The dynamic insertion of arbitrary-length ads into podcast files at download time makes SponsorBlock tricky (probably not impossible?) in podcasts that also have non-dynamic sponsor reads.

If someone chapters a podcast, noting an ad (dynamically inserted) for an online casino at 4:33-4:54 and a sponsor break read by the host (baked in to the original file) at 10:12-11:43, those times are mostly invalidated when someone else downloads the file and hears an ad for a business credit card at 4:33-5:21. Now the sponsor break section is going to cut the actual content early and come back before the read is over.

Multiply that problem by 3-4, depending on the episode, and you can start to see the issue.

This is a similar problem to that of Twitch. They bake the ad into the main video stream, meaning you can’t block it without also blocking the content. If YouTube ever does it, it’s game over; but I have a feeling they can’t for some technical or scaling reason, or they would’ve done so first.