Noticed a new technique in podcasts. I suppose it has been going on for a while, but it just recently appeared in the websites I use.
When you open an audio clip for playing or downloading, the website mixes a LOCAL ad into the clip just before playing. I was surprised to hear an ad for Les Schwab, a Spokane tire dealer, in the middle of a Federalist clip that I downloaded.
Formerly national ads were pre-mixed into all instances of the clip, not mixed at runtime.
This is a modern version of a VERY old trick. Newspapers formerly collated a page or two of neighborhood ads into the papers destined for a particular suburb.**
On radio and TV, network broadcasts or syndicated discs had a space for local stations to insert their ads, which isn’t quite the same thing. The local station wasn’t able to mix specific ads for specific neighborhoods on an individual basis at the time of broadcast.
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** Synchronicity: I’m animating another old printing press now, the Kellogg Country Jobber. It’s an interesting halfway point between the crude all-manual Army Press and the more sophisticated automatics. Reading more about the inventor Ansel Kellogg, turns out he was primarily known for running a company that churned out these inserts for small-town papers everywhere.
Polistra's Mill 