Acast secures $45 million in funding

Acast has secured investment funding equivalent to $45 million, led by a group of European Investors.

 
In the four first years since its founding, Acast has been a technological pioneer for the podcast industry.
 
Historically, the company is known for pioneering dynamic ad insertion, a first for the industry, that is now standard and over the past year the company has been focused on developing powerful cutting-edge voice activated technologies for smart speakers.
 
Recent innovations include building the exclusive in-car podcast app for Ford, an Alexa Skill for podcast listening and recommendations and an app for Google Assistant as well.
 
CEO, Ross Adams, says “This has been the biggest year in our short history as a company. In 2018 alone, Acast has grown by 86% percent, breaking all our records. Working with respected investors like AP1 and Robur on realizing our new mission is a huge vote of confidence. The team at Acast has worked very hard and we will use this funding round to continue pushing the podcast industry forward, making it more mainstream and accessible.”
 
Already working with top global audio creators like Nova Entertainment, My Dad Wrote a Porno, and VICE, this year the company added Sky News Australia,the BBC, ITV, Osher Gunsberg, Kinderling Kids Radio & The Thinkergirls among many others to its ranks and in 2018 grew to 3,300 hosted shows, an increase of 93% on 2017
 
More than 125 million listens happen each month platform wide, representing a growth of 62% from last year and in Australia, they recently surpassed the milestone of supporting 11.5 million listens each month.
 
According to research conducted by Nova Entertainment and Acast in Australia, 3.8M Australians now listen to podcasts regularly with 20% of these not listening only 6 months ago.
 
In addition to continually signing the best content creators in the world, Acast is also bringing more unique distribution opportunities to the table for creators.
 
This year, Acast established a partnership with Spotify to distribute the company’s 3,300 podcasts across Spotify’s 180 million listeners at the click of a button while maintaining the ability to monetize on all tiers of the Spotify ecosystem through their proprietary dynamic ad insertion technology.
 
Global brands such as American Express, McDonalds, Mercedes, Disney, Ebay & HP are also partnering with Acast to find new ways of reaching the highly engaged and leaned audience that is podcast listeners.
 
Acast announced a strategic partnership with A Million Ads, allowing for the creation of the first ever personalised podcast advertising, globally.
 
The new funding will be used in part to accelerate growth in existing markets while Acast also continues to expand internationally.

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