Looks like we've got some interesting thoughts from Marco. Seems like he regrets keeping Instapaper a paid app and not making it free to go after marketshare and take on Pocket. He seems to conclude he "lost" against Pocket, and now doesn't want to make the same mistake with Overcast. I personally don't think the patronage model will go very far. I think he's doing more to make the full app free and gain marketshare,…
But let's assume we're not in a bubble, so raising funds isn't an end in and of itself. Where does the money come from to give investors a return when the entire app is free?
Right now, every podcast listener hears the exact same ad regardless of where or when they are listening. It seems obvious that at some point soon, podcasts will include a custom code for "insert ad here" and an ad exchange will bid on that 30 second spot and put a targeted ad there. Currently, the MP3 + RSS format of podcasts doesn't support this degree of sophistication which is what Marco is alluding to with it's walled gardens comment. There's a goldmine for whoever can figure out how to move podcasts into a vertically integrated format and define the platform.