It would be great to have the ability to set Plex to automatically skip adds or sponsored contents inside podcasts. Similarly to the skip intro for TV shows, but rather as a general setting.
As for how it could be implemented I’m not sure. But it could possibly be done by downloading the episode and analysing the audio stream and then isolating the sections that are different e.g. include background music, faster spech etc. When then playing back the episode Plex would then just skip ahead past the add.
After a quick google search there seems to already be one app that promises this functionality on the apple app store. https://adskippro.com/
And then I know that YouTube Vanced will do something similar with YouTube videos.
So I assume it should be possible to make an algorithm that works in most cases.
There’s already a feature suggestion asking for that. I suggestion you vote/comment in that thread – though I’m not sure this is going to happen as podcasts are only made available for free if the creators have some form of revenue creation (same as you won’t be able to skip ads on Plex’ video on demand service).
Therefore closing this as a duplicate in order to avoid distracting/dispersing votes.
