Niche creators do stand a chance. They just need the opportunity to reach their audience with a degree of intimacy and trust that the horrific scourge of mainstream online video and corporate 'journalism' do not and cannot offer. Certain media can enable this for their viewers and others less so. It's no cliche to say that medium is the message in this context.
Native advertising in podcasting is proof that not all online advertising has to consist of bludgeoning ignoramuses over the head with colorful nonsense within the infinite scroll of their Facebook feed. It can be about legitimate respect for a brand and a brand's legitimate respect for it's engaged, targeted niche demographic. But at the current rate of things, the web will require another massive spree of innovation to fix the tragedies caused by Facebook and Google over the past 10+ years to ever reach this point.
It doesn't even need to be particularly native advertising. I've listened to a bunch of ads on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History that are completely unrelated to the subject of the podcast.
Also, the comment I was responding to was using YouTube ads as an example, which are temporally inserted, very similar to podcast and radio ads.
When media consumption demands true engagement of both time and attention, the ad quality improves. Even the best niche digital video content on YouTube is too low-brow to offer a comparable experience to viewers. Again - the medium is the message.
It reminds me a lot of the spots that the local sports radio station uses