Now, Lizzie, we met last week for the first time properly at the City University.
They were doing a wonderful career in podcasting.
You were on the panel and we started to chat a little bit.
I wanted to get you onto PodNews for some very specific reasons.
But one of the big announcements that you made a week ago,
something called interchangeable ad slots.
I wanted to get you on to talk about that.
But before we do, let me just ask you two very quick questions.
Let's position what and who is ACAST.
I always get confused.
You're so broad and so wide.
Where do you and how do you position ACAST yourselves?
Yeah, I mean, I think we are so broad and so wide.
We have many different customer sets and we are many different things to different people.
So sometimes it is really hard to explain.
So if I'm down the pub and someone says, what is ACAST?
I tend to say, well, do you know what a podcast is?
And then once I know what a podcast is, I say, so we essentially host podcasts.
So if you have a podcast, we get it out into the world and across all the listening apps for you.
We help you make money through advertising and through subscriptions from fans.
And then we help you grow that show through lots of different tools and services.
So we essentially host, monetize and grow 92,000 podcasts across the world.
And we work with thousands of advertisers.
And there's pretty much not many countries in the world where we aren't present and doing that.
Yeah. And we'll talk about some of that shortly.
Who would you then say is your biggest competitor?
Well, again, by virtue of the fact that we are across so many parts of the industry,
and as everyone I'm sure knows, the industry is incredibly fragmented.
There's lots of different players doing lots of different parts of what we do.
So actually there's no one big answer to that question.
It entirely depends on when you're looking at hosting.
You know, if you are an independent podcaster, you might be looking at us.
You might be looking at Anchor.
You might be looking at Buzzsprout, Podbean.
Whereas if you're an advertiser looking where to spend your money,
it's entirely different competitors set.
You might be looking at spending, for example, in the UK on our podcast or with Global and DAX.
So there's no one answer to that.
I'm sorry, Sam, I can't encapsulate it for you.
That's fine.
Now, your core revenue generator is from advertising.
You also have Acast Plus, which is your subscription model.
But let's stick with the advertising first.
You announced this thing, as I said, called interchangeable ad slots.
What are interchangeable ad slots?
Absolutely.
So this is quite an involved answer.
But I always like to explain this if I'm talking to the person with the least knowledge in the room.
So forgive me, listeners, if any of this is really obvious.
So when you place adverts in podcasts, so we have the traditional, what we call adverts made by a brand.
They're typically 30 seconds long and they are put against different podcasts all around the world.
And then you have what podcasting is more famous for, which is a sponsorship.
So sometimes people call these host reads.
So that's where you think of your favourite podcaster who's talking to you about the brand in question in their own voice and in their own tone.
OK, so in any one episode, you might have slots available for, let's say, at the start of an episode, you might have two slots marked for two ads, one each.
And then you might have a slot which is marked for one of those host read sponsorships.
So traditionally, that's how podcasts ads have been sold.
Actually, what we did is we innovated a way of automatically being able to detect.
Hang on a minute. A sponsor read hasn't been sold in that sponsor slot today.
So instead of just wasting that slot and not actually putting any message in, we can automatically convert it into an ad slot and put an ad in its place in real time.
So, as I say, it's incredibly involved and it's quite a niche subject.
But what it's done is it has increased our marketplace capacity, so the amount of inventory that we can sell against by over 10 percent in the last few months, which is, you know, in a marketplace as big as ours is incredibly valuable.
And it's also good for podcasters because it means they're potentially making more revenue because we are decreasing the number of slots that go unsold for them.
So that's something that is available to every podcaster on the A Class platform, or is it just available to a few of the top end?
No, we've been testing it with a few to make sure that it's working and it's working so well that we're now rolling it out globally across as many of our podcasters as possible.
They don't actually need to do anything themselves.
This is all sort of work on our end that we're doing to maximise those returns.
Now, one of the things that I have to say, the penny took a while to drop for me.
So I'll be very honest.
Probably two years ago, feels like somewhere in the middle of Covid, A Class announced that they were going to transcribe every podcast.
And at the same time, Amazon announced it and a few other people announced they were transcribing.
We all felt that this was a good thing for people who were hard of hearing.
So they could read the transcription of a podcast and I just thought that's what you were doing.
I thought it was very good, maybe a little expensive.
And then the penny dropped.
I was listening to Matt Deegan talk about it on the Future of Media.
And suddenly somebody said, yeah, well, if you take every transcription and you can then work out that a basketball podcast categorised as basketball was talking about cars for 10 minutes for some strange reason, but they were.
You could see that within the transcription and you could place car ads around that element of the podcast.
And that's when the penny dropped me.
So is that how you were aiming for conversational targeting when you started?
What was the thinking behind it from A Class side?
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's a few things behind it.
First of all, everyone knows that in advertising context is queen.
And as A Class, one of the biggest tenets that we hold dear is we want to always ensure that the listening experience for listeners and the experience for podcasters and for advertisers is as great and authentic as possible.
So when you bring context into podcast advertising, it becomes incredibly powerful.
So you're right.
So in transcribing hundreds and thousands of podcast episodes, our data scientists got to work and suddenly the opportunity for advertisers to capitalise on that was really clear.
So what we've done is we've launched a suite of targeting capabilities for advertisers, which we put under the conversational targeting umbrella.
And what's really exciting about that is advertisers are able to target individual conversations on an episode level and get really granular in where their adverts are appearing.
So traditionally, podcasters categorised into different categories depending on the topic of the show.
So if you have a podcast, let's take Off Menu.
You know, Off Menu, one of the UK's biggest podcasts hosted by two comedians, Ed Gamble and James Acaster, two brilliant comedians, I may say, where they get a celebrity on to talk about their dream meal.
So essentially, that is a category classified as a food podcast and a comedy podcast.
But actually, once you analyse the conversations happening within episodes, the topics that they touch on are so broad that suddenly this opens up that podcast, a whole new spate of advertisers who might traditionally not necessarily consider Off Menu on their hit list.
So the first thing that we launched was IAB category targeting.
So the IAB, one of the great pillars of the podcasting industry around the world, has different categories of subjects which they label a common taxonomy, which helps us all play in the same sort of playing field.
So they have different categories which they can assign to podcasts.
So the first instance, what we've been doing is we transcribe hundreds and thousands of episodes using transcription technology.
Then we use NLP, so natural language processing tech, so things like IBM Watson, also AWS Comprehend, to extract all the metadata from those transcriptions.
And then that can match those with different IAB content categories to therefore actually classify individual episodes of podcasts in different categories.
So this might all sound quite sort of like top line and theory based.
So if I give you a very real example, so last week Off Menu, which is, as we know, a comedy and a food podcast, they had on the best actress in the world today, Florence Pugh, picking her dream meal.
And of course, there was a lot of conversation about food.
There was a lot of comedy. There was a lot of jokes happening.
But naturally, being an actress, she spoke a lot about film.
She spoke a lot about different movies that she's shot, working with different directors.
So actually using IAB category targeting, that episode can be identified as being potentially interesting to film fans, movie fans, and also film and movie brands.
So actually, whereas before we might have just assumed that we'd want to place advertisers targeting food and comedy subjects, we can actually open that up by instantly perhaps serving a Netflix ad or Amazon Prime or for a movie.
So that was really exciting. And that was the first stage in conversational targeting.
Yeah. And I think that's very cool.
The other thing you announced, though, was something called keyword targeting.
And again, I was just trying to understand what's the difference between keyword targeting and conversational targeting?
Yeah. So keyword is even more granular.
So as the name suggests, we're actually looking at individual keywords that are mentioned within an episode.
And a keyword could be just a word like hot or weather or tea, but it could also be an entity.
So it could be a person or a brand.
So then what you can do is you can actually target advertisers can actually target mentions of individual words within episodes so they can get even more granular if there's a particular topic in question they want to target.
So actually, by way of example, again, if we carry on with the episode of Off Menu from last week.
So another part of the conversation, Florence happened to talk about a birthday present that she bought for her grandmother.
So actually, if you were, let's say, a moon pig or a funky pigeon dot com, other birthday card brands are available.
You might actually want to buy out mentions keywords of birthday, for example, because at that moment in time, birthdays are top of mind.
Maybe you're thinking, oh, it's my dad's birthday next week.
What am I going to buy? Lo and behold, a beautiful advert for a birthday card provider is probably going to make you more likely to convert.
So to I.B. category targeting and keyword targeting, they're both parts of conversational targeting.
They're slightly different, but they both have their uses.
So I would say that category targeting allows for more reach, sort of broader targeting, because if you think about it, there's going to be lots of conversations around particular topics.
So brands can go really wide in their targeting in that.
But then with keyword, if they layer on keyword as well, they can get incredibly specific around individual words.
So I think it's just really exciting that the thing that I would say in general about conversational targeting and looking at this episode level targeting in general is
as you and I both know, the podcasting industry is still so young compared to other industries.
And so the potential is incredibly exciting.
We still don't know what we don't know.
And we could actually probably just sit here right now and thinking, OK, well, if we have this at our fingertips in terms of transcription, AI, NLP, we could do this.
So what about if we tried doing this?
And so that's what our data science teams and our tech teams around the world are sort of working on every single day.
Now, you've also recently launched a self-serve platform for podcast advertising.
Tell me more about that.
Yeah. So in the olden days, she says, a few years ago, I'm obviously joking, but previously to spend money on podcasts, the way it's previously been done and is still currently done with a lot of big brands is through media agencies and working with our sales teams.
And that's worked incredibly well.
It continues to work incredibly well.
But actually, what we've been able to do is open up podcast advertising to a whole new subset of brands, smaller brands, small businesses, SMBs, SMEs, as people call them, who can actually have access to our advertising platform themselves.
They can log in.
They can start a podcast campaign for as little as two hundred and fifty dollars.
They can choose their targeting.
They upload their own audio creative.
They set their parameters.
They hit play and away they go.
And they can set up their own advertising campaign in as little as 15 minutes.
So it's really democratizing podcast advertising for anyone, anywhere to use.
And there's also we're seeing a big use case as well from podcasts themselves.
We know podcast advertising is effective.
We also know that you're using it as a channel to grow your own podcast is effective.
So we're actually seeing a lot of podcasters using our self-serve advertising tool to advertise to other podcast listeners and grow their own shows.
So, again, it's incredibly exciting and we're seeing a lot of demand from it, particularly in the US.
Now, talking about US, talking about countries, recently you launched in Spain.
You also had Megan Davis, your international M.D. at Acas, saying that Italy was very important to them in 2023.
So have you launched in Italy yet?
What's Spain like?
And tell me more about your internationalization plans.
Yeah, so one of the beauties of the Acas model is that we can be present in many countries without actually having to have boots on the ground.
So our tech platform, the expertise that we have means that where we see demand and demand generally means where podcast listening is growing and there is demand from listeners to listen to podcasts, then the advertisers tend to follow.
So our international team, Megan and her brilliant team, have been monitoring that demand over the last few years.
And where we see it, we've been signing up podcasts to work with us.
So in Italy, in Spain, we now have a presence in Singapore as well.
And we've started signing and monetizing shows in those regions, which is brilliant because, first of all, obviously, it allows us to work with advertisers in new regions, new countries.
But it also expands our international reach for, let's say, our podcasts in the US or the UK, who might have listens in those regions where we can also monetize them there.
So it's great that we have that agility to be able to speak to that demand wherever it is.
Yeah, you were talking about actually your growth in Asia.
Tell me more about Asia, because that sounds like a really exciting opportunity for Acas.
Yeah, I mean, it's another place, as you say, that podcast listening is just growing exponentially.
So we launched last year.
I think we saw a 21% increase in monthly lessons across Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia in about six months at the back end of last year.
So now we're working with some of the biggest podcasters down there and then in turn matching them with some of the most important advertisers in the region.
And it's just so exciting to just see we are in quite mature markets.
Podcasting has been around in the UK forever and has been very popular forever.
And so it's so exciting to see where other regions are going through that same journey we have and the demand is exploding.
So, Lizzie, that's great news about the growth in the Far East.
But I want to come back closer to home.
Last week, you announced something called the Acast Amplifier in Ireland.
Tell me more about what that program's about.
Yeah, so Acast Amplifier is essentially our incubator program to discover and supercharge new podcasting talent, which we do for a number of reasons.
One, because we truly believe that there is so much great podcasting talent out there which just needs that push to get started and in some time support as well.
And because we want to ensure our network is full of as many different voices as possible.
So we first launched this last year in the UK.
It was incredibly successful for us.
And what happens is anyone who doesn't currently have a podcast can apply.
They can submit their idea, which is then judged by a panel of judges of some of our most well-respected podcasters in the market.
And then the lucky winners, their podcast gets made, they receive a grant, they receive coaching, consultation from us and so on and so forth.
So it was an incredible success in the UK with the podcast that won that called Memories from the Dance Floor, which I recommend you all check out, which is doing incredibly well.
So we have now launched that in Ireland.
So Ireland has long been a very important and successful market for us.
We work with many of the biggest podcasts, most popular and successful podcasts over there.
So we thought it was time to discover some new talent.
So we've launched Acast Amplifier in Ireland, which is now open if anyone is listening and has an idea and is based in Ireland.
I think the applications are open for a few more weeks yet.
And yeah, they could see their show being made, as I say, receive that grant, get all the coaching that they need, receive actual materials as well, equipment from people like Shure.
I'm using one of their microphones today and Focusrite.
So yeah, we really believe in supporting and nurturing new talent wherever we can.
And I'm excited actually to hopefully do this in a few other of our regions as well once we've done it in Ireland.
Yeah, I'm just thinking of all the places we've talked about, it seems very North Hemisphere.
Do you do much in Australia and South America?
Yes, absolutely.
Australia is one of our oldest and most successful markets.
I'm sure Australia is so unique as a region and the team down there have made amazing strides.
They work with all different kinds of podcasters, publishers.
The advertising scene is booming down there.
So, yeah, it's long been a really strong market for us.
The same in New Zealand actually, New Zealand has a real blossoming scene as well.
So we have representation down there as well.
And the same in South America.
We've been in Mexico for a few years now.
We have many lessons across the region, which we monetize.
We have a lot of listening happening.
So that's also seen a lot of growth.
So the short answer is yes.
Now, Lizzie, we mentioned a little while back about Acos Plus and we haven't really touched on that.
Now, one of your most popular shows is Shag, Married and Oid.
Last year, you launched bonus content and exclusive benefits using Acos Plus.
Is that something you're going to be doing more with some of your top end slate podcasts?
Or was that just a touch and see what subscription looks like?
No, absolutely. So we launched Acos Plus a few years ago.
I'd say, was it last year? I don't know.
The years merge into one.
But this is because we believe in helping our podcasters make money in whatever way suits them.
Advertising is perfect for many podcasts.
But you know what, there are some podcasts that prefer either not to have adverts or it doesn't suit their show.
And actually, they have very loyal followings who actively want to support them and will pay,
will support them financially and will pay for things like being able to access bonus content
or in some cases, if they do take ads to listen ad free.
And so in line with what is happening across a lot of the industry, subscriptions are really becoming such a big thing.
So Acos Plus allows podcasts to, as I say, offer ad free listening, bonus content,
special sort of one off series and so on and so forth.
And it's just a way for podcasters to diversify their income streams.
And we actually have some of our biggest podcasters around the world.
You mentioned Shag Mara and Noid, who have a bonus segment called Extra Extra every week for their subscribers.
Mark Marron, one of the biggest and most established podcasters in the world.
He has WTF Plus as well.
One of the most successful Acos Plus we've had is in Ireland with Tommy Hector and Loretta.
And they're doing really well because, as I say, listeners often recognise that actually you get most podcasts for free.
And we're very lucky that ad supported model like podcasting means you're accessing brilliant content for free,
but often they do want to support and they actually are willing to pay for either extra content or perks.
So it's doing really well.
We rolled it out across all of our markets.
And we're seeing some podcasters have real success from it.
So, yeah, we're continuing to innovate with it.
We're continuing to support it.
And now I'm excited to see where it can go.
Yeah, I think subscription is something that yourselves, Apple, Spotify are pushing very hard.
One of my biggest bug bears, and I don't know if you have an answer to this really, is why do consumers have the perception that podcasting should be free?
We pay for music. We pay for films. We pay for books.
But there is this old conception in the marketplace that, oh, yeah, it's just somebody behind the mic and clearly it's free.
Why do I have to pay for podcasting?
Do you have any thoughts?
I mean, I've not actually really thought about it in depth before,
other than having to hold myself back when I see people moaning about podcast ads on Twitter.
And I just want to say some more, do you realise you're getting this for free?
And actually, but no, I do wonder if it's something to do with radio.
So you grow up listening to the radio, you turn on the radio, it's a sense to be free.
Yes, hopefully your parents would have paid for a license if you listen to BBC radio in the UK.
But I wonder if it's a hangover from radio times.
I never used to have to listen to, sorry, pay to listen to Jeff Lloyd and Annabel Port on the Virgin drive time show.
And many people see podcasting as being born out of radio.
So I do wonder if it's a hangover from that, because, of course, these people will spend hours watching YouTube videos and not think twice about the ads that they're getting in between if they haven't paid for premium.
So it's interesting, but I do think the tide is turning.
I think as podcasting grows and as podcasting becomes even more mainstream, I hate it when people say podcasting has just become mainstream, but as it becomes even more mainstream,
I do think that people are beginning to understand a bit about the industry and it's becoming even more professionalised.
Right. So actually, podcasting content nowadays is incredibly professional, much higher quality because people have learned how to make great podcasts.
So I'm thinking the tide is turning, but I do wonder if it's something to do with radio.
What do you think?
Well, I really wish Spotify would be honest and had charged additionally for podcasting.
So the 9.99, 14.99 for music, family subscription.
I wish they'd said, and if you want podcasting, it's another 3.99 or 4.99 or whatever it would have been.
That would have then made podcasting seen as having value because I sometimes suspect I know my daughter uses the family Spotify and then just sees,
oh, you've just added podcasting. Oh, well, that's just another thing that's been added and had no perception of the value that podcasting brought to Spotify.
And so I really wish Spotify had done something with it.
And Apple, certainly the biggest behemoth in the market, can change perception overnight.
I mean, if Apple just suddenly turned around as they do with Apple Music and just simply said all podcasting now is 1.99 or 3.99, it would just change perception.
Now, what would that do for an embryonic industry that's trying to grow its audience?
Would that kill the marketplace where people go, oh, well, I can't be bothered to pay. I'll go and do something else.
I don't know where we are in that balance. Are we too soon to turn on the payment tap?
But I do think that at some point, the big players, yourselves included, need to make that a perception to the user that this isn't free and that there is value.
And as you said, high quality content is being produced, which is very different to what is produced on anchor with somebody with a mic in their bedroom.
But I think, you know, WTF and Shag Married and OID are put in the same box sometimes as the one man band who's editing it themselves.
And there is no perceived difference in value by the consumer because they're consuming it for free every time.
Yeah, I'm not sure I entirely agree with you in the sense that I think that if you just look at the stats in terms of listenership growing,
the money that has been flowing into the space from advertisers and also from in terms of production,
I think the perception of podcasting is definitely different now to what it was five years ago.
And I also think that, you know, RCA always likes to use a phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats.
So actually, I think that I think it's beautiful that a Shag Married and OID can exist in the same podcast feed.
If I open my podcast app next to a podcast I listen to, which is called Big Boys Don't Cry,
which is to chaps who talk about romantic movies every week, who they're not celebrities.
And I found them quite by chance, but I've become just as hooked on their podcasts as I am, let's say, Shag Married and OID or anything else I listen to.
And I think that our industry is so beautiful in that way in that it can really code switch from the big high value names,
the big advertisers right through to people who simply want to make something about something they love.
I'm not sure this is actually answering your original question, but I'm saying that I do think that the perception value is changing.
I think audiences are understanding more. There's a quid pro quo, which is why things like Acas Plus are valuable,
because people I think are starting to get that, OK, I can listen to this podcast with ads,
but if I really don't want to, I can pay £99p, £2, £3 a month and get it without ads because I recognise the work that's been put into it.
So I think as Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart would say in The Rest is Politics, I think I would agree to disagree with you.
OK, let's move on to last couple of points.
You did a deal with Amazon Music talking about removing ads.
You took out thousands of ads from your podcast and did a rev share with Amazon.
What was that all about?
Yeah, so as I said earlier, we are always looking at different ways to generate revenue for our creators.
So it might be through advertising, it might be through Acas Plus, ad free listening, and it might be a hybrid of the two.
So this was something that Amazon wanted to do.
They wanted to work with a few thousand of our podcasters to be able to deliver those podcasts,
ad free to their subscribers on their own podcast app, which is great because it's another way that we are ensuring that we can secure revenue of creators in a different way.
And I think, again, like I've said before, our industry is so young that it's really exciting that we can experiment and we can open up these new pathways all the time for revenue generation.
And this was just another one of those which has worked incredibly well for Amazon and incredibly well for us.
So, yeah, long may it continue.
I think it's important that we continue to innovate and make sure that this industry can stay as sustainable and evolving as brilliantly as it is.
Yeah. And talking about the industry, final point then, you announced or it was announced last week,
the launch of the podcast standards project and Acas were one of the named partners in that.
What is that to you guys?
Yeah. So Acas has long been advocates of what we call open podcasting.
So we believe anyone should be able to listen to any podcast on any app and also therefore those podcasters be able to monetize across any listening app.
So we founded an RSS technology that is very much what we support and what we champion every single day.
So when this working group was first talked about at, I think it was a podcast movement in Dallas last year, of course,
that's something we want to be part of because we want to supercharge the open podcasting ecosystem for everybody.
So when our smart partners, but also in some cases, competitors all want to come together to find a way to ensure that open podcasting remains open and remains strong,
that's naturally something we want to be a part of.
So we're in that working group alongside, as you talked about last week, the different app to different hosting platforms.
And again, it's something I'm really looking forward to seeing how that develops and the strength in numbers that we can put together to evolve open podcasting for as long as it makes sense.
And I'd like to thank you as well.
James and I are putting together a series of networking events for the industry.
These are B2B events called PodNews Live, Manchester and London, the first we announced and also Drinks in London at the podcast show.
Thank you to Acast, who are one of the sponsors of that.
So thank you very much, Lizzie.
It came through your team anyway, if you're not aware of it.
But thank you very much.
Hey, I'm aware of it.
And there's two things I like, which people can probably tell is I like talking about podcasts, so happy to be involved in those events.
And I also like drinking with podcast people.
So more than happy to be involved in your drinks as well.
Thank you, Lizzie. Look, Acast doing amazing things so far.
What's the rest of 23 looking like?
Is there anything that we should be looking forward for Acast?
Yeah, I mean, as we touch on during this chat, we're going to be continuing to innovate, particularly when it comes to our advertising, our marketplace capabilities.
Programmatic, we haven't talked about in detail here, but it is a big thing for us.
And I'm really excited to see how that continues to develop lots more brilliant podcast signings.
In fact, there's one we're about to announce today, which is a big deal.
We're announcing today that we're partnering with Higher Ground for podcast ads, distribution and sales, which is, of course, the production company founded by Michelle and Barack Obama.
So has Michelle Obama's podcast, The Conversations Between Barack and Bruce Springsteen.
And that's really exciting for us. So they're going out in the open ecosystem and working with us on that.
And again, we don't know what we don't know. So who knows in three months time what we'll be announcing.
All I would say is stand by and continue to read pod news and listen to this podcast.
Look at that on message.
On message every time. Now, that does just bring me to a very quick question.
Exclusives. Is that an exclusive to your platform? Are they now going to be only on your platform?
Or going back to what you're saying about the open RSS nature, are they going to be available everywhere?
Actually, that's a good point, because when we say exclusive, it means different to what other partners in the industry might mean exclusive.
All we mean is we have the exclusive rights to distribute and sell that that put those podcasts for advertising.
Usually that's what an exclusive deal means.
Whereas, of course, our podcasts are available and are monetized wherever you listen, whether you listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Google podcasts or Pocket Casts or anywhere else.
Which is the beauty of Acast.
There you go. Lizzy Pollard.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Sam. See you later.
Bye.