Your are correct if you are using over the air TV or Kodi and if you use FOSS podcast players such as Antennapod or Podverse.
Everything is moving this way. It's only a natural desire for those spending money on advertsing to want to know if the money is being spent effectively, or if they'd be just as well off lighting cigars with $100 bills.
The lure of targeting, tracking (ad effectiveness, not people per se), etc is just too inticing for those non-techies that haven't pulled back the curtain to see that the all powerful wizard isn't wearing any clothes (to mix metaphors). Those of a certain age that depended on Nielsen ratings and what not buying TV/Radio ad time were always very interested in knowing how effective the ad buy really was. Then, the digital ads folks come along telling them they can hit exactly the demo they want to target and then show click through rates, etc. It's like a dream come true with a cherry on top under a rainbow with the leprechaun delivering a pot of gold riding on the unicorn's back. They all bit hard hook,line,and sinker.
Spotify exclusives are non pre podcasts than pages that were hosted on AOL.
My smart tv isn’t connected to the internet after registering it. I have an AppleTV connected.
I think podcast has outgrown that definition some time ago.
But Apple doesn’t make money by advertising based on the podcast you listen to. I doubt they make any real money on their new podcast subscription service. Apple doesn’t even hosts podcasts. They just index RSS feeds. The podcast directory API has been freely available for over a decade and is used by third party podcast players.
Unlike Spotify, you can subscribe to a podcast feed that isn’t in the directory.
Seriously though, what newspaper(s) would you honestly be willing to spend ad dollars with (and for what products) thinking that this would be a good investment? Geritol? Now, if your suggestion is buying newspaper ads would then get ads in their digital versions as well, then maybe. However, seems to me that most viewers of news sites are from link aggregators more than just readers of a website. Not sure how that would affect ad placement.