Acast grows in the US

• Acast released its Q3/24 financial report. Sales grew by 12% year-on-year to US$45.6mn, including North America growing at 29%; Europe as a whole saw just a 3% growth, and comments from Ross Adams seem to suggest Acast UK is finding it especially tough. The company remains on track for “positive EBITDA” for the year, though made a loss of US $0.6mn in the quarter.

  • Acast shows are getting more ad-heavy, though. “In Q3, we introduced an additional ad marker, allowing podcasters to add a second midroll ad slot into their episodes, boosting their monetization potential with increased ad inventory.”
  • Acast blames Apple’s iOS 17 changes for a drop in listens of -15%. A decrease of -15.2% was also reported by Podtrac earlier in the year. We covered the iOS 17 changes in full.

• Spotify will announce a new tie-up with airline Emirates today, with promotion on the airline’s in-flight front page for Trevor Noah’s podcast, and a mix of podcasts and music playlists on the system. Our Editor spotted the collaboration earlier this week.

  • Emirates, which carried 51.9mn passengers last year, uses spafax for its IFE content; our sister publication the Podcast Business Journal spoke to the company about how to get your content there too.

• PodX-owned Platform Media have acquired a majority stake of the world’s biggest rugby show, The Good, The Bad and The Rugby. Platform Media has produced and commercialised the show since its inception.

• A Russian court fined Apple $36,000 for not removing two podcasts that contained "information aimed at destabilising the political situation in Russia”.

• The New Books Network hits 25,000 episodes today. The network, a consortium of author-interview podcast channels dedicated to public education, is one of the largest podcast networks in the world.

• Have you had an exciting email from CanvasRebel Magazine wanting to promote your show? Is it something? Bahnfyre PR did some research, and thinks it’s nothing.

• The Podcast Show in London has opened its 2025 Presale Waitlist, so you get early access to the best rate. We’ll be there.

• Things to come to podcasting? Medium, a blogging platform, is 47% “AI slop”, according to research.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• The Podglomerate looks at how to get your show featured on podcast apps. Many, the company says, include human curation.

• The Drum covers How to get a B2B podcast in the top 10% of global podcasts - looking at the lessons learnt by The Science of Service Podcast.

Podcast News - with New Podcast Trailers - the podcast

Hidden Mentality is hosted by Rishi Kurada, a college student at NYU, navigating the uncertainty of figuring out what to do in life, with a focus on self-development. The podcast has a new trailer, and delves into the essential life lessons that aren’t often taught in the classroom.

Can this month’s 29th United Nations climate mega-summit keep alive the possibility of stopping global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees C? New podcast TRACK CHANGES will be covering the summit in Azerbaijan; it’s hosted by climate journalist Murray Griffin.