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• After criticism from the UK podcast industry, the BBC has said it won’t press ahead with ads in podcasts in the UK, saying that it has “decided to rule out placing adverts around BBC licence-fee funded programmes on third-party podcast platforms in the UK.” The announcement is expected to be confirmed in the BBC Annual Plan next week. Independent podcasters had called the idea “disastrous”.
  • The BBC will still take some advertising in UK podcasts though; Podnews reported last week on a new BBC podcast which will contain ads inside the UK, but is not produced by the public service. The BBC is funded by advertising outside the UK.
• Exclusive: Frequency Ads has launched a new Premium Publisher Network for host-read ads. Partnering with DAX US, the service aims to make host-read ads as easy to buy as programmatic ads.
• Popular podcast app Pocket Casts is rolling out “smart folders” next week, which automatically groups shows together. You’ll see them in beta versions of the app now.
  • “Popular podcast app”? Find out quite how popular Pocket Casts is - next week, in the Podnews Report Card; Apr 2 9.00am on the Keynote Stage at Evolutions.

> > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.

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