The ad revenue is still piddling. The reason Spotify has been paying so much for podcasts is that they think podcast exclusives can reduce music subscriber churn, which is their entire business model.

The idea with The Ringer was it would be "the next ESPN" (lol) and produce a ton of Spotify Original shows. The BS pod could stay free until he goes to the old folks home, but they thought they'd be producing tons of sports and culture shows that the free pod would drive their audience to. The blank ads on the show now are 100% production errors and should be targeted ads, but honestly I think they assumed they would be ads for other Spotify shows The Ringer would be producing.

That hasn't really happened because Bill is just mailing it in and probably doesn't know how to produce great new shows and attract talent without ESPN behind him. If you're the next great podcast producer right now, you don't want to be Spotify exclusive, you want to get big on your own and then sell to Spotify for your own big deal. So they end up just as a home for a bunch of sports radio guys who lost their jobs, and Bill has no connection to them and makes no case for why any of his listeners should listen to them. Because if Bill did try to make a show for younger people, he'd just end up having his teenage daughter talk about Netflix shows through the lens of ultra high net worth L.A. private school kids.

Some of the podcast numbers were leaked last year and the whole strategy has gone really poorly so far from that perspective. And you can see that from the lack of exciting homegrown Spotify podcasts. BUT if the deal has reduced Spotify churn by even 0.1% more than spending the same money on traditional marketing would have, it might not have even been so bad?