be worse off if everybody ignored
billboards, advertisers were no longer willing to pay for billboards, and we
got rid of the lot of them.

> Is it ethical to mute the TV when commercials come up?

This is fine, you paid for the TV and you pay for cable, and there will be no
consequences to many people muting the TV during commercials.

If, however, you're given something for free that could be taken away, and it
is able to be offered for free due to the business model of ads, taking this
concept to its conclusion where everybody automatically skips over ads will
make the free and open podcast system no longer viable.

Advertisers will no longer be willing to pay for ad space on podcasts, and the
podcasters will have to move to charging per episode, or more likely, getting
tiny royalties from a company like Spotify.

~~~
ilikehurdles
> This is fine, you paid for the TV and you pay for cable, and there will be
> no consequences to many people muting the TV during commercials.

The nature of advertising has turned the entire TV device into an advertising
machine that phones home whether I mute and look away or watch "ad-supported"
content, or paid-for content, or my own content. I cannot buy a TV that does
not funnel my private life into someone's advertising budget thanks to Smart
TVs and the normalization of surveillance capitalism.

If a podcast can not survive off its syndication, its advertising, its
royalties, nor off its direct subscriptions, then the market has clearly
spoken: that podcast is not providing value to listeners, and if it weren't
subsidized as a channel by which advertising campaigns reach a desired market
segment, it wouldn't exist at all. Clearly if this scenario causes you to shed
tears, perhaps consider donating or subscribing, otherwise that podcast isn't
a valuable product, it was a line item on an advertising campaign meant to
reach you.

------
mumblemumble
A good percentage of the ad-supported podcasts I listen to also have an ad-
free feed for their Patreon subscribers. I'd say look there first if you're
looking to spend money to avoid ads.

We messed this up 20 years ago when online print media tried doing the same,
and the result has been an endless and wasteful arms race. Let's not mess this
up again.

~~~
criddell
The arms race is inevitable. Podcast companies haven't been receiving
investments because of that sweet SquareSpace money. They want to track
everything there is about how a podcast is listened to and by whom and then
monetize that every way they can.

~~~
mumblemumble
Right now, they're a long way from doing sophisiticated tracking. My podcast
app just downloads an mp3 file from a feed; it's not executing any JavaScript,
or otherwise doing anything they can use to do the kind of tracking that
happens on the Web.

That regime has been stable for decades, and I can't imagine it will change
unless something changes to make it stop working for podcasters. Because
moving their distribution channel from RSS to some sort of closed app risks
alienating their audience.

~~~
criddell
Some of the big podcast apps have recently been sold and it only makes sense
that they plan on adding telemetry.

The MP3 file might not change, but there's a chance that they are going to
start watching you play it.

A lot of investments have been made in the podcast world recently and VCs
usually don't make things better.

------
corodra
I'm going to have to agree with this is not a "good" idea. ~95% of podcasters
are just small team folks. They make a bit of money on the side with it or
just barely make enough to do it full time. I've always been willing to listen
to the ads done by creators on both youtube (Not the yt ads, the ones creators
do little skits or do a speech that benefits them directly) and podcasts. It
supports the content and most of the money goes to create more stuff I
actually like to watch/listen to.

------
ajayyy
Cool project, interesting decision to monetize something like this though.

I made SponsorBlock ([https://sponsor.ajay.app/](https://sponsor.ajay.app/)),
which is a similar premise for YouTube videos except free, open source, and
with a publicly downloadable database. I posted about it on HN back in August.

I'd be curious if you'd be willing to do what I've done here and make it more
open. When you are dealing with things like this (ad blocking), it gives you
more of a responsibility to share.

Anyway, how do you do this? Is it a reporting system? Or is there some kind of
algorithm you made?

~~~
adskipprod
It's not a reporting system. I believe that idea has been tried and did not
work. This uses all-new technology to find the ads and skip over.

~~~
slenk
By just looking for the music that plays at the beginning of some ads?

~~~
ajayyy
That's probably it. Their vague terms make me suspicious.

------
goldcd
I came here to judge - but if there's no way of paying for the adverts to go
away (stitcher? maybe spotify (I pay, but don't use it for podcasts)) I have
sympathy.

Skeptoid did offer a nice/hacky/old-school solution likely to work with your
favourite player - subscribe manually with ~
[http://<username>:<password>@<site.com/ad_free_url/>podcasts...](http://<username>:<password>@<site.com/ad_free_url/>podcasts.xml)

Providing your player lets you put in a URL - it "works" and doesn't require
you switching your client.

I do wish there was a slightly more formalized process letting you provide
credentials to your app and it sorting this all out for you - but then I'm
reluctant to engage in a movement that might f'up the XML+MP3 standards
approach that's allowed podcasts to flourish.

~~~
mmahemoff
This is quite common - many podcast apps, if not the very biggest ones,
support feed importing and those feeds can include a username and password.
It's really not that complicated, it just looks like a long URL and in most
cases you can click on it in an email or website on your phone, and add it
directly to the podcast app from there.

The hard part at the moment is the friction from your podcast app to paying to
"unlock" that feed to importing it back to your podcast app. Some of us are
working on a standard called PodPass
([https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/08/podpass-wants-to-build-
the...](https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/08/podpass-wants-to-build-the-identity-
layer-for-podcasting-before-some-big-tech-company-does-it-first/)) to make it
seamless, but without the walled gardens.

~~~
goldcd
Yep - that's the vague amorphous idea I had rattling around my head, just
described by somebody who knows what they're doing.

As stated - it's getting the initial adoption going that's problematic.
Probably pointing out the obvious, but NPR bought my favourite client Pocket
Casts. At naive glance, looks like a good fit. NPR already has an excellent
group of people who've donated (so whole bunch of people paying already) and
with this would give them a way of rewarding them with the adverts removed.
Plus think both sides of this would be advocates for still allowing the output
to be available widely, and not walled up somewhere.

------
AndrewWarner
As a podcaster (Mixergy.com), I love this.

My listeners should never feel guilty about skipping ads.

If my ads aren't interesting or don't improve your life, you owe it to
yourself to skip.

I keep working to improve my ads. Most recently: I hired a copywriter (Neville
Medhora) to go over my ad reads. And today I recorded interviews with
10-second ads, instead of 3-minute ones.

~~~
tantalor
If your listeners use this app they won't know whether the ads are
interesting.

------
danShumway
Pure curiosity, is this based off of Adblock Radio?

[https://github.com/adblockradio/adblockradio](https://github.com/adblockradio/adblockradio)

I've been curious for a while how hard it would be to proxy my podcast feeds
through a local server that stripped ads. As far as I can tell, this stuff has
to be done dynamically per-file -- sharing timestamps don't work because ads
are dynamically injected during each download.

~~~
adskipprod
It's not using Adblock Radio, though that is an interesting idea. All new
technology.

~~~
dest
Creator of Adblock Radio here. If some day you are able to share your approach
to filter ads, especially native ones, I would greatly appreciate it.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Their homepage shows you the few podcasts they support which suggests some
sort of manual pattern recognition per channel. It's clearly not a general
solution like adblockradio.

~~~
psalminen
Yeah, looking at the list I know 99pi and Reply-all play special music at the
beginning of their ads.

------
saagarjha
I find it interesting that their terms of use attempts to place restrictions
on _linking to their homepage_ :
[https://adskippro.com/terms.html](https://adskippro.com/terms.html)

I also find it interesting that this is in the terms, when their app is $1.99:

> To the extent that the app and the information and services on the app are
> provided free of charge, we will not be liable for any loss or damage of any
> nature.

~~~
conroy
My guess is that they're using a boilerplate ToS, as the app looks relatively
new.

~~~
roywiggins
It's a bit mad to put up a ToS that your users are nominally expected to
follow when you clearly _haven 't read it yourself_...

------
bberenberg
I was thinking about making exactly this today while listening to 99PI.
Decided that I would rather support the makers. I wish that the various apps
allowed subscriptions to avoid ads in a given podcast. 99PI is doing a
fundraising drive right now. As part of it, they share that 1/10,000 listeners
donates. I would be happy to pay 99PI $1 a month for their podcasts if I could
skip ads.

~~~
tw1010
If the advertisers can't tell if you're using this app or a traditional
podcast app, are you really supporting the makers any less by using this app?
The advertisers won't pay them any less because they won't be able to know
that x% of users didn't hear the ad.

~~~
jldugger
Who says they can't? The user agent used to download the podcast is a pretty
strong signal, and it seems reasonable for podcasters to expose this data if
it means higher bids on ads.

~~~
epicide
The user agent string has _mostly_ been used to lie about the source of a
request: [https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-
history/](https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/)

------
cryptozeus
So get the free content without giving the content provider money or any
opportunity to monetize via ads ? And expect that they will give quality
content forever ?

~~~
0xffff2
I would rather be able to get paid content without giving the content provider
money or any opportunity to monetize via ads, but that doesn't seem to be an
option.

~~~
cryptozeus
I think this works in idea but not sustainable for provider. May be if there
is a way to get both...choose free or pay for add free.

Some of the major podcasters tried going paid route and reversed back to ad
based model. i.e. tim ferriss

------
smcleod
It has just about the ridiculous ToS I've ever seen, including stating that
you can't post links to it!
[https://adskippro.com/terms.html](https://adskippro.com/terms.html)

~~~
paulcole
I thought it was funny that an unethical app even has a ToS in the first
place. Like the guy robbing my house telling me I can’t pick his pocket.

------
ortusdux
I'm still shocked that Google has not made a podcast platform wherein they
manage the ads and subscriptions. Host the audio, inject ads at the breaks,
allow paid subscriptions that remove the ads, have a monthly payment option,
etc. Basically half YouTube half Audible.

I do listen to one podcast that has an ad-free feed for patreon supporters. It
works rather well and they have add a surprising amount of bonus content for
subscribers.

~~~
0xffff2
How is the ad-free feed hosted? I'd love for this to be a widespread thing,
but I listen to podcasts almost entirely during long drives, so I worry that
paid content will fragment distribution.

~~~
ortusdux
[https://www.patreon.com/law](https://www.patreon.com/law)

You get a unique RSS feed for the commercial free episodes and bonus content.

------
vsskanth
Personally, I'm OK with ads in podcasts. They are based on the general
audience for the show and doesn't have any intrusive tracking or
personalization.

If I'm really tired of the ad I can just skip ahead 30 seconds.

------
newscracker
You want me to pay $1.99 for an app I can’t try, which doesn’t have any other
features that other podcast player apps have, and also prohibit linking to
your product anywhere in your ToS? It’s a very shady beginning, to say the
least.

------
fenwick67
Can't wait for old-timey radio product placement in my podcasts.

"The party enters the wizard's keep. It smells fresh and clean, like it was
recently cleaned with Febreeze, which the wizard uses for all his odor-
destroying needs."

------
president
You're getting a lot of hate for it but congrats on the release. Can you
comment on how you are identifying ad content?

~~~
freeplay
Doubtful. I'm interested in that as well.

If I were making it, I would listen for keywords (ex: Cash App, Onit,
MyBookie.com, Manscaping, Dollar Shave Club) that could be updated like an
AdBlock filter list. Combine that with obvious changes in inflection, notable
differences in the waveform, etc.

I would also assume my implementation would cut the podcast down to about 4
minutes with all the false positives.

------
tus88
I think people are making too big a deal out of this.

Popular podcasters do make money through Patreon for example, not everything
comes down to advertising.

And for frank, honest commentary, I think I would rather not have advertiser
influence over podcasts, just like the news.

And many people do podcasts just out of passion or a hobby...they are more
like blogs than anything else.

------
Nextgrid
To the people saying this is morally wrong, let me give you a different
perspective: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and they are ad-supported
(although I do support them on Patreon whenever possible). The ads are for the
likes of SquareSpace, Skillshare, etc (there's also lots of shit like VPN
providers but let's focus on the good ones first).

I'm already aware of these brands, I even recommend one of them to clients. At
this point, the ads aren't telling me anything new, don't make me aware of a
new product, they are just annoying and waste my time.

Is it still wrong to block these ads?

~~~
rahuldottech
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, it's okay to manually skip ads, because
some percentage of the users will still listen to the ad, especially if it's
the first time they're hearing it.

If you implement automatic ad blockers, that guarantees that no one is
listening to the ad. Which would mean no revenue for the content creators.
Which would lead to a really crappy system.

------
nkrisc
The best way to skip ads in podcasts is to not listen to the podcasts if you
don't like the ads. Or, you know, pay the creators.

~~~
adskipprod
OK, but do you read every ad on every web page you visit?

~~~
nkrisc
Consciously? No. Subconsciously I probably scan them as I look around the page
which can trigger further investigation.

Did you pay full attention to every ad you listened to in a podcast? I don't
even know what your point is.

Full disclosure, I use ad blockers online (but whitelist sites and subscribe
to others). The reason I do so is first and foremost for security reasons. Ad
networks deliver malware, despite their best efforts. They also deliver
battery-draining ads and bloat. I'm not inherently opposed to advertising,
however. Last I checked, listening to ads in podcasts is not going to give
your phone malware or spin up your CPU 100% so I don't really see the point of
blocking them. As far as advertising goes, podcast ads are pretty benign.
Sure, you can do it and I'm not even going to call you a bad person, but it
just seems like the wrong battle to be fighting.

Either it never takes off and the whole thing is moot, or it really takes off
and forces podcast creators to monetize in ways that are less benign. No real
gain.

------
sneak
Ads are terrible regardless of whether they are “nice, inoffensive privacy
protecting ads” or “unethical spyware web ad network ads”.

This is a great tool and saves people their only truly nonrenewable resource:
time.

Thank you for making it; if I listened to any of these podcasts I would be
using it.

Always block everyone’s ads.

~~~
adskipprod
Thank you. Which podcasts do you listen to?

~~~
sneak
The Bunker New York

[http://thebunkerny.com/podcasts](http://thebunkerny.com/podcasts)

Mysteries of The Deep

[https://m.soundcloud.com/mysteriesofthedeep/sets/mysteries](https://m.soundcloud.com/mysteriesofthedeep/sets/mysteries)

The latter is even in alac-m4a lossless, something that surprised and
delighted me.

One is run by a friend and the other is run by a friend of friends. They’re
both truly excellent.

Neither have ads.

------
spike021
Seems odd...

Most podcasts are pretty grassroots without financial backing, I think.

I don't really mind the ads, and most podcasts apps seem to have skip buttons
anyway. I mostly use the iOS podcast app, but it has a 30 second skip button.
That usually gets me right past the ads.

------
aloukissas
Amazing! Was meaning to build something like this for a while, glad you beat
me to it! Re: monetization/ethics/etc -- would 100% support podcasts that
follow the Brave model with opt-in for ads or pay if you want ad-free
experience.

~~~
adskipprod
I agree - thank you!

~~~
aloukissas
Just realized this is iOS-only. Any chance you've built this on react-native
(which will make it trivial to port to Android)?

~~~
adskipprod
Not react-native, and the port to Android will not be trivial.

------
abhisuri97
So how does it really do the skipping feature? Do you transcribe the podcast
and look for standard advertising copy for companies like Squarespace, hello
fresh, etc? Would it register a false positive if one of those company names
is said?

~~~
rahuldottech
Most podcasts, have a particular jingle/tune that plays before/during the ad,
which should not be difficult to identify with some clever code.

But honestly manual flagging wouldn't be too hard either.

------
moltar
I was thinking something like this should exist, but podcasts should be paid
for skipped ads. I don’t mind paying a small fee for ad free podcasts.

I also want some system that fast forwards all the intro stuff straight to the
meat and potatoes.

~~~
aliveupstairs
I think you can do that with Pocketcast (free on android, paid on the web) and
set a unique time for each podcast.

------
adskipprod
Founder here:

I think that many people already skip the ads using the 30 second skip forward
button. I know I did before building this app.

I'm also thinking about safety -- people driving their car and reaching for
their phone to skip the ads.

~~~
iamdbtoo
The biggest issue here for me is that you're charging for this app. You're
basically asking me to pay you for your hard work of removing ads from someone
else's hard work of creating content.

~~~
adskipprod
If it was free, you would be fine with it?

~~~
iamdbtoo
Pretty much, yeah. While obviously not nearly as severe, I view this basically
as war profiteering. Consumers are waged in battle against a broken industry
and you're offering some help, but only for a cost.

------
mersenne
Would you mind sharing what approach did you use to trim the ads? Did you
manually detect the ads and then trimmed the file or are you using an
automatic (perhaps ML-based) approach?

~~~
adskipprod
The only thing I can share is that it does not modify or trim the podcast.

It downloads the podcast, finds the ads, plays it, and skips over the ads. The
ads are still in there. After it skips the ads, you could manually skip
backwards and hear that they are still there.

------
waxjar
This submission is _advertising_ a paid app to... skip ads.

Question for OP: how would you feel about a browser extension that
automatically recognises submissions of this nature and hides them?

~~~
adskipprod
HN Rules: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play
with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the
thread."

I thought the whole purpose of Show HN is to show what you've created. Should
there be restrictions on the types of things being created?

In your example, I think the browser extension would hide every submission on
Show HN.

------
dickjocke
Very cool idea, I'm curious about how this was built and works.

I'm also curious if you think you'll face any challenges or if Apple will
allow this to live on the play store?

~~~
adskipprod
I can't tell how it works, because I don't want to create competitors.

I don't see why Apple would have a problem with it. Their own "Podcasts" app
lets you skip ads. This app finds the ads and skips automatically.

~~~
dickjocke
Lmao, because you are draining their platform's content creators of value?

------
butz
Podcasters should probably provide ad-less versions of podcasts for
subscribing users, e.g. using Coil or similar extension for monetization.

------
bilekas
Edit your title : "I built and app that skips over other peoples add and puts
mine in"

~~~
adskipprod
Perhaps you misunderstood what the app does?

~~~
bilekas
I'm really happy you respond to the harsh criticism given, but do you think
its cool to say : "Hey, no adds in this paid app........ But the money doesn't
go to the guy who made the content"

I get why you might have done it, hey a nice adblock feature. But you are
asking for money for it.. Did I miss something ?

------
CharlesW
So how do creators block this app, since those users are literally worthless
to them?

------
bwb
I think this is wrong morally.

------
downerending
I intrigued at how uniformly negative the reaction is to this. Do people here
not use things like AdBlock? Do you also avoid fast-forwarding over ads in
videos for the same reason?

~~~
ajayyy
I think it is that they are charging money.

~~~
downerending
Seems like a weird place to draw the ethical line.

~~~
ajayyy
Almost every adblocker out there is free and open source for a reason.

------
rosybox
Some people just want to watch the world burn.

------
quadrangle
The big picture is that podcasts are economically public goods (non-rivalrous,
non-exclusive), or at least would be completely if not for copyright
restrictions legally.

Ads _detract_ from the value. In other words, as a resource, ad-laden podcasts
are _worse_ than ad-free podcasts.

If you ask people to pay to access the ad-free versions, that's a "club good"
(non-rivalrous but now exclusive). That also dramatically reduces the value to
the world. (Also, the existence of ad-laden ones is a detraction itself, even
affecting the ad-free versions because ads create conflicts-of-interest).

So, all the economics here is about about the public goods dilemma. How the
heck can fund the work without all these detractions? Taxes? I'm not saying
the answer is easy, I'm saying we should get the __question __right.

The one view I reject: that somehow ads in podcasts are a _good_ thing.
Rather, ads are an unfortunate compromise given the challenges of funding
public goods. There's little room for debate there.

What is called for is specifically funding models that somehow coordinate
critical mass of people _without_ the use of paywalls or detractions like ads.

------
czr
typo: under supported podcasts, heavyweight is listed twice.

------
frankydp
This is simple fraud.

------
throwGuardian
This is why we can't have nice things. Podcasts rely on advertising for
revenue, and given the static nature of pre-recorded ads, they are the least
intrusive in this era of AI driven hyper real-time ad-targeting. Reminiscent
of print ads on newspapers.

So respect the effort of the creator and stop automating ad skipping. Heck, I
even implore you to listen to the ads that make your favorite shows available
for free, but you always have the skip-ahead button in your player

~~~
criddell
NPR inserts targeted ads when you download an episode.

~~~
slenk
Isn't it only geo-based though? Of the IP you are downloading from? Fine. Do
that. That is still very unobtrusive

~~~
criddell
It isn't clear exactly what they are doing nor have they said what their plans
are.

I think NPR bought Pocket Casts and I doubt they spent all that money with no
plans for a return on that investment.

~~~
slenk
I fear more and more podcasts are going to start locking you into a podcast
app.

It's turning into the video streaming scene

~~~
criddell
I think that's exactly what some of these companies think they are building -
Netflix for podcasts. Unfortunately for them, there isn't a lot of value in
podcasts for most people and I can't see that changing.

~~~
slenk
Exactly. My limit is $5/month and a lot of smaller podcasters seem to agree
that it is an adequate amount for bonus content/no ads.

Hell, I know a few that for $1 or $2 they get the full ad-free podcast

------
sevkih
da wut??? apple actually allowed this?

~~~
sigjuice
Why wouldn’t they allow it? What rules are being broken by this app?

------
ykevinator
Cannot believe this was flagged

~~~
adskipprod
Why should a lively and interesting discussion be flagged? I'm interested in
hearing all opinions, not trying to shut down someone I disagree with.

------
kaffeemitsahne
And now suddenly (looking at a lot of the comments here) ad-blocking is about
privacy? I simply don't want to see/hear crap, period.

~~~
PascLeRasc
"I want people to spend the equivalent of a full-time job researching content,
writing shows, organizing guest appearances, producing high-quality audio, and
marketing/distributing it to me. I'm prepared to pay exactly $0 for this, and
I can't not be entertained for a 30-second sponsor spot."

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
The absence of content while the ad plays is obviously not the issue. It's the
presence of other, malicious content.

~~~
PascLeRasc
What's the current state of the art on embedding malware in audio files?

------
post_break
I think it's funny the outrage over ad skipping podcasts, but keeping browser
ad-blockers installed is ok. I mean there is only so many times I can hear the
same casper, generic vpn, eero, ad and not want to pull my hair out.
Especially when the podcast boasts about how they use the product and how it's
not like anything they've ever tried before.

~~~
rahuldottech
> but keeping browser ad-blockers installed is ok.

That's because web ads track you, can inject malicious code, and are
obtrusive.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, a lot fewer people would be using ad
blockers in browsers if web ads were as simple as podcast ads (the equivalent
would be unobtrusive static images with links).

~~~
post_break
If you bought a DVR and recorded a TV show would you want the one with the
commercial break skipper feature?

~~~
adskipprod
I sure would :)

------
adskipprod
OP here:

If you are already skipping the ads with the skip-forward button in your
favorite app, you will love AdSkipPro. I use it every day driving back and
forth to work, and I think it's great.

If you don't skip the ads, and you enjoy listening to them, you will of course
continue to do so using your favorite podcast app. AdSkipPro will not be for
you.

I don't think there will be any net difference to advertisers and the
podcasting community. Those that skip will continue to skip, and those that
don't won't.

