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The Ringer, Spotify's podcast network, ends its ChatGPT sponsorship after complaints from listeners
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Bill Simmons has admitted that the ChatGPT features did not go down well with The Ringer's listeners, and the Spotify network has quietly pulled them. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show and the program hosted by Simmons carried them most, and two hosts had already aired their unease on the shows. Bloomberg frames the case at a time when OpenAI and Anthropic are spending millions on podcast ads.
The Ringer, Bill Simmons' podcast network, which belongs to Spotify, has stopped running the segments sponsored by ChatGPT after its listeners turned against them. Bloomberg broke the news in a piece by Ashley Carman, picked up by Awful Announcing, which says the company wound down the sponsorship without any announcement.
Those features, built around questions put to ChatGPT, spread this year across several of the network's shows, and were heard above all on Simmons' own podcast and on The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. On The Rewatchables, his movie podcast, Simmons even used the service to recreate reviews in the style of Roger Ebert for films the late critic never got to see. Sean Fennessey, The Ringer's former head of content, said in an interview that he did not care for it and told Simmons so. According to the summary of the Bloomberg piece published by Mediagazer, Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, another host at the company, had voiced their discomfort on air.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Simmons explained that last spring they thought they could fold AI research into regular features on some shows, as some rivals and leagues such as the NFL were already doing, and that they quickly saw it was not working: "our audience just didn't like them."
Bloomberg adds, citing Podscribe data, that OpenAI and Anthropic have spent more than $13 million between them on podcast ads over the past three months; of that, about $11.2 million comes from OpenAI, according to the Mediagazer summary. None of the reports makes clear on what date The Ringer's sponsorship ended or on what terms.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
Money from AI companies is pouring into podcast advertising, but this case shows that not every format works. A standard ad read is tolerated; a segment of the show itself built with the advertiser's tool touches something more delicate, the voice of the hosts, and listeners may experience it as an intrusion into what they chose to hear. That the reversal comes from a large network with an owner like Spotify suggests that the audience's reaction weighs more than the income from a sponsorship. AI brands get a warning here: putting the product inside the content can backfire when there is wariness about the technology. And anyone producing content gains by measuring how an advertiser fits their audience before committing the tone of the show.
Source: Awful Announcing · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
