Disclaimer: This interview is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. In Practise is an independent publisher and all opinions expressed by guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of In Practise

{audio:0:04:15} I’d love to know more of your background as it relates to the podcasting space.

{audio:0:04:24} To frame that whole question, I worked for a company called Global Radio in my first role in advertising, a traditional linear radio platform, probably the biggest commercial radio brand in UK. I then went over to Spotify, on their commercial team with the ad sales team. I was there for just over a year and a half. Then it was actually Ross Adams – who's now the CEO of Acast – he was one of the international sales guys at Spotify at the time and when he left, he kind of took me with him over to Acast. I was the third or fourth hire in the UK. I would've joined in October 2014. I think we went to market on 15th October 2014. It's amazing how those dates stick in your mind. 

{audio:0:05:22} My role at Acast, along with one of the other sales guys, was really just to launch it to UK agencies and advertisers. Obviously, at that time, it was quite interesting. Podcasting is not new and it wasn't new then, having been around since the early 2000s. The big ones in Europe were things like Tiësto’s Trance podcast and then a load of soccer podcasts and that was kind of it really; special interest stuff, I guess. Internationally, you had big podcasts like the Nerdist, which was pretty big still then, but really it was these kind of more niche, specific interest podcasts which a lot of the time had been started by fans of specific things, as a kind of way for them to have conversations and they weren't really particularly commercially minded, would be a polite way to put it. 

{audio:0:06:24} The thing we had to do, at that point, was reintroduce podcasting, get it away from this view of it being nerdy and geeky, particularly when it came to working with bigger advertisers and agencies and really talk to one of the points of your questions: it's incredibly engaged listening. It gets a huge share of someone's attention, particularly because it's a longer form audio content that people can take everywhere with them, so we really had to sell them the benefits of that.

{audio:0:07:05} I’d love to hear your interest in the podcast industry post your Acast experience?

{audio:0:07:16} Post-Acast, I worked in a video production company, a video advertising network and now I’m in a large ad verification company. 

{audio:0:07:35} That might provide you with an external perspective on my first broad question which is, as you mentioned, podcasting is a highly engaged audience, is massively increasing its share of listening but its share of ad dollars still tracks way behind its share of listening. Why is that and what does the industry need to do where podcasting gets a fairer share of advertising dollars?

{audio:0:08:28} Where do you see podcasting sit in terms of total ad spend?

{audio:0:08:38} My understanding is podcasting is $2 billion in revenue and radio in the US is $30 billion. I don’t remember the exact share of listening versus radio but it’s much closer than the 10% share of ad dollars.

{audio:0:09:02} I bet for a lot of people they listen to a lot more podcasts than they do radio.

{audio:0:09:06} It’s not 50-50 yet overall, but it’s a lot closer to that than 10%.

{audio:0:09:13} If US radio is anything like radio in the UK, then they’re very good at talking up numbers and making sure they survey the right people. One of the problems that’s true for even Spotify and Pandora is, before you start looking at their kind of podcasting piece is that, traditionally, at Spotify at Acast, we would talk to radio teams. The challenge with that was that always, with any kind of premium digital audio, we were looking to charge much higher CPMs than the CPMs that were expected from commercial radio; five times as much as people were used to spending. 

{audio:0:10:02} The thing we could promise in some ways – and it was easier with standard streaming audio rather than podcasts – was that it was much more measurable, so we could tell you exactly the number of listens and that kind of thing. The challenges that we came across at the time were that people understood you could download podcast episodes. Once that downloaded had happened, there was no real way of us telling whether someone had even listened to the episode, let alone whether they actually listen to the ad; did they fast forward? So the measurability question became a problem quite quickly because it was an easy one to poke holes in, to be totally honest. 

{audio:0:10:51} However, the whole thing that really helped was this general push of full spend going into digital. Then we had to change our tack in a lot of places, to actually go after digital ad spend which was obviously a much higher portion of overall ad spend than radio anyway. But when we were fishing in radio budgets, we were fishing in a very small part of people's overall budgets. 

{audio:0:11:16} Initially, it was going to the digital teams where we used to spending much greater CPMs because they could be hyper targeted. With Spotify and the standard ad streaming platforms – I’m going to keep on talking about them because they're really relevant to Acast and all podcasting – if you’re on the ad funded version of those services, obviously you're very valuable to those platforms because you normally give your age and gender; you provide that level of targeting. On the flip side for Acast and the podcasting platform, is what you're able to be hyper targeted around very specific types of content and that became really interesting for contextual advertisers. A contextual advertiser I always found quite a strange thing because, really, your advertising is contextual in some way or another. 

{audio:0:12:10} The problem that Acast had at the time was, when we launched, obviously, we only had a pretty limited number of podcasters and, unlike platforms like Spotify and Pandora, where they can monetize absolutely every listen, for Acast the thing was being able to show or get podcasters to believe that we can actually create significant advertising revenue for them. In the early days, that was very much around selling in the benefits of a show and specific shows into advertising agencies. The biggest challenge with that, if you think about podcasting as a whole, is that I had a quick look at the Acast website and I think they're up to 40,000 podcasts.

{audio:0:12:59} Yes. 40,000 is what they’re disclosing right now.

{audio:0:13:03} That's a hell of a lot of shows to go out and sell. So we look at the programmatic network groups and how we gather these shows into really succinct categories that we can say, here's our sports podcasts; here are our football podcasts, here are our specific football team podcasts, if you want to go that targeted; and that was relatively straightforward. The bit that really set Acast apart, and the bit why I really joined Acast, was their ability to give podcast creators ways to put in ad spots within their shows that are dynamic. Previously, as I'm sure you’re aware, pretty much all podcast revenue came through those hosted sponsors. They were super engaging but the problem with them being is that they could have been recorded five or six years ago. If you listen episodes from eight years ago, you'll get an eight-year-old ad. 

{audio:0:14:00} That represents two problems, one for the advertiser, because they probably don't want messaging to be sat around for eight years and it affects measurability, particularly if they're talking about specific offers and that kind of thing. Then for the podcaster, 30% of their listens might come on launch week and then there's a huge, long tail of listens as well. So by being able to dynamically insert ads into podcasts as users download them became the solution to both of those problems. That was Acast’s big sale. We can really effectively aggregate all of this long tail of podcast listening into really simple to activate audience for you. That was one really big piece. How familiar are you with the tech side of podcasting?

{audio:0:15:02} I understand dynamically inserted ads, the closed programmatic systems supposed to be used by podcasters and the challenges of RSS. I understand the tech decently, so you can assume I’m not a newbie in the industry.

{audio:0:15:37} When you’re talking about ad spending within podcasting, obviously, there are two big routes. There’s how much of it is being spent on advertisers by sponsoring or supporting shows, whether that be through dynamically inserted, radio style ads, or those hosted sponsorships. Then there's the whole kind of branded content element where it's actually, brands are producing their own podcasts and putting them online. I'm guessing from an investment perspective, looking at people at Acast, the brand owned content isn't as relevant because most of that budget goes into production rather than giving it to companies like Acast. Is that accurate? 

{audio:0:16:26} Yes. One of my questions is, historically, the direct-to-consumer performance marketing people have had good response on podcasts; it’s easy to have an offer code. But it seems what the industry doesn’t do nearly as well is appeal to get brand spend and Coca-Cola to be on a podcast kind of thing. I’m trying to understand why that is and what needs to happen to get more of those mainstream advertisers over the line.

{audio:0:17:06} One of the biggest challenges across everything I've ever sold has always been that idea that advertisers like to appear along with things that they actually know themselves. I know that sounds really daft but it’s why people spend loads of money on Facebook because they have a Facebook account and the same with YouTube. Everyone knows YouTube. One of the really big challenges of getting big budgets is that the publishers and distributors, like Acast, don't have a big brand in themselves because they're not really offering anything that a consumer would come into contact with. Obviously, the closest to that is Spotify, who then have their own issues where the majority of their interest will always be around premium subscriptions because that's where pretty much all of their revenue comes from.

{audio:0:17:55} They also are then a bit more of a risk to podcasters in that it's unlikely that a podcast owned by Spotify or the rights owned by Spotify would then be available in all other platforms. It goes against everything that a lot of the old podcast minds are really thinking about. Then obviously, with the Joe Rogan issues, one of the things that brands like Acast are protected from is that because people don't know them, if they do have a podcaster that makes some kind rogue episodes, it's always the podcaster that sits with that and they don't risk that reputational damage. 

{audio:0:18:36} The one big challenge I think will always just be getting enough salespeople and growing out a team that can effectively go and sell the benefit, not just of headline shows, like Serial and everyone else were amazing four or five years ago, but they weren’t where the bulk of this thing is. How do you get advertisers to really believe in the branding space? Category is always the best way which are like the old TV sponsorship deals really. Films on Channel 4, in the UK, were brought to you by Volvo when I was 15 and I can still remember that.

{audio:0:19:13} The other challenge will always fall on that last measurability piece. That's going to be a challenge for the rest of the industry with things like the death of the cookie and all the other things people are talking about at the moment.

{audio:0:19:34} Is there a technical solution to measurability?

{audio:0:19:43} Not one that I think is particularly convincing for a brand, other than really investing in effective research. What you’ll tend to see is these tentpole pieces of research and they’ll seem really good at these, like here's a whole look at the podcasting market in general. Then the other bit you'll see is all the stuff that's done by either publishers or distributors; so Acast, or probably The Guardian will do their own, for instance. They run their own research studies. Both obviously, have their merits, so you've got Nielsen telling you what the whole market looks like and then Acast and The Guardian telling you what their shows are like and a publisher’s own brand study always goes well. You never see one that doesn't work. 

{audio:0:20:35} Effective measurement of how podcasting can be really singled out compared to other media types to driving brand outcomes would be the only way. But then the challenge within that is, that if you were to buy a category sponsorship from Acast – I can't guarantee that's how they actually sell these days, by the way, because it's been a while – the way to use it is to then speak to the users that haven't listened those ads. What Acast do really well is make sure that that content is available in every platform, so I listen to loads of Acast shows but I use Spotify for all of my music listening, audio listening.

{audio:0:21:26} What about tracking pixels implemented into a podcast, having it fire when the ad gets played and sent back to the ad server? Do you see that as a viable go-forward?

{audio:0:21:41} That would still only work if it was a streamed episode.

{audio:0:22:08} There’s a way to at least prove to the podcaster you’re listened to. You’re not able to prove that the right ad was in the podcast at that time. 

{audio:0:22:23} The way that could work and the way that would have to work is that you would have to get a signal back from all of the players because, as far as I'm aware, the challenge that Acast would have working with someone like Spotify is that they effectively split the RSS fee. It’s not really like that, because Spotify doesn't work on RSSs. The way I presume this works – I can't imagine how it work a different way given what I know of Spotify – is that they will, effectively, download the episode once from Acast servers and then host that on their own platform and that gets listened to by millions of users. That then becomes an issue and then you have to be able to track each of those listens back to an individual user. Knowing what I know that Spotify, they did not like sharing user data or any signals coming out unless it’s a Spotify owned show, because with Spotify owned shows, they do have ad server integrations so that they can do that tracking piece.

{audio:0:23:38} Spotify has been buying up these ad tech companies and, as opposed to having an independent third-party verification service, everyone has their own verification which seems to be maybe a little less trustworthy.

{audio:0:24:12} One of the other challenges is that for your budget on YouTube – the Spotify Joe Rogan problem become quite similar – quite often you could have what to most brands would be a brand safe or reputation safe channel, but there could be an individual episode within those channels that then causes issues. One of the things that I know there were some platforms trialing, I think even Acast were at the time working with Microsoft’s platform, was kind of near enough real time transcription of audio. 

{audio:0:24:47} And the contextual targeting based on that transcription?

{audio:0:24:52} Exactly. You could also overlay. To talk where I am at the moment in DoubleVerify, where we do contextual analysis for the actual brand safety side, that could be another big thing for opening up brand budgets to really be able to go down to an individual episode level and ensure that there's nothing that is brand unsafe that is going to deliver alongside. The Economist is a really good example, bringing back your example of Coca-Cola. I'm sure a hell of a lot of The Economist is absolutely fine for Coca-Cola, but I’ll be very sure there will be an episode on The Economist where they've said some very negative things about Coca-Cola’s environmental impact and that kind of thing.

{audio:0:25:37} That is one big opportunity to work closer with verification companies, in the same way that DoubleVerify now works with YouTube and a lot of Facebook and places like that, where you can work with all these publishers on these platforms and we'll make sure that you only deliver alongside content that aligns with your brand values.

{audio:0:26:01} It’s like Volkswagen is scared to invest in an auto car pod because they don’t know what it’s going to say about Volkswagen. You don’t want to have a Volkswagen ad next to being “Volkswagen’s garbage.”

{audio:0:26:15} Exactly. Hewlett Packard didn’t advertise on the Financial Times for about 15 years because someone wrote a nasty article about them. It happens a lot. The one biggest problem in terms of advertisers and how they'll approach the market is that measurability and trust in all the content that you’re going to buy.

{audio:0:26:45} Do you think, if the contextual gets good enough, you can go through the transcript and say, these 10 car podcasts are positive on Volkswagen? Maybe you want to advertise alongside them. Would that be enough to get a Volkswagen over the line?

{audio:0:27:05} I can't imagine why they would have any reason not to. Why else would they be spending their digital audio money with platforms like Spotify; and they rely on contextual playlists, so you could target driving playlists. I’m sure there will be a podcast called Petrolhead. You could target those specific audiences. It's an easy sell, because you can bring podcasts to life incredibly easily. Most cases anyway, it's a good title for the show or show name. It doesn't really matter about the episode; this is the new business podcast or whatever. 

{audio:0:27:55} Then it just comes again to having a good sales team out there. The benefit of podcasting does have is people love podcasts. I still love podcasts. I didn't leave Acast because I thought there was an issue with podcasting or anything like that. I do all of my listening to podcasts. It's an easy thing to sell, just a lot of advertisers have been burnt in so many different ways recently. The Joe Rogan thing I'm sure won't be helping. 

{audio:0:28:36} Using Joe Rogan as an example, I think Anna Faris has recently launched a show with Acast. Acast didn't have the ability, when we first launched, to actually kind of write checks to get content. That's a really big thing because, if you want to advertise on an Acast podcast, in 99% of the cases you'll have to speak to Acast directly. Rather than going in through each of the shows because that will be the commercial agreement they have with them, that they get the sole exclusive right to monetize. 

{audio:0:29:15} It then becomes incumbent on all of the platforms and that's what Spotify really started; actually going out and buying IP or at least kind building out these massive partnerships with individual shows. That was one thing that I was really worried about for Acast, actually, when I first saw that happening on Spotify. I don’t know if Acast would have the investment and when I was there, that was the way they were speaking; it was pretty hardline that we're not going to pay for content. I’m glad they’ve changed their mind on that because I think that will be a really big difference to them. 

{audio:0:29:54} I think they provide some revenue guarantees but they’re still not about making content exclusive. 

{audio:0:30:17} One of the first things I was shown when joining Acast in 2014 – this was public by the way – was that on the Acast player, a podcaster could add static images alongside the audio stream. So you could say between the 15th second and the 25th second I want this image and for the next section I want this image, to make it more of an interactive experience. Swedish companies often come up with weird names so they called those added display images blings. They were quite a nice concept in that they could add quite nice creative ideas. They were great for advertisers, but they gave a clickable element alongside it, like you see in Spotify. The challenge with that is it required everyone to listen to it in the Acast app. Now I don’t have the Acast app anymore and I used to work there.

{audio:0:31:11} And they’ve basically shut down the Acast app; they’ve announced that.

{audio:0:31:17} Good. It's a shame because it was a really nice idea and probably podcast discovery would be done better on a podcasting app. However, you’ve then got so many different issues that they had to contend with, so as soon as they started putting on public RSS feeds, then you had all the other podcasters coming and saying, “Hey, are you monetizing our content?” “No, we’re not. We’re just monetizing Acast episodes.” That is why I'm really glad you saying that Acast sustained this idea of publish it everywhere or anywhere that takes an RSS feed; anywhere like Spotify where they probably don't take an RSS feed in that classic case. That's definitely the way forward. It’s probably a better draw for big podcasters, as well, because they don't want it to then only be able be available through specific platforms.

{audio:0:32:15} On the tech side, my understanding is one of the headwinds of the podcast space is that you can’t deal with it like you can on digital. You can buy “programmatic” from Acast but you have to deal with the Acast private marketplace and Spotify’s private marketplace. There’s no central repository to make buying easy across the industry. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.

{audio:0:32:55} There are companies like Adswizz trying to set themselves up. The most similar example is YouTube with their video content. YouTube video ads are available programmatically, as long as you’re buying them through Google. Google have the benefit of owning the biggest DSP in the world.

{audio:0:33:29} It’s about making podcasting available through old school proper programmatic. There is a big open marketplace but you can buy audio everywhere, that would require kind of an SSP-style service to come in and say, we are going to be able to aggregate content from Spotify and Acast and all the other platforms. The challenge with that would then also be how they are inserting those ads into podcasts because Spotify, if they're selling podcasts, they'd have to do it as kind of pre or post rollout if it's not the code they own, because then they're effectively monetizing their own user rather than the content itself; they could make that argument. 

{audio:0:34:22} Then with Acast they'd have to make sure that any SSP was then able to do the dynamic ad serving. Also, the podcasters probably don't want that because they have less control over which advertisers are going to agree. 

{audio:0:34:38} I’ve heard that as well. Right now, everyone justifies the extra handholding by saying it allows us to control which ads are on which podcasts and that makes everyone more comfortable. At the end of the day, you’re missing out on a lot of spend by forcing those incremental steps as opposed to just making it plug and play. I think the podcast buyer is comparing it to digital advertising, it seems.

{audio:0:35:10} The interesting thing there is that, if you can effectively monetize the long tail, where there is really good listening in terms of long tail of shows, I should imagine that Acast – I'm pretty sure we did back in the day and that's before there was any kind of programmatic offering – took that control away from smaller podcasters, because Acast are giving you free hosting and they’re monetizing on your behalf. But because of the size of your show, we can't give you the choice to work with a premium advertiser. Acast were quite rigorous in who they would and wouldn't work with. Tobacco brands stayed relatively out of it. If we worked with gambling brands, it was only through direct sponsorship, so you could still give those guarantees, I guess.

{audio:0:36:11} Let’s assume my two billion number is directionally correct. If we look out five years, how big do you think podcast advertising is five years from now?

{audio:0:36:39} Significant. The biggest things that point me in that direction are one, that I get asked in my current job, do you have an audio solution? To put that into context, a year and a half ago, there weren’t any CTD solutions and we built them because of that demand. There are obviously conversations between people like us and big ad sites to make podcasting safer and more measurable from a media quality standpoint.

{audio:0:37:18} There’s still huge investment in shows. Every week, Acast seem to be saying they’ve launched a whole new show, which is great. They are also bringing over big talent. In the UK there was a big podcast on BBC called Peter Crouch podcast, an ex-England football player. Acast have bought that recently. What I've also noticed is that Acast are running a lot of ads now talking about Acast as a platform, I guess a bit like how YouTube started on the create your own channel. Here's how we can support you. That is obviously a really, really good sign. 

{audio:0:37:59} Compared with the death of the cookie, and to bring it up again, there is a lot of concern from advertisers that they're going to lose their ability to effectively target users. A lot of advertisers are fairly confused about how effectively they target at the moment, to be totally honest. Apple have made it fairly impossible to have reliable targeting on their devices for a long time and lots of people don't own iPhones and a lot of advertisers don't really realize that. 

{audio:0:38:36} There's that kind of idea that it is still probably one of the strongest contextual spaces in the world because, if someone's listening to a specific podcast, it's because they've chosen to do so and all those great reasons we know about podcasting and why it really works. Also, there's a whole kind of shift in the agency and advertiser landscape. Video is a big example, at the moment, of moving spends away from non-measurable platforms. Linear TV, the old TV traders, more like stock market traders shouting each other down the phone, are becoming more digitally savvy and audio will follow that. I know more people that are finding new podcasts all the time.

{audio:0:39:28} It’s quite intangible and a hard thing to get any numbers behind, but I still discover new shows and I listen to more podcasts now than I did when I worked for a podcasting company which is a pretty good example. My mum listens to podcast now, so she definitely didn't eight years ago. 

{audio:0:39:50} Are you willing to hazard a guess in terms of the number? Five years from now, we have gone from $2 billion to where?

{audio:0:40:15} I’d be amazed if it was lower than $5 billion. It’s still in the nascent end of brands getting the idea of advertising on podcasts. At least five. I’d eat my hat if it was less than five. What’s your biggest concern in choosing which ones to support?

{audio:0:40:57} That would be the second question is, I consider the podcast advertising space to be fragmented and there are a bunch of players who are frenemies; people who are on some level competing but on others helping. I’m curious if we look out five years from now, I assume there are going to be a few winners in the industry. Who comes out of this as those winners, advertising hosting companies doing most of the podcasting work?

{audio:0:41:48} I don't see Spotify doing it, to be totally honest, because their one way is to buy new shows. I can't imagine them extending unless I'm really mistaking the ability of an average person to create their own podcast there because of all the challenges. Monetization on Spotify must be getting more and more challenging in that of the $10 a month that someone pays as a premium user, then giving the right bit to a podcaster compared to each artist and everything else just becomes a real mess and people can only listen through Spotify. Only Acast seem to be winning at the moment. I hear more podcasters talking about hosting on Acast.

{audio:0:42:48} Why are people choosing Acast?

{audio:0:42:51} I think because they've shown that they can actually deliver shows to every platform, so having the Spotify relationship’s really, really important. A frenemies piece is that Spotify need that content there because they want people to use the Spotify platform still. At one point, I made the choice to listen to my same podcast, but I listen to them on Spotify rather than using the Acast app. They were first to market with a really reliable ad insertion tech and one that made it easy for podcasters to do that through a drag drop interface where you go, I want to drop my ad spot in here within this show. 

{audio:0:43:41} I think also it’s important is they have a good reputation in the market. It took them a while, but if you look at the types of providers they're working with now, so big celebrities; Anna Faris must be probably one of the bigger global names that they really shouted about recently. Then if you look at the BBC, they renewed their contract with Acast and that is huge. I still think the BBC are pretty well regarded globally. They're actively talking to potential podcasters through podcasts. I think that's a really smart move. Everyone wants to be an influencer now. Thankfully, I'm a little bit old for it, wrong side of it, but definitely my nephews and nieces talk about being an influencer and podcasting is probably another space for them. 

{audio:0:44:41} A lot of influencers have podcasts and it's inherently easy to set up and Acast are basically saying, “Hey, if you want to start a show, we can show you how to,” and they've done things like their Acast Essentials guides. I haven't seen any other podcast, or distribution service at least, really go out and do that kind of thing.

{audio:0:45:10} What do you think about AudioBoom and iHeart? A lot of the previous hosting companies got gobbled up by Spotify, Amazon or Google or the radio companies. How do you think about those players?

{audio:0:45:40} AudioBoom were an interesting one, but I think I got themselves in trouble when they first started out because they were monetizing content on their player that they didn't own the rights to because they had the RSS feed thing. They were the competitor that we spoke about because they were really active in market, like going into advertising agencies at the same time we were. I had actually worked with their head of sales when I was at Global Radio. They just didn't have the right reputation, in my opinion. I don't think they've done particularly well on the content side of things. Then iHeartRadio, I don’t know if they’ve done enough in the innovation space.

{audio:0:46:36} They acquired Triton and Omni. 

{audio:0:46:45} Triton Digital was an ad server on the podcast side.

{audio:0:46:56} I guess this is the challenge of listening to a lot of podcasts. It becomes a bit of an echo chamber. It just happens to be almost all the shows I listen to are hosted by Acast.

{audio:0:47:15} Acast’s position is really, really strong in the UK but not as strong in the US. In the US, it seems like a lot of these publishers are still really kind of selling their ads through their internal salesforces. The New York Times, NPR are handling this internally as opposed to in the UK whereas the BBC outsourced to Acast. How do you see that decision because outsourcing versus doing it internally? Acast takes a significant chunk, almost 40% of podcast advertising dollars.

{audio:0:48:02} That’s an interesting one. It is quite similar in some ways to traditional broadcast video platforms and them not really getting a lot of brand digital budgets because they're not measurable. A lot of those are still only sold by the publishers, but they’re not moving to the programmatic space. I just don't think that has legs and I know that sounds really basic, but the general push for the entire industry is to kind of democratize and make it simpler to go and buy through owned platforms, so they've got a relationship with their DSP. They want to plug in that supply. For the NPRs of this world, they can maintain doing that because they do have these big flagship shows. I don’t know if that’s really the future of where podcast listening growth will be.

{audio:0:49:07} Did you ever sell to someone who was making that decision about who had an existing internal salesforce and then made the decision about do we go with Acast or sell it ourselves? Was that like a sale you ever did?

{audio:0:49:24} We spoke to a lot of podcasters who did already have their own relationships. That was one thing you had to do. We had to go and help find content people want to advertise. I guess the whole thing again coming to that salesforce thing is that only the biggest publishers will have a team that goes into agencies and advertisers. I'd also question who those teams are speaking to because, quite often, NPR are speaking to traditional radio teams and then you're still looking at only really getting those radio budgets. I dread to think what those CPMs really look like for people like NPR and the number of listens. They're getting big revenue for podcasts in old terms, but the same episode gets download a million times; I doubt they're getting $10 million an episode, unless I'm really wrong. 

{audio:0:50:25} That would be huge, but then that's the kind of CPM you'd want to push for. The tender on CPM is probably about right for digital audio, especially if you can be really specific on where you're targeting.

{audio:0:50:47} Digging into the culture at Acast, Ross is still running as CEO. I’d be curious of your impressions of Ross and his strengths and weaknesses.

{audio:0:51:23} I jokingly always said to Ross that if he ever became CEO I’d bang on his door and go work for him again in a heartbeat, if that kind of puts that into context. Ross is one of those people. The best way I can put this is, I've worked for people that are known by everyone in the market and there are two types of people like that. There are people that are known by everyone for the wrong reasons because they've got a bad reputation, maybe because they've done something stupid on an event; I've worked with lots of people like that. Then there are people like Ross that everyone likes. What I really think helped drive the BBC partnership, The Guardian partnership is that he is a very, very personable person. 

{audio:0:52:16} I would work for Ross in a heartbeat and I reckon if you asked anyone that has worked with him, they would probably say exactly the same thing. He's incredibly hard working. I think if Ross is growing a similar team to the one he grew at Spotify – and I'm sure he has, I still know the people over there – the culture there would be a great place to work. I should have taken him up on that thing where I said I'd go back and leave if programmatic came up.

{audio:0:52:59} There were some really bad decisions, in my opinion, made by the team that led the company before Ross was there in terms of hiring. Particularly, the first US launch didn't go very well because not enough due diligence was done on people that were brought in to lead that kind of launch. That was still 2014, early 2015. I think that put a lot of pressure on the company because, obviously, the US launch was really important. 

{audio:0:53:32} I think we made some mistakes with big podcast providers in the US early on which was an issue. I wouldn't be surprised that that has completely changed under Ross's stewardship, in terms of the fact that he would have identified the mistakes that were made and would do everything to correct them. It’s an interesting one with Acast because they're never going to be a household name in my opinion, because why would they be? They're a bit like a lot of the other companies; people know Amazon the brand, but they don't really think of Amazon's web service that powers the entire internet, basically.

{audio:0:54:21} With Acast, it'll be a similar thing. They will be really, really successful, but I can't imagine them being a household name because there's no reason for a user to really know who they are other than, in passing, hearing their name in a podcast. 

{audio:0:54:48} It will be interesting to see what happens with podcasts, whether the biggest thing to happen in the future is these big flagship shows, really high production values and that's why people listen; or is it going be because they really do democratize it as they're trying to do through these ads and say look, if you want to start a show, we have the way to do that and give you a platform to do it? In which case, Acast, I think, are probably one of the best placed companies to do that because they're set up to monetize long tail so any creator, effectively, could probably start earning some revenue on Acast. I'm sure there's a cap like you need to have 10,000 listens or something. 

{audio:0:55:35} If there is a trend for influencers, for want of a better word, being able to really build out a podcast brand from scratch, then Acast are really well positioned to do that. If it is going to be big headline shows, it then becomes what are people like Sony going do because they've launched their podcast studios recently, where they have these enormous budgets that they can throw at the problem. What does the podcaster have to give up if they do that? Do I have to buy a Sony experience if I’m going to listen to a podcast? There’s no other actual podcasting company that I think is as interesting as Acast.

{audio:0:56:44} Is there anything we haven’t discussed on Acast or podcast that you think I should be paying more attention to?

{audio:0:56:52} Not particularly, to be honest. I think the biggest signal is going to be who is getting the most amount of content and that sounds really basic and obvious. Obviously, what all of the platforms need if they're going to win is listenership because, without listeners, you've got nothing to monetize. People are investing in content that sounds like a good idea. Spotify took a big risk with Joe Rogan and in some respects, it blew up in their face so badly they were losing artists from their main way of monetizing which is a bit mad.

{audio:0:57:40} I can't imagine there being any kind of breakthrough in the way that podcasts are listened to now. That seems to be fairly settled and you’ve got people listening to their music through Spotify, iTunes and that's where they're going to listen to their podcasts. Acast podcasts are available in Spotify and iTunes so that has to be the big thing.

{audio:0:58:14} Also don't know what are Spotify's deals with creators? If they do give a podcast money to buy their content, you start to get into the crazy world of, is there going to be a spinoff TV show? I think there was a Serial TV show or there was going to be. That starts getting more serious in a wider sense from how much money are they going to make, what happens down the road with TV shows and spinoffs? I guess that’s really hard to forecast.

{audio:0:58:55} Spotify is trying to keep people; they’re not the open ecosystem that Acast is promoting. They’re trying to get people behind the Spotify paywall.

{audio:0:59:11} I feel like Spotify have to have podcasts there and it’s a good thing for Spotify to have podcasts because then they can start to tell you more about those users. If they need to monetize free users through ads, even if they can’t monetize the podcast directly, they can say, this person listens to these podcasts. Spotify will keep them there, in which case they have to keep working with Acast and, as a user, you’re not really offended if you get an ad in a podcast and then Spotify ads. You don’t know who’s selling what to you. It is such a fragmented marketplace.

{audio:1:00:20} I still struggle to see exactly who comes out of this winning and that’s why I am still trying to figure it out.

Acast: Podcast Advertising Platforms and Growth Opportunity

Former Manager at Acast AB

inpractise.com/articles/acast-podcast-advertising-platforms-and-growth-opportunity

Acast: Podcast Advertising Platforms and Growth Opportunity(May 13, 2022)

Former Manager at Acast AB

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