Spotify doubled down on podcasting—and it’s working.
Techcrunch called last year a “breakout year for Spotify’s podcasting efforts,” and hell, it’s certainly not wrong. In February, the company announced plans to bet big on podcasting with its $300 million acquisition of Gimlet Media and Anchor.
Spotify set itself up for success in every way it could. The company redesigned its app to be podcast-friendly, and it bought two of the leading podcast production companies (the aforementioned Gimlet, as well as Parcast) and one of the leading production tools (Anchor).
Now, Spotify has announced the next step to its podcasting plan:
Turns out the powers that be at Spotify aren’t just doing this because they’re, like, super into podcasts, bro. They’re also super into money.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the company unveiled Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), its brand-spankin’-new proprietary podcast ad tech for Spotify Podcast Ads. SAI will allow podcasters and advertisers to access key data like ad impressions, demographics, and frequency reach—for the first time ever. SAI will only be available to Spotify original and exclusive shows, initially.
theCLIKK’s Take: Spotify might be the company that finally democratizes the monetization of a podcast, a luxury that has been reserved for only the most popular podcasts. And, perhaps more importantly, will Spotify’s Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) technology be the pre-cursor for a self-serve podcast ad platform? We hope so. Either way, if your podcast isn’t on Spotify, it might be time to remedy that.
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