The monetization decision for podcasts is interesting. The one that I'm involved with has had huge success without ads, rising to #1 globally in its category. The perpetual question we chew on is about how much of that success is due to no ads? If it had less success, and that drove a need to monetize it, and we changed to an advertising model, would that create a death spiral because ads are a disincentive to listen? Or would that stabilize the finances? We can study others, but not really know until we try the experiment (which hopefully we'll not have to do).