Acast achieves profitability target

• Acast has posted its first year in profit, according to the company’s financial year-end report. The full report claims a 19% net sales growth for 2024, and an EBITDA profit of $2.2mn. Total listens were down 13% in 2024, which the company attributes to Apple’s changes in iOS 17.

  • In Q4/2024, net sales grew by 17% overall, with sales in North America growing by 33%. However, the number of listens was down by 8% in the quarter: Acast say this is because the BBC left Acast’s network for Triton Digital. The BBC left in late November, so expect a further decrease of listens in Q1. The UK itself is a “challenging market” according to CEO Ross Adams (though Acast didn’t represent the BBC there).

• Netflix wants to get into video podcasts, according to Business Insider. It reportedly tried to hire Alex Cooper last year.

• Meta has launched a demo tool called Audiobox - “create an audio story with AI voices and sounds.” It’s quite a fun thing to play with, though it seems to like whispering very much. Of interest: “This research demo is not open to residents of, or those accessing the demo from, the States of Illinois or Texas.”

• Spotify’s shareable links - which show you how many times each link was clicked, and how many streams you gained from them, are highlighted by Spotify for Creators in a new blog post today highlighting The Diary of a CEO. There’s an interview with the podcast’s “Head of Failure and Experimentation”, which is a job title to aim for!

• Is podcasting missing out on its fair share of ad revenue? The MediaLeader describes podcasts as “the $74bn opportunity advertisers are missing out on” saying we only get 0.2% of all ad spend; while Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster suggests that podcasting reaches 53% of US adults, but attracts a significantly smaller revenue share.

• Curated podcast platform Hark has launched Tech Now, the best conversations from top podcasts on emerging trends and issues in the world of tech and AI. The tool is hosted by Dan Blumberg, and contains clips from a variety of shows.

• Outside the UK, the BBC is to add podcasts, and some radio stations, to its international website and app. The announcement has appeared before the new “Audio” section, which currently is still a link to the domestic BBC Sounds website.

• YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, published his annual letter to the YouTube community, and it contains interesting promises for podcasters: “We’ve long invested in the podcast experience and creators have found that video makes this format even more compelling. This year we’ll roll out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators, and make it even easier to discover podcasts.”

• Blubrry has attained v2.2 of the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines.

  • The IAB Tech Lab repeatedly tells us that annual recertification remains a requirement, yet iHeart’s Voxnest, Spreaker and Omny Studio were last certified in 2021; and iHeart’s Triton Digital has not recertified since 2022. (Apple, Spotify and YouTube have never certified).

• Podcast listening has set a new record in Sweden, with the number of podcast listeners growing by 20% year-on-year. And, almost 1-in-10 households are paying for podcasts, says the data.

• Crowd Network has partnered with accounting software Sage to provide stats and analysis on the 2025 Guinness Men’s and Women’s Six Nations.

• PODES, the Portuguese Podcast Festival, announced the winners of the sixth awards in the country. The podcast of the year went to the investigative show Violeta.

• Announced today at 1pm Madrid time will be the nominees for the Ondas Global Awards. There will be five nominees for each of the 14 categories chosen by the jury, including the category for the best non-Spanish speaking podcast.

• The Whickers Podcast Pitch Award 2025 is now open for entries. Aimed to recognise original and innovative documentary, the awards are the legacy of broadcaster Alan Whicker; you’ve until Feb 28 to enter.

• The Institute for Digital Transformation is to launch its own podcast network, the Digital Transformation Broadcast Network, next month. It will provide leaders and innovators with valuable insights and discussions.

• Think Spotify is super? Apple is awesome? Please fill out the Podnews Report Card.

We mentioned Edison Research’s Infinite Dial Australia yesterday as if it was new research. It wasn’t; it actually came out in July last year; but a swish new website by CRA confused our little brains.

Tips and tricks - with Pod Predictor by Coleman Insights

• You’re probably not in Apple Podcasts in China. Here’s more help on what is available, and what isn’t.

Moves and hires

• Sean Lozensky has been hired as CIO for Zeno Media. He will be responsible for leading the company’s ad tech integrations, fraud prevention strategies such as Invalid Traffic (IVT) mitigation and streaming technology initiatives; he joins from Live365 and SoundStack.

Podcast News - with Memberful

Using Memberful: This Week in Tech is the top-ranked flagship tech podcast from TWiT.tv - and uses Memberful to get closer to its audience, giving it a consistent, recurring revenue. Join Club TWiT and check out the Memberful platform.

Sweep the Pod with Dan Ahdoot and Bret Ernst launches today for fans of the Netflix series Cobra Kai - you can now relive every crane kick, rivalry, and dramatic dojo showdown as Dan and Bret take listeners through each episode with their signature humor and insider perspectives. It’s new from Cloud10 Media.

Chance Encounters is new from CNN Audio today, hosted by CNN Travel Writer Francesca Street. From romance that sparks at 30,000 feet to friendships found on the road, the series embraces the magic of travel, and the power of the connections we form in the most unlikely of places.