Today Podchaser - the podcast industry’s intelligence engine - announces the launch of a groundbreaking AI-powered capability to allow advertisers to expand their reach in podcasting and refine their targeting further than ever before. Podchaser’s Collections+ has been developed and tested with Acast, and is now being made available to any hosting provider, ad platform or marketplace in the industry looking to enhance its own targeting offering for advertisers.  

With Collections+, data on podcasts and their audiences is pulled from the widest range of sources across podcasting - including the hosting platform’s own data, Podchaser’s first-party data, Apple Podcasts and Spotify category and chart data, IAB categories, surveys and transcriptions. The data is then synthesized using AI models, sorting podcasts into verticals based on all available data points. This creates the highest-quality collections for advertisers to target against in the industry, replacing the traditional method, where podcasts are categorized manually into groups which advertisers then choose to buy against for their campaigns.  

Bradley Davis, CEO at Podchaser said: “We’re turning what was once the art of podcast buying into a true science using everyone’s best friend, AI. By combining Podchaser’s position as the industry’s intelligence engine with Acast’s decade of deep experience in packaging podcasts to help advertisers reach valuable audiences, we’ve been able to create the highest-quality collections in the industry which go beyond simple manual human classification. As audience-first buying becomes increasingly important, and more and more dollars flow into brand campaigns, we’re optimizing ad planning for everyone. Advertisers are empowered to plan smarter campaigns and we’re enabling more podcasters to earn more revenue. Most importantly, this data technique is being made available to the whole industry to use, to improve podcasting for all.”  

Data shows that 44% of US podcast advertising investment lands with the top 500 shows. But these shows only account for 12% of monthly reach, which means advertisers are missing the opportunity to target nearly 88% of the addressable podcast audience. Collections+ benefits all parties in podcasting: for advertisers it brings more scale, increased longevity of creatives, better campaign diversity and increased effectiveness. For podcasters, it means greater discoverability amongst advertisers, increased chance of revenue and more shows monetized.  

For example, a podcast may present itself as focusing on travel, but through Collections+ Podchaser can deduce that episodes veer heavily into discussions around, say, mental health as well as self-development, allowing that show to be included in more relevant sales verticals, making the podcast more discoverable to advertisers and attracting even more relevant advertising to engaged audiences than before.  

At Acast, Collections+ has already seen uptake from a large number of brands including several Fortune 500 companies, and has enabled Acast to monetize 5% more shows in the first seven weeks of testing. For advertisers buying through Acast, the capability is available in all markets at no additional cost - whether bought through Acast’s sales teams, programmatically or via Acast’s self-serve advertising platform.  

Collections+ is available now for any podcast hosting or ad platform - contact [email protected] for more information