The role of podcasts in the media mix is coming into its own, and podcast-centric platforms continue to build on the channel’s popularity.
Acast announced Thursday (Nov 16) that it has entered into a partnership with Proximic by Comscore to enable cookie-free targeting across the podcast platform’s 100,000+ podcasts.
“Podcast advertisers around the world are eager to reach not just listeners, but the right listeners with their brand story, and Canadian advertisers are certainly no exception to this,” Heather Gordan, managing director of Acast in Canada tells MiC.
“Acast’s most recent partnership with Proximic by Comscore enables Canadian advertisers to connect with those hard-to-reach audiences through privacy-safe contextual signals, which also means their brand message reaches the most relevant audiences than ever before within the region through both local and international content creators.”
According to Bryan Segal, SVP of commercial at Comscore, “Canada has seen rapid growth in consumer usage of online radio and podcast formats, and Canadians spent 386 million hours streaming audio in September 2023 alone, up 218% from September 2019.”
Overall, Segal says the podcast opportunity “has been underrepresented in media investment, as ad technology and measurement have caught up to consumer adoption.”
While not Canada-specific, Spotify’s Q3 2023 earnings report showed a 16% year-over-year increase in advertising revenue, with its podcast revenue specifically playing a meaningful role. The rise was attributed to sold impressions across original and licensed podcasts on the platform’s audio-first marketplace, the Spotify Audience Network, which connects publishers and creators with advertisers.
In the wake of that success, Spotify announced last week that its Spotify Audience Network has expanded into Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico and Sweden, joining Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.
“The Spotify and Acast announcements come at an opportune time for podcasts,” says Darrick Li, VP of North American sales for research and measurement company, Guideline.
According to Li and Guideline’s latest ad spend report, podcast spend was down in Q3 over last year, but up 12% from January through September in 2022 over the same months in 2022, “which, when considering seasonality, is a better assessment of ad spending in the medium.”
By way of comparison, Li says podcast ad spend grew 48.9% in the US in Q3 year over year. “Podcasts continue to blossom in Canada–both from a consumer interest perspective and from an advertising infrastructure standpoint,” Li says.
He notes that access to podcast advertising has become easier through DSPs. “Third-party programmatic buying in the Canadian market was up 59.4% year-over-year in Q1 2023 (versus over 33% for the U.S.), and while new targeting and measurement capabilities will inevitably help direct buys,” Li adds, “it will also help attract continued growth of buying podcasts through third-party platforms.”
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