How Acast made the business case for podcast advertising

Podcast platform Acast used tracker surveys to identify podcast trends in emerging markets and engage with advertisers.

Market analysis
Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
200-500 employees

Challenge

Acast needed to understand how podcast usage was growing and changing in their emerging markets in order to help grow advertising opportunities. They wanted to track trends in Canada, Mexico, Spain, and Germany.

As the number one podcast company globally, according to Podtrac, Acast strives to have a deep understanding of podcast listeners around the world so that we are better informed to make products that help podcasters, understand what consumers want as well as how they are thinking about podcasts, and best serve our advertising partners.

Tommy Walters, Research & Insights Director, Acast

Solution

Acast was already working with Attest for brand lift research, so they knew the platform had the reach and capabilities they needed. For this study, they decided to focus on people who listen to podcasts daily. They ran an initial survey to get benchmark figures, followed by another wave six months later.

I was trying to get the power users because those are the people who are really driving the trends. The value of re-running the same research was to see which way the trends were moving.

Questions explored how people listen to podcasts (i.e. in the car, with friends), if they engage with ads, and whether they spend money with podcasters. They also covered topical themes like AI and politics.

Attest was great to work with for this research. The team helped make sure a few of the smaller markets were able to close in time and were responsive and helpful as usual.

Impact

The podcast research uncovered notable trends highlighting opportunities in several of Acast’s emerging markets. For example, an +8 percentage point increase in the number of Mexican listeners who trust podcasts for political information could potentially open the door to the platform accepting political ads.

Meanwhile, statistics showing a growing likelihood to engage with podcast advertising, and expanding consumption of international podcasts are paving the way for sales conversations.

The data points are used as sales collateral first and foremost. Each seller in each market can reach out to different clients and strike up conversations. They’ve also been added to our go-to-market decks. There have been a lot of positive responses.

Acast are now planning another global research study, this time making use of Attest’s new multi-language research feature.

Attest is great! We’ve been using it for three years now. The platform is really easy to use and the data comes back quicker than other competitors I have used in the past.

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