The amount of Ads in the podcast…

Hi, posting this here because as I realised there is no flair for podcast, hope this is okay!!

So I have absolutely loved the podcast for the last two years (both Reddit and smosh mouth) but lately I am severely bothered by the amount of ads in these episodes. Tbf I don’t know how much smosh gets to decide over that but damn. I listen on Spotify (premium) and besides the two ads the cast reads themselves, I get between 3 and 5 (!!!) ads. So all in all I get up to 7 ads within about an hour.
Is this a bug? Do they sell these ad spots? I mean ofc I can just skip them, which I do, but so often I am doing something and would like to just be able to listen without getting disturbed/ having to pick up my phone to skip.

Anyone else experiencing this?