ITV signs podcasting deal with Acast

London, UK—ITV today announces that it has chosen Acast as its partner platform to host and help grow its expanding roster of podcasts. The partnership comes in the middle of a successful summer of podcasts from the broadcaster including Love Island: The Morning After, Tour de France Podcast and World Cup Podcast. It will see ITV tap into Acast’s proprietary data capabilities to inform its audio strategy, and also allow it to attract advertising and sponsorship around shows. The daily Love Island companion podcast in particular has proven incredibly popular, spending 43 of the last 68 days at the top of the Apple Podcasts chart in the UK, and achieving over three million listens.

Acast’s Global Head of Content Susie Warhurst explained: “Our partnership with ITV comes at what feels like a real turning point in the audio on demand industry in the UK. TV giants such as ITV moving into podcasting in a serious way - and creating new and innovative formats - means a new generation of listeners are discovering this amazing medium. It marks a real shift, and the message is: podcasting has become even more mainstream as a media channel.

Our own Acast Audio Intelligence Report from earlier this year showed that the podcast audience in the UK is not only growing rapidly, but getting younger too - indeed two thirds of new listeners are aged 16-34. Traditionally podcast audience have been assumed to skew heavily male, but with content such as Love Island: The Morning After attracting an 80% female listenership on Acast, this is changing fast.”

Janine Smith, ITV Head of Digital Entertainment, Comedy and Drama, said: “The Love Island podcast has been a huge success this summer and we’re looking forward to working with Acast to build on that with further opportunities around our programming.”