Acast, the world’s largest independent podcast company, today announced the continued expansion of its self-serve podcast advertising platform with real-time campaign planning tools for both advertisers and podcasters. 

This latest innovation from Acast focuses on improving efficiencies in the media planning process by allowing advertisers to see up-to-date inventory availability for host-read sponsorship campaigns. Through a new feature called Availability Calendar, advertisers can now see all of the host-read sponsorship inventory available across Acast’s entire marketplace at that exact moment as well as the price of each podcast to ensure that it fits their campaign budget. This increased transparency significantly reduces the time that it currently takes advertisers to plan and book host-read sponsorship campaigns as well as makes it easier to distribute ad spend across multiple podcasts at the same time. 

“Globally, podcast ad spend is inadequately distributed to the largest shows, but by improving planning and discoverability tools for advertisers, Acast is increasing the scalability of the more than 100,000 shows on our network”, says Ross Adams, CEO at Acast.

These new tools also give podcasters more control over their monetization potential through the recently launched AdCollab feature. Within the AdCollab creator portal, podcasters can now instantly see a list of all of the brands that are interested in working with them. The portal also now enables podcasters to instantly accept or reject brand proposals and allows them to connect directly with advertisers to immediately begin planning the production. With this improved visibility, podcasters can easily identify and act on more opportunities to earn money and grow from their craft.

These real-time media planning and collaboration tools follow a series of innovations to Acast’s self-serve advertising platform since launching last year. In June, Acast made host-read sponsorships available on the platform, which provided advertisers access to the largest marketplace of podcast influencers. Soon after, Acast announced AdCollab, which enabled advertiser and podcaster collaboration for the first time. AdCollab also introduced automation into the host-read sponsorship buying process and has effectively reduced the time to book host-read campaigns by 85%. 

“We continue to create efficiency through development of scalable sales channels. In launching our self-serve advertising platform and bringing AdCollab to market, Acast has made it easier than ever to book and produce podcast advertising campaigns”, says Ross Adams, CEO at Acast.

Since launching in November of last year, Acast’s self-serve podcast advertising platform has grown to service organizations of various sizes and industries, from small and medium sized businesses, to household brand names, and even to podcasters themselves. In that time, nearly 40% of advertisers booked repeat campaigns.