Editing Pocket Casts (section)

===Showing advertisements to Champion/Lifetime users (''September 2025'')===
In September 2025, the parent company Automattic changed the app to display advertisements to users who had purchased a lifetime license for the Pocket Casts app<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theverge.com/news/784429/pocket-casts-ads-lifetime-memberships-complaints|title=Pocket Casts is showing ads to people who paid for an ad-free app|first=Jess|last=Weatherbed|date=2025-09-24|work=TheVerge|access-date=2025-09-26}}</ref>. Support staff responded to complaints justifying the change as necessary to provide ongoing support and development of the app<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/the-new-advertisements-seriously-suck/#post-10923|title=The new advertisements seriously suck.|work=Pocket Casts Forum|date=2025-09-08|access-date=2025-09-26|author=jofzar}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/ads-despite-being-a-paid-customer/#post-11055|title=Ads despite being a paid customer|author=gmcmillan3|work=Pocket Casts Forum|date=2025-09-23|access-date=2025-09-26}}</ref>. Later, the CEO posted on Hacker News claiming that showing ads to users that had purchased a lifetime subscription was a bug<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45354405|title=Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it.|author=photomatt|date=2025-09-23|work=YCombinator Hacker News|access-date=2025-09-26}}</ref>.