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by sethhochberg 2723 days ago
A lot of audio ad broadcast software uses a combination of audible or inaudible tones to act as "triggers" to mark a location where an ad can be injected using some kind of location/time/etc aware data, the ad itself is very rarely baked into the stream unless it is something you're listening to a host read themselves.

In podcasts, the ad injection software will often pause the audio at the point where the ad tone occurred while it plays the ad, and resume it afterwards for continuity.

AdSwizz's AIS suite is one example of the tools commonly used for this: https://www.adswizz.com/ad-insertion-suite/

(I work in the internet radio space, lots of old-school internet radio streams are similar).
2 comments
dexterdog 2722 days ago
How does this work with a typical podcast player? The media download is typically just an mp3. The podcast software maker would have to be in on the scam otherwise it's an mp3 that plays from beginning to end.
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Fogest 2722 days ago
When your player requests the mp3 file in this example the server on the fly can generate an mp3 file that your player then downloads. This means that they can serve different ads in old podcast episodes or even remove them in old episodes.

I heard about this tech on a podcast actually.

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sethhochberg 2722 days ago
If you're just downloading an MP3, there isn't any kind of ad injection going on.

Ad injection would apply if you were using your favorite podcast network's app, webplayer, etc.

Ads in a plain MP3 are "baked in"

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TranceMan 2722 days ago
Similar to Cue Mark [0]

I remember my dad pointing this out many years ago on ITV in the UK.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark

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