Spotify announced today the purchase of two podcast technologycompanies, Podsights and Chartable.
“We believe the opportunity for digital audio and podcast remains significant. With these acquisitions, we’re taking a big step in upleveling digital audio measurement and insights to help the entire industry scale to new heights”, says the official communication on both acquisitions.
Podsights is a leading podcast advertising measurement service that helps advertisers better measure and scale their podcast advertising. Chartable is a podcast analytics platform that enables publishers to know and grow their podcast audiences through promotional attribution and audience insight tools.
Spotify has plans to extend the measurement capabilities provided by Podsights beyond podcasts to the full scope of the Spotify platform.
Grabbing a slice of the curent and future podcast ad cake
According to eMarketer, annual U.S. digital audio advertising revenue is poised to grow to nearly $8Bn and of that amount, $2.7Bn are forecast to be invested in podcast advertising alone by 2025.
“We believe the next step to unlocking this growth is demonstrating audio advertising’s impact through innovations in measurement and attribution for advertisers and audience insights for publishers,” Spotify explains.
In fact, the current acquisitions add to a series of strategical movements and developments carried out by Spotify since 2020 such as the launch of Streaming Ad Insertion, then the company introduced its first audio-first ad marketplace, the Spotify Audience Network.
Just last month, the online audio multinational expanded even more through an interactive ad experience called call-to-action cards.
All these investments were aimed to delivering impact for advertisers and growth for podcast publishers like the Wall Street Journal, ViacomCBS, and AdLarge.
Over the past year, Spotify has been strengthening Megaphone’s already robust offering and most recently even more with the acquisition of Whooshkaa and its broadcast-to-podcast technology
The aim of these movements was to ensure Spotify platform the best place for podcast publishers to create, monetize, and measure their podcast businesses.
Aquisitions to meet the needs of publishers and advertisers
A recent Advertiser Perceptions survey, measurement and attribution remain the two biggest unsolved challenges for podcast advertisers. Spotify plans to solve this pain point through the acquisition of Podsights.
With the acquisition of Podsights, Spotify will be able to help advertisers understand how podcast ads drive actions that matter to their businesses.
“Over time, we plan to extend these measurement capabilities beyond podcasts to the full scope of the Spotify platform, including audio ads within music, video ads, and display ads,” the company explains.
With the acquisition of Chartable, Spotify further enhances Megaphone’s suite of tools with the integration of Chartable’s audience insights and cutting-edge promotional tools, SmartLinks and SmartPromos.
These tools will make it easier for publishers to turn audience insights into action and expand their listenership while ultimately growing their businesses.
