More Podcast Company Acquisitions and Some Links You Should Share with Your Clients

Welcome to the forty-sixth Podcast Perspective from the Podglomerate. The podcast industry is thriving, with dozens of news hooks and hot takes coming every day. With Perspectives, we're aiming to shed the podcast ecosystem in a clear, helpful, and hopefully entertaining way by discussing the latest tips, tricks, and trends.

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Lots of acquisitions again this week – if anyone wants to buy the Podglomerate, I'm all ears.

Speaking of which! I'm told that you need a massive following and fan base to get acquired, so I've started the Podglomerate company page on LinkedIn (follow here). I haven't begun using it yet, but I imagine we'll be doing some fun stuff there (like announcing shows, new job openings, etc).

On to the acquisitions!

Entercom Buys Podcorn

What would someone in 1920 think of that headline?! Entercom was founded, btw, in 1968. Just Googled it. Entercom is the 50+ year old radio giant who has moved into podcasting in recent years with the acquisition of content companies Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Media. Podcorn is a marketplace for podcasters and brands to connect for advertising opportunities.

Podcorn was founded by Agnes Kozera and David Kierzkowski, who had previously founded Famebit – basically a version of Podcorn that catered to YouTuber influencers as opposed to podcast influencers. Famebit was acquired by Google in 2016 for a reported $36M. According to the press release, Kozera and Kierzkowski will continue to lead Podcorn, joining Entercom’s leadership team.

Big picture, Entercom is bullish in the podcast space, which accounted for most of its growth last quarter. The company has making a lot of high profile highers in the space, and has announced that they'll more than double their original podcast output in 2021, a slate which has historically gotten a huge amount of positive critical attention. Podcorn will give the company a way to connect (and profit) off of smaller creators, potentially even as a pipeline for talent acquisition, and a pipeline for smaller advertisers using the platform that may be considering a bigger, more coordinated ad buy across other Entercom properties.

Enjoying Podcast Perspectives? Subscribe to The Podglomerate Newsletter, my weekly email newsletter. Click here to subscribe or connect with me on Twitter.

Podchaser Buys Podrover and Podcharts

Podchaser is a big podcast database combining all kinds of interesting data about podcasts in one place – think IMDB but for podcasts rather than film and TV. They recently launched Podchaser Pro, which sticking with the IMDB (Pro) comparison, is a PR database for podcast creators (think Cision, Muckrack, Meltwater, Podchaser Pro). Podcharts allows you to track podcast charts across multiple platforms, and Podrover does the same thing for podcast reviews.

With this acquisition – terms weren't disclosed – Podchaser will be able to integrate a nice new set of tools into their overall package, and probably pull in some nice easy revenue streams.

Podsights Announces Podsights for Publishers

Podcast attribution software suite Podsights recently acquired Pod.link, and in their first post-acquisition announcement they've launched Podsights for Publishers, which will allow for podcast to website, app, and other podcast attribution. These tools are extremely useful for most digital marketing initiatives and will allow users to see hoe effective their various ad campaigns are, something that's lacking in the industry today.

How Does Chartable Feel About All of this Attribution?

Both Podchaser and Podsights are in their own way kind of falling in the footsteps of Chartable, which has launched a lot of these same features months or weeks prior to these platforms (charts, reviews, and attribution are all available on the site). I have no commentary on this, just something I'm tracking closely.

As for attribution, Chartable recently announced new attribution windows, which you can read up on here (potentially important for you marketers).

More on Gimlet / Reply All

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this as I'm already way over my word count, but for anyone tracking the Reply All / Gimlet story, Nick Quah had a big in depth writeup for Vulture this week. I also encourage you all to read this piece from former Gimlet employee James T. Green, and this one about former Gimlet employee Starlee Kine.

An Omny Data Dump

One of the top questions I get from brand clients is how to measure success? What they mean is "how is my show doing compared to the next guys?" A quick Google will show you a handful of benchmark reports for how well a podcast is doing by download, usually using data reported by hosting provider Libsyn or Transistor.

Well my friends, today we have a new data dump in town courtesy of Omny (which is owned by Triton Digital, which was just sold to iHeart). Enjoy this wonderful blog post for all of your media kits and deck building, and throw a slide in at the end letting your clients know they can subscribe to this newsletter.

BTW, this post was put together by Omny Managin Director Sharon Taylor, who's amazing and a friend of the newsletter. Also read her podcast predictions for 2021 and let her know what you think.

Grab Bag

• The Podcast Academy announced the nominations for their inaugural awards for 'excellence in audio,' the Ambies, which will be streamed live on May 16th.
• Jack Dorsey owned Square (payment processing tools) just bought Tidal (Jay-Z's msuic streaming platform).
• Some fun data from Acast, who is apparently planning for an IPO.

Easy Listening: Dirtbag Diaries

No big explanation here – I love the podcast, which digs into stories about the outdoors. Produced by Duct Tape Then Beer and hosted by outdoor writer Fitz Cahall, it's incredibly well done and seems appropriate as we come into Spring.

Enjoying Podcast Perspectives? Subscribe to The Podglomerate Newsletter, my weekly email newsletter. Click here to subscribe or connect with me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading—see you next week.