The State of Acast with CEO Ross Adams

Ross Adams: We came up to a lot of resistance in the States when we first launched, and now it's really interesting how people are talking about how dynamic advertising being the standard and you have to be able to do that to attract advertisers. So it was a nice kind of wave that we started in this place ten years ago.

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the latest news in the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate. While there are hundreds of podcast companies operating in the ecosystem, there are very few that operate on a truly global scale.

Some of those companies include Spotify, Apple, Amazon, iTunes. iHeart Sirius XM, and Acast. AcastT represents more than 125,000 podcasts. And by some measurements is one of, if not the largest podcast publisher in the world. Today on the show, we speak with Acast CEO, Ross Adams. Ross has been with the company since 2014 and CEO since 2017.

Today, he chats with us about how Acast scaled as a company and what led to their IPO. What he thinks of the podcast market today and what keeps him up as CEO of a public podcast publisher and platform. He also takes us through some of Acast's acquisitions over the years, including Pippa, Radio Public, and Podchaser.

For more info on Podchaser, make sure to check out our episode with Podchaser CEO Bradley Davis. So let's get to the show.

Hey Ross, how you doing? 

Ross Adams: I'm good. How are you? 

Jeff Umbro: I'm great. I'm very excited to talk to you. 

Ross Adams:Thank you. 

Jeff Umbro: You guys have had a big year. So you have been with the company basically since the beginning. You've been CEO since 2017. Can you walk me through your background and how you got from point A to point B?

Ross Adams: Sure. So my career spans 20 plus years in audio. I first started out in radio in the UK and London. Working for what was called Capital Radio Group, now known as Global Radio. And that was where I learned to cut my teeth on how to sell audio, essentially how to sell airtime. I was then lucky enough back in 2008 to meet a chap called Danielette, who of course is the founder of Spotify.

They were just launching or starting to think about launching Spotify. I joined, I think it was first 30 people in the company there. There was three of us who were. Launching UK and we decided to launch Sweden and UK at the same time. Left Spotify in 2014 and then joined ACOST. I was originally joining as the UK country manager.

So again, it was a Swedish company, gained huge success, signing fantastic shows. I think it was, we signed something like 800 shows in our first year. So all of these shows were manual. So we didn't have a. Open proposition where anyone could join. It was all just manual pitches. Can you give us a little bit of background on what is

Jeff Umbro: Acast?

Just in case somebody doesn't know, because you do have your arms kind of in a lot of different places.

Ross Adams: Acast is a podcasting company. We host, distribute and monetize content for creators. Our revenue is mainly ad revenue. We represent 125, 000 plus creators globally. So we've got people and feet on the ground in like 14, 15 markets.

And we. Selling multiple more markets than that. So we are truly a global podcast company, but an infrastructure company.

Jeff Umbro: It's very cool. And I'm going to ask a bunch of questions about the public part of that. Cause there just aren't that many public podcast companies. Yep. You guys refer to yourself as independent.

And so I just want to define what you mean by that, because you are a huge company that represent a lot of different shows.

Ross Adams: We really care about the open ecosystem and we talk about. Our independence and most of the creators are independent apart from obviously the larger publishers, but that's the beauty of this space.

And so we kind of have our vision and strategy around this open ecosystem and the open ecosystem known as RSS and championing that we believe a show should be able to distribute to as many listening places as we want. And our listeners should be able to listen to a show. In as many areas as they want.

And so we distribute to everything. So we kind of operate from the center as that independent podcast platform. We're not owned by a conglomerate. You know, we are a public company owned by shareholders. Anyone can buy shares in Acast. That's kind of what we mean by independent.

Jeff Umbro: And that's different from Spotify in the sense that Spotify like wants you in their ecosystem on the app so that they can do other things with you and your data and that kind of thing, correct?

Ross Adams: That's it. Podcasting is a strange beast in that it doesn't operate like other media. RSS. It means that you can distribute to any podcast player. So Spotify is a podcast player or a podcatcher, as we call them. They are all about their own walled garden and we're about distributing to as many places as possible.

A listener shouldn't have to be forced to download a specific app to listen to a specific piece of content. We believe it should be in an open ecosystem. You

Jeff Umbro: guys actually did have an app though, up until recently. What was the logic that went into spending years creating that app and then ultimately deciding to sunset that?

Ross Adams: Yeah, that was part of our kind of initial strategy. I don't think many podcast apps had really focused on the user experience and user interface, and we really focused on that. A lot of people really loved our app, but it became kind of a conflict of interest almost. We care about the open ecosystem and distribution, yet we have our own app.

Then we had what we'd called ACAS plus back then, which was our subscription service, but again, only available on the ACAS side. So we were testing these innovations out, but kind of going against what our independence was. It was incredibly confusing for our stakeholders. And those stakeholders really were our investors as well as our podcasters.

So when we would pitch to a podcaster, Their response was, I don't want my show just to be on Acast. And we're like, no, that's not how this space works. And then you speak to investors and they're like, Oh, I've downloaded your app. You're an app company. It's like, no, that's just part of our business. So it became incredibly confusing.

And actually, you know, it was a great data source for us as well to understand consumption data. But we believe we can get that data elsewhere. That's why one of the acquisitions with Podchaser happened. And so for us, we thought, you know what, this is kind of going against our vision and strategy and our independence.

So we decided to sunset it.

Jeff Umbro: So as a host and company, what are the things that keep you up at night?

Ross Adams: It's a good question. I think it's making sure that we continue to produce the right features that creators want. I think RSS is how the podcast industry works. Many have kind of challenged that, you know, some are still challenging that.

I think, you know, YouTube being the kind of latest one that won't accept kind of the, the terms of RSS. What if I challenged that in the early days and then realized they couldn't launch a podcast player without most of the content and accepted the pass through agreement and away we go. So if I look at the things that keep me up at night, it is the distribution side of things.

And. RSS and making sure we maintain that. And then, yeah, of course it's on the hosting side. It's making sure that we provide the best service for our, to our creators.

Jeff Umbro: We actually just last week published an episode with Matt Chappell from the IAB. As a hosting company, how do you feel about the certification process from the IAB and how important is it?

Is it a big deal that Spotify is not doing that? Obviously you don't speak for them, but I'm just curious about your opinion.

Ross Adams: I think what the IAB does is, is great in supporting kind of the, the, and evolving in the way we measure podcasting. I'd love everyone to support that because that's how we operate and that's how advertisers kind of measure their success and measure kind of how they buy shows.

So I don't understand why Spotify have stepped away from supporting that. It doesn't make a lot of sense on my side, but let's see, you know, they said they're going to revisit it. So let's see if they do that, but we fully support IAB and we helped her to continue to evolve the measuring system.

Jeff Umbro: You are a distribution service.

So to start, like what is the difference between a publisher and a distributor?

Ross Adams: It depends by market because, because publishers, we call publishers like BBC a publisher over in the UK, but then publishers are different here. So, uh, for us, you know, distribution wise, you know, we distribute to a web platform that accepts RSS and allows you to play that content and we, we stream accordingly and obviously we use the IRB metrics as our way to consider what is a stream and what is a listen.

That's how we consider distribution.

Jeff Umbro: How much of the stuff that ACAS puts out, do you all own?

Ross Adams: Yeah, for us, it's about the monetization license of that. So we don't own any IP. Okay. It's not been our focus. Again, that goes along with our ethos around independence. We want creators to. Control their content, have freedom of speech, and that's kind of up to them, how they make their content and publish their content.

We are solely the distribution side of things. We can enhance publishing side by doing the likes of BD deals with companies that help you publish and help you make a better show, but that's not in our interest to own IP. You know, for us, it's all about keeping that creator's independence and us monetizing the show for you and sharing in the revenue side of things.

Jeff Umbro: And how do you think about which shows you put those resources behind because you do work with so many different partners? Is there a priority when it comes to scale or content type or something like that?

Ross Adams: Yeah. So I think again, it differs by market, you know, certain markets are more popular in certain kind of divisions and topics, categories, and then they're even more popular in certain categories for advertisers by, by region as well.

So. You know, we have a strategy around what content we want to go after. We have a more manual part of our business called Creator Network, and that's more of our white glove treatment that looks after the larger shows. You'll be dealing with the agents, you'll be dealing with the shows themselves. We've got studios in our offices all around the world.

So we might offer those as part of the deal as well. But then we have kind of an automated pipe as well. So the reason why we can represent 125, 000 is the technology that we've built behind that. And inherently behind the 125, 000 podcast is an audience and that's what the advertiser wants to reach. So it's how we enable the advertiser to reach that audience regardless of size of show.

But we do have certain categories that we might have a lower quantity on and we see more demand in, and then we go after that, and that's more from a manual standpoint, um, when it comes to signing.

Jeff Umbro: Let's talk about advertising. How are you feeling about the ad market in general?

Ross Adams: We feel good. I mean, it's different.

You know, the macro is affecting markets in different pockets around the globe. I'd say Europe's a slightly slower on a macro and it's affecting the advertising side there. Although we're still continuing to grow from strength to strength, the macro is less affecting the US ad market. That's what we showed in Q1 with our results.

So,

Jeff Umbro: yeah,

Ross Adams: you know, we're seeing a tracking quite well on that side with the results we put out in Q1. The macro is more affecting Europe and slightly Asia to a certain extent.

Jeff Umbro: And so, uh, are you worried long term at all about lower CPM in general across the board or in different locations or anything, or do you think that the industry will kind of maintain a standard?

Ross Adams: I think we'll maintain a certain standard, you know, podcasting, especially as the. The likes of the cookie starts to disappear and podcast targeting becomes the same table stakes as other digital media. I think that we will inherently hold our CPMs pretty well. Like every medium over time, the more and more audience that starts to listen, that will put pressure on CPMs to a certain extent, but then I think the new targeting offering that we have enables us to charge up.

higher amount. So I'm still pretty bullish about the CPMs longer term. It will be pressure on them, but it's not as much pressure as other media because we're fairly new medium, albeit we're 20 plus years old, but from an advertising standpoint, we're as old as Acast, which is 10 years old.

Jeff Umbro: I'm glad to hear that you're optimistic.

I would love to keep those CPMs really high. Now, when you are working with advertisers, Acast has a very particular attitude towards things like attribution tracking. How do you feel about attribution tracking?

Ross Adams: I think it's attribution tracking is key to kind of continuing to grow and continuing to hold CPMs.

If you can't prove attribution, then it's going to be inherently difficult to hold CPMs. So we work with most of the attribution companies in market. It's important to us to not create our own solution ourselves attribution. Otherwise, you know, you're measuring your own homework and kind of like, you know, it's really important to have.

An independent person does do that rather than yourself, because that's not what we're about measuring our own work.

Jeff Umbro: I know historically, like some of your shows have charitable access. Some of them do not. You guys are a global player. Like, how do you pay attention to the data privacy because you're operating in so many different places at the same time?

I

Ross Adams: mean, the good thing is we, you know, we were born in Stockholm in 2014. So, We've grown up in Europe and Europe obviously has GDPR and a very stringent rules around tracking capabilities, which is a lot different from the US. Because we've grown up from that from day one, it's been part and parcel of what we do.

So it's part of our DNA in how we think about data, targeting, tracking, etc. That's how we've been working since the day we were born. So it's really part of what we do. We don't think about it in a way that. We suddenly had to think about and introduce it later on, like most companies who are going from the US to the UK, you know, US is kind of replicating what Europe is doing in terms of data protection.

And so we're already prepared for that. So we're in a good spot really.

Jeff Umbro: What was the competition in Europe at that point? Because Spotify was not in podcasting at that point, right?

Ross Adams: No, exactly. So I think the only people that were commercializing podcasts were. I think it was Squarespace and Squarespace has sponsored two shows in the UK and that was it.

And that was just through manually calling them. So we started to sign all the top shows. It was actually, it was a very successful launch, you know, going into the likes of the Financial Times and saying, Hey, you've got 10 podcasts to, do you monetize them? And then like, no, we're about to shut them down because we don't have any commercial model around it.

And Hey, here's the technology that's free and we can monetize them for you. So we were very successful and we gained huge traction. So we're the first to launch and we invented dynamic ad insertion. Now, dynamically inserting advertising into digital content isn't new, but doing it into RSS, into podcasting was new.

So we were the first to do that in real time as well. So we're storing this in the cloud. So we're the first to do that as well. So we really thought about this model and turning this analog medium of podcasting into a digital medium by applying digital metrics, because we wanted to attract those digital ad dollars to it.

So we launched with that, so we essentially launched the European commercial model. Now, over in America, podcasts were being commercialized, but they were being commercialized in a baked in standard way. There was no technology being applied whatsoever. So we launched that, I think two or three years after our launch back in 2017, that was when we started to see traction and we got, you know, we came up to a lot of resistance in the States when we first launched, and now it's really interesting how people are talking about dynamic advertising being the standard and you have to be able to do that.

So. Attract advertisers. So it was a nice kind of wave that we started in this place 10 years ago. So yeah, so I joined as the UKMD. I then was chief revenue officer after 12 months, running globally and helping them launch in new markets like the US. The founders then stepped away and into the board and I became CEO, took over 2017 and so yeah, I've been CEO for almost seven years now, seven years in October, helping with all their funding rounds.

It's been a magical journey. When did ACAS go public? Three years ago next month, actually. And again, that was a really interesting journey because we were out seeking funding, then wonderful COVID hit, um, and changed the world. What was interesting about that of course, was podcasting suddenly had a absolute boom.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. You know,

Ross Adams: people at home thinking about what they can do and podcasting became one of those things. So we fared very well out of that troublesome period. But we needed to, to raise money. We had an injection of cash from some of our owners because obviously they saw the opportunity and, and still believed in this amazing space.

But when we thought about, you know, we need to step up here and, and raise more money for our future. And, um, an IPO seemed to be the best route. Now, IPOs, uh, inherently had never been done during lockdown and not done through a video call scenario.

Jeff Umbro: And there just aren't that many podcast companies that have ever done it either.

Ross Adams: Exactly. So for us, it was a new challenge for the banks and it was a new challenge for us. So this involved 18 video calls a week. I was losing my voice in some of them because you're pitching the same thing over and over and every single call is, Hi, how you doing? And you've got to keep that kind of smile.

And you're sat at your desk in your room at home during COVID and trying to garner interest in your company, a time when inherently most companies are really struggling and we were still growing. So we managed to time it right. We raised 160 million US dollars at our IPO. And so we did very well out of that.

And I think if you look at our cash, you know, based on Q1, we have about 70 plus million. Still in the bank. So we're a very well funded company and I've looked after our cash incredibly well and invested very smartly. It was a really interesting process because obviously we listed at a certain price and then the whole world decided shock and awe, they believed in profits and not necessarily growth anymore.

Well, they believed in profits, then growth. So for us, you know, we'd always focused on profits as part of our company, but we decided to pull that forward as a, as more of our core focus, really watch our cost base, and we made some big calls on that early on and those have paid off. You know, we, we hit profitability last quarter and we're close to hitting it in Q1, Q1 naturally is the lowest advertising quarter of the year.

Um, so that's why, you know, seasonality wise, it is the lowest, but we were minus 4 percent EBITDA margin there. So close to, to break even, but we've been clear to our investors that this year is a full year of profitability for Acast goal.

Jeff Umbro: Wow. Well, good luck. I would love to see it. It's good for everybody.

Random side question. What are your feelings on minimum guarantees? What shows should get them? Which shows? What are the shows where it doesn't make sense?

Ross Adams: It's an interesting one cause, you know, minimum guarantees weren't necessarily a thing prior to some of the larger companies stepping into the space and trying to bid for, you know, gaining an audience share, I know Spotify bid huge amounts for the likes of Joe Rogan.

Then you had other companies reacting to Amazon, you know, bid for the likes of Smartless and others serious with Crooked Media. So there was some large contracts being bid there. And I think a lot of it was really spurred by the U. S. The U. S. is the most fragmented market. So there's many, many players here.

And so therefore it's even more competitive than any other market. So MGs hit their peak, I'd say probably 12 months ago. And then when money, you know, wasn't cheap to borrow anymore. Profits became more of the target for everyone.

Jeff Umbro: What a wild idea. I know, right?

Ross Adams: How, how strange is that to believe? That became obviously a turning point where companies had to really manage their.

Cost based and really think about their investments more smartly.

Jeff Umbro: Now,

Ross Adams: MGs, we didn't really play in, in that MG arena. You know, we had a very good business model. We had a very good track record. We had very good relationships with our creators. So we didn't need to play in that arena. But you did occasionally offer them, right?

We did occasionally. Yeah. And, and, and where it made sense for us. And when you say minimum guarantees, they were minimum guarantees, not maximum guarantees. A lot of people kind of played in that area. So I think that that got, you know, reset, you know, the golden age of producing content whilst the golden age, I still believe we're in that golden age of producing amazing content.

I think the MG side of things started to reset in the past year. Debt problems people had, profit problems people had, investment problems people had in the industry. So naturally you can't make those big bets anymore on content. I do think MGs will still be around though. I think that larger, you know, larger shows, uh, will always gain a certain commercial value.

Inherently in a competitive marketplace. Yeah. So they will exist, but maybe not to the level they did previously.

Jeff Umbro: Well, you said a sure bet, but like, in your opinion, what makes something like a sure thing as opposed to a bet?

Ross Adams: If they've already got a track record and they're already an existing show. Then I think it is easier to make a decision on because you have historical relationships with advertisers, historical audience, and you've maintained that audience or grown that audience over time.

So historically you can look at previous success and then mark the, the, the risk level off that. Now, If you're starting a brand new show, it becomes very, very difficult. You know, you look at some of the investments that the likes of a Spotify made in some of their shows, and they just did not, you know, it's, it's not easy to build a success in podcasting.

Podcasting takes time to build a success. It's different from other social media where. You can't just release a show and it just booms. Like Serial was a very, whilst it was one of those strange ones that did boom from the first episode. They actually launched it on This American Life's RSS feed originally.

So they. Already had a traction of audience to bring across to that show. So it didn't really start from zero. So I think to have overnight success is hard. So yeah. So it's easier to look at a show that already exists than it is to look at a brand new show.

Jeff Umbro: I'm very curious though, if Spotify would say that, well, Spotify has said in some cases that they over invested, but their goal was never to make it like a sustainable ad model, or at least at the time it wasn't, they just wanted people using Spotify because they get money elsewhere.

Ross Adams: And what content could they produce that attracts an audience? And that's kind of their strategy. So, you know, these companies have a different strategy and vision in place. It's not about how many listeners can this exact podcast get. It's more about a bigger picture, which is their core business, which is them as an app business and how many users they can gain, how many users they can maintain.

And so premium content or premium subscribers they have, how can they distribute more content that's exclusive to them to feel that they're getting value for that? So. You know, a lot of these companies had a different mission in place with those big bets they've made. It wasn't just about podcasting in an audience that was monetizable.

You're correct there.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. This is more of a question just out of my own curiosity. I don't know. So what does it feel like to be a non founder CEO? It's an interesting question.

Ross Adams: I think I've always been an entrepreneur since I've been a kid, since I was about 11 years old, starting many businesses. So for me, it was always, and then obviously when, you know, the internet and technology came about, I was always fascinated by how do I become a founder because that's, that's kind of the thing that you aspire to be.

But I think the more I understood about business, the more I understood that actually you don't need to be a founder to impact the vision and strategy and have that feeling of ownership of a business, I think with Acast, you know, we're a technology company. When you join, or at least when I joined, you know, I gained shares in the company as part of my input, but then I was instantly in the management team that decided on the vision and strategy.

I had a very strong vision and strategy for the company. A core focus on the audio market. UK was our biggest market pretty quickly our first year. And so the vision and strategy was built around the UK market and my vision and strategy. You know, I think some of the decisions around the app. Some decisions around, you know, the focus that we had back then versus now is very different.

So I don't feel any different necessarily from a founder. I respect obviously the founders of, of Acast and what they did to help launch it in the first place. It takes a lot of effort to launch a company. Yeah. But I think 10 years later, me being in the CEO seat for now. You know, almost 70 percent of the history of Acast highlights that I don't have that founder imposter syndrome, but a CEO is a very stressful job.

You know, I absolutely love it at Acast. Our culture is incredibly special and we are, we talk about, and I talk about it a huge amount being a number one priority because it is, you know, I want to create a very good place to work because if you have a great vision and strategy, I believe if you're hiring the right people with the right culture, you'll always succeed.

Your vision strategy, if you have a, if you're focused on a vision strategy first, but don't care about the culture and people, I don't believe you're going to succeed. Yeah. We changed that when I took over as a real focus and here we are 10 years later, first profitability and, uh, and yes, I think it's working.

Nice. Congrats. I mean, how many employees are you guys at? Three, I think, close to 400.

Jeff Umbro: That's huge.

Ross Adams: Yeah. So we're a big organization. Yeah. And we're, yeah, we're truly global as well. I've been people in 20 plus countries. So it's our feet on the ground in 14 that we've launched and we have remote workers everywhere.

So

Jeff Umbro: how much time do you spend like actually talking to podcasters every day, as opposed to like running the business, you know, which I know is kind of one in the same.

Ross Adams: Yeah, you've got to, you've got to be feet on the ground and talking to everyone because, you know, when I'm coming up with my team on the new vision and strategy, I've got to have, you know, understand experience and what's changing in the landscape and unless.

And especially here, so now I'm in America. So I moved to America almost two years ago now with my family. I genuinely, like if you think about us and we think about us as our core opportunity and the biggest kind of market in podcasting, you cannot understand the market unless you're spending time with podcasters, advertisers, and creators here on the ground.

So I do speak to, to advertisers, to creators all the time. So I spend my time really between. A lot of internals, um, managing the business, of course, investors. I make sure that every week I am talking to creators and every week I am talking to advertisers and agencies. So I really am understanding what, what the new trends are and what's happening within the space.

Jeff Umbro: Did you guys want Spotify to buy Acast before you IPO'd? Was that ever like part of your roadmap?

Ross Adams: I, for us, we just focused on our vision as a company, right? If someone decides to come along and try and buy you, then that's a shareholder decision.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah.

Ross Adams: I think if you try and shape a company to be bought, then I think, you know, your, your kind of dreams are broken a bit cause it never really happens how you think.

So we've always been focused on building a very sustainable, brilliant company in a big position, a number one position in podcasting. And if we do that, you know, let's be profitable and continue to be independent. If our shareholders decide that someone should buy it, then that's for them to decide what's best for the company.

Jeff Umbro: Spoken like a true global CEO.

But you guys have acquired, by my count, three companies. I want to mention each of them and then ask you like, what's your favorite? From your point of view, what the logic was behind them. So the first I believe was Pippa, which was a hosting platform. Yep. What was the goal there?

Ross Adams: I talked about how we signed, you know, 800 and something shows in the UK in that first year.

You know, that was a huge amount of effort manually reaching out, speaking, pitching to shows, signing them, you know, with contracts, et cetera. That took a lot of time and effort. And I think for us, we understood that there were, burgeoning industry of podcasters and creators out there. And actually the easiest way to do that is to have a open podcast platform where anyone can join.

Anyone can, can sign up and anyone can join our marketplace. So Pippa had already done that. They were an open platform that had great relationships with creators. They replicated our culture. They were a fairly early stage as well, and had two brilliant founders who had founded the company or three founders actually, and Simon, Tim and Irwan were A brilliant team and had a great vision for what they wanted to do.

So for us, rather than changing our entire proposition and making it open and building kind of that, that web presence, it was easier for us to build, to buy and a quicker proposition. Integration takes a long time. We learned a lot of, a lot through that integration, to be honest. I don't think we were, we were as prepared as we probably thought we would be for those, but you learn that through acquisitions, right?

And we successfully integrated that. And then that allowed us to start. Gaining a huge amount of creators joining us in multiple countries. And it also helped us, you know, shape our pathway and where we should launch next based on where the audience and creators were. So that was a great acquisition for us.

And then Radio Public

Jeff Umbro: was the second one.

Ross Adams: That's right. And Radio Public was slightly, slightly different with that one. It was less about the technology and more about the people, but they had a great vision, great experience. Two individuals who we acquired through that acquisition were Matt McDonald, who's our chief product officer today, and CQR, who works now across on the, on the data side is, and both of those guys have probably 30 plus years experience in podcasting between them.

So, you know, they are the OGs of podcasting and, um, incredibly experienced. Again, culturally match our culture is so important. I'm not buying a company that doesn't match our culture. And they really did. Uh, and they helped spur on our vision by adding their vision to it. And they've been brilliant for us.

So we were really pleased with that one.

Jeff Umbro: And then the third, a previous guest of Podcast Perspectives, Bradley Davis's Podchaser. This to me, by the way, feels like the most active of the acquisitions to date in terms of what they're doing out in the world.

Ross Adams: Definitely is. I think Podchaser is an incredible company, again, incredible founders and team behind it.

And I think, you know, we, with our vision for ACoS, we have to live in the future. That's natural. You know, I think data is a huge part of that. You know, we talked about the app earlier on and the data we got from that. We got, you know, we had, um, a certain amount of, uh, listeners on that and subscribers to that app.

If we look at the entire industry and we look at the future of the industry and we look at how the U S is incredibly fragmented, so, you know, if we're trying to, Gain that agency revenue. When I say agency, I mean the group, you know, advertising agencies like a WPP and publicists. You know, if we want them to start bringing revenue into the space, understanding audiences, we need to inherently have a lot more data than just the data we have today.

We have a lot of first party data from 125, 000 podcasts listening across all the ecosystem, but how do we gain more data and how do we Have more data that actually enhances the entire industry rather than enhances just ACoST. So Podchaser was an acquisition we made almost two years ago with Bradley Cole and team.

And for us, what we're looking at with Podchaser is a proposition that has data on, More than 3 million English speaking podcasts out there. We've just launched AI predictive demographics through them. We have Collections Plus, which is how they segment content for us as well. It becomes an incredible DNA brain of podcasting, which is available to the industry.

And a lot of industry players plug into it and share data back and forth within that. I think if we think about the future of podcasting, where it's going, Podchaser plays an inherent role for the industry as well as for ACoS.

Jeff Umbro: I agree with that. We are pretty heavy users of Podchaser Pro and work with the team on all kinds of different stuff.

So I know you're not going to tell us like who your next acquisition is, but like, what are the kinds of companies that you are looking at in terms of like the future of Acast right now?

Ross Adams: I think our ethos around anything to do with the likes of M& A is, uh, test and then do you build or do you buy? You know, I think for us, it's looking at the areas that are of core focus and Do we offer the right tools and technology that is going to answer the, the kind of visions question?

And if we don't have that, how can we partner with best in market? If that works incredibly well, maybe there's a conversation there about M& A, or maybe it's a question about building. So, you know, every case we take separately like that, but like I said, we have 70 plus million, uh, on our cash, which balance, which we, you know, invest wisely.

From an M& A perspective, I think it's, we have to obviously invest our cash wisely. And if there is an opportunity that is something that will help accelerate our vision, then of course that is something we will consider, but right now we're focused on our vision and focus on investing wisely and trying to hit that profitability goal as our first point.

Cool.

Jeff Umbro: You guys just celebrated your 10th anniversary. What is the plan for the next 10 years?

Ross Adams: We really need to continue protecting that RSS ecosystem and championing the open ecosystem. We seem to be the company that, that leads that the most in the industry. US is a core focus for us. We have to continue to grow.

You know, we're number one, pretty much every other country, but the US and whilst audience wise, we're, We're close to being number one. We are a top three player there. We need to continue to grow our audience and continue to grow our revenue. I think if you look at Q1 results, North America grew 48%. It was the biggest market that grew out of all of our markets globally.

So we definitely see the future in the States. And that is a core focus and vision for us, signing the good, the right content and growing in the right way and growing revenue from the agency side. And then of course, profitability, that is, you know, core focus. It's very hard to look at 10 years and think about that, but I, I think I look more about the next three years more than anything, and I think solidifying our position in the U.

1. is core, and then it's looking at the entire podcast space and making sure it grows, U. S. is incredibly fragmented as I said before. I think Podchaser can play a really interesting role in how we can start using that tool as a way to navigate. The space for advertisers who are coming into the space and trying to gain audience.

But, you know, and also podcasting has to grow. I think you look at radio, radio is 90 plus, 95 plus percent of the population. Podcasting on average is probably 30%, 30, 35 percent plus. In the U S how do we get more and more of the population listening to podcasts and that will grow and that will start to grow the entire industry.

But unless we can really understand the audience behind podcasting and do that through the likes of Podchaser, that's kind of the key to kind of success and unlocking the future ad dollars within the space.

Jeff Umbro: That's a great place to end. Really appreciate it. And we'll see you soon. Great.

Ross Adams: Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Ross Adams for joining us on the show. You can find him on LinkedIn and we'll see everybody in a couple of weeks. For more podcast related news, info and takes, you can follow me on Twitter at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podgloberate. If you are looking for help producing, distributing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at thepodglomerate.com.

Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate

Thanks for listening and I will catch you next week.