> And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me

While I understand that there is value in physically locating you as you play it, but the fact that the spoken ad got onto your podcast means that you are in some way located, right? I've gotten area (ie. ISP that don't exist anywhere else) specific messages in my podcasts.

I guess they don't get as much usage data as lot of other apps, unless the playback app shares it.