Podcasts have been distributed via RSS forever, and it did not stop publishers from growing followers, advertise or charge for content. I call BS that RSS doesn’t work for publishers, it was killed by social media because “the feed” turned into the main way to consume content on the web.
Podcasts are different, no JavaScript based ads or tracking, no links to keep you engaged on the site. RSS does bring value to podcasts and has been successful for podcast especially since the downsides mentioned for normal websites don’t apply to podcasts.
Podcasts basically proof the point: there’s nothing wrong with rss, and publishers will use it, if it is in their interest.
Podcasts are a very special case. They are self-contained content and have not much demand for anything around them. Any ad can be delivered inside the podcast or between streaming them. Videos are similar. Just look at Spotify, YouTube, Twitch, how many ads do they have outside the audio & video-streams?
And podcasts are even more special, because their main purpose is to be consumed without any interface, often even without any internet-connection. So the whole setup is already against classical advertisement.
I think the point is, we’ve been sold by Google and FB the idea internet advertising is “ads”, cookies and JavaScript, but it absolutely doesn’t depend on that. Publishers advertising products directly as part of content has never been a problem, it doesn’t depend on invasive technologies.
