Over advertenties in AntennaPod

The official versions of AntennaPod do not insert any ads. The app is developed by volunteers without commercial interest and the project relies on donations to cover costs. As AntennaPod’s source code and income and expenses are public everyone is free to verify this.

If you are seeing ads, this can have two reasons:

1. You downloaded an unofficial version of AntennaPod

Je hebt een niet-officiële versie van AntennaPod gedownload. AntennaPod is open source. Dat houdt in dat iedereen de broncode kan downloaden. Helaas gebruiken sommige ontwikkelaars AntennaPod om snel een podcast-app te maken met advertenties en die vervolgens te publiceren als nieuwe app. De officiële AntennaPod app staat op Google Play of F-Droid. Het is ook mogelijk de laatste versie van GitHub te downloaden en AntennaPod zelf te bouwen!

2. The podcast publishers added the ads to their shownotes or audio file

De podcast-uitgevers hebben advertenties toegevoegd aan hun shownotes of audiobestand. AntennaPod speelt podcasts af zoals ze door de makers zijn gepubliceerd. Als ze advertenties bevatten, speelt AntennaPod die af. Wij hebben niets met die advertenties te maken, dus de opbrengst gaat volledig naar de uitgevers van je podcast.

Now, you might ask something like “But then why is the podcast in English and the ad in German?” or “But why is the podcast episode from 2008 but still promotes a product released in 2023?”. The reason is a technique called dynamic ad insertion. Podcast publishers can instruct the hosting company to insert those ads. Then, while downloading or streaming the episode with AntennaPod, the media file delivered to AntennaPod gets cut on-the-fly to include the ads. The ads are recent (while the episode might not be) and can be targeted based on the IP address from which you request the media file (e.g. a company in your country). Depending on how smart the hosting company does this, the ads might get inserted right in the middle of a sentence. Some of the hosting companies also mess up the chapter marks while inserting the ads (so the chapters are off by the duration of the ad).

You can always use the fast forward button in AntennaPod to skip the ads. If you are streaming an episode instead of downloading, the hosting company has an idea of how far you are in the podcast. It might be possible that the company detects the fact that you skipped the ad and insert a new one. If you instead download the episode, they cannot do that and you can skip the ads more reliably. (Downloading is also better for your privacy because then the hosting company does not know when you listen to which section of the episode. AntennaPod can be configured to automatically download and later delete episodes, so you don’t have to do that manually.)

Additionally, many podcast hosts provide an ad-free feed that you can buy. Usually, you then either get a secret podcast feed URL, or alternatively username and password that you can enter in AntennaPod.

If you find these ads annoying, consider talking to the podcast publishers about this.