Drinking our own champagne: How our own podcast ads fuel growth
When Tom Webster’s article in Sound Profitable was shared in the Acast marketing team’s Slack channel last week, we all felt pretty pleased with ourselves. It makes the point perfectly of why we run what we call “house ads.” Or as Tom affectionately refers to as “drinking your own champagne”—a much more refined idiom than the usual canine tech-bro expression. So I’m stealing that one.
It’s been said a thousand times, but it’s worth saying again: B2B customers are people too. And a lot of people are listening to Acast’s 135,000 shows around the world. In fact, there’s over 1 billion listens each quarter—and we can be certain that a slice of those listeners are decision-makers at brands and agencies looking for new ways to promote their businesses.
Acast launched its self-serve podcast advertising platform in 2022 to democratise the growing marketing opportunity in the space, and bring more brands and advertisers in to invest. That was an inflection point that blew open our total addressable audience for who we can introduce to podcast advertising.
Naturally, if we truly believe podcast ads are the most effective way to engage audiences and drive action, it only makes sense for us to leverage our own ad inventory. After all, why not use the same channel we champion to reach our target audience—potential advertisers—who could benefit from running ads just like we do?
We know it works, too.
Results speak for themselves
Looking back to 2024, we were focused on building awareness and driving sign-ups to our advertising platform, podcast ads were the MVP of our marketing strategy.
The audio ads we ran across our own network delivered over 22% of the sign-ups we received to the platform—a whopping percentage of our marketing efforts that spanned paid social, search, CTV, PR, and organic.
We attributed these sign-ups through a combination of pixel-based attribution via Podscribe (available free-of-charge to all advertisers with Acast), vanity URLs, and a 'How Did You Hear About Us' survey on sign-up. I recommend to all podcast advertisers to ensure you’re measuring success with at least two attribution methods so you have visibility on performance—take the guesswork out of it.
Podcast ads ranked second in lead volume, just behind search engines. But as confirmed by Oxford Road’s Sound of Growth study, audio ads fuel branded search—with an average of 18% of clients’ branded search volume. This makes intuitive sense—you might hear a podcast ad while out on a run, and then search for the brand when you’re back home. Its effect on search is both immediate and sustained, with lasting impact that can extend for weeks beyond the ad campaign. Anecdotally, when our audio ads were paused; we saw a dip in sign-ups across channels—evidence of the power of adding podcasts to a media mix.
Test, learn and iterate
We’ve run a variety of campaigns, testing different creatives, targeting solutions and expanding into new markets and languages including Europe, Nordics, and Asia.
Creative messaging is where we’ve had the most fun—using the medium’s greatest strength to our advantage. For example, as an extension of our ‘Get Closer’ brand campaign making media planning sexy—we produced audio ads with the same messaging to reach hundreds of thousands of listeners in the exact same intimate environment we’re promoting.
We also see great results from more product-focused creative, especially when it comes to promoting a product that’s relatively new, and to a newbie audience who hasn’t taken the plunge into podcast advertising.
In 2025, we’re doubling down on podcast ads as a key channel to reach and influence our target audience—introducing new creatives and campaigns to leverage our own brilliant content. And testing powerful new targeting capabilities like Audience Attributes — a gamechanger for B2B advertising in podcasts.
Podcast listeners: expect to hear exciting new Acast audio creatives on the airwaves soon. And if you’re a marketer, here’s another message to come join us! You’ll be celebrating results with champagne in no time.
When Tom Webster’s article in Sound Profitable was shared in the Acast marketing team’s Slack channel last week, we all felt pretty pleased with ourselves. It makes the point perfectly of why we run what we call “house ads.” Or as Tom affectionately refers to as “drinking your own champagne”—a much more refined idiom than the usual canine tech-bro expression. So I’m stealing that one.
It’s been said a thousand times, but it’s worth saying again: B2B customers are people too. And a lot of people are listening to Acast’s 135,000 shows around the world. In fact, there’s over 1 billion listens each quarter—and we can be certain that a slice of those listeners are decision-makers at brands and agencies looking for new ways to promote their businesses.
Acast launched its self-serve podcast advertising platform in 2022 to democratise the growing marketing opportunity in the space, and bring more brands and advertisers in to invest. That was an inflection point that blew open our total addressable audience for who we can introduce to podcast advertising.
Naturally, if we truly believe podcast ads are the most effective way to engage audiences and drive action, it only makes sense for us to leverage our own ad inventory. After all, why not use the same channel we champion to reach our target audience—potential advertisers—who could benefit from running ads just like we do?
We know it works, too.
Results speak for themselves
Looking back to 2024, we were focused on building awareness and driving sign-ups to our advertising platform, podcast ads were the MVP of our marketing strategy.
The audio ads we ran across our own network delivered over 22% of the sign-ups we received to the platform—a whopping percentage of our marketing efforts that spanned paid social, search, CTV, PR, and organic.
We attributed these sign-ups through a combination of pixel-based attribution via Podscribe (available free-of-charge to all advertisers with Acast), vanity URLs, and a 'How Did You Hear About Us' survey on sign-up. I recommend to all podcast advertisers to ensure you’re measuring success with at least two attribution methods so you have visibility on performance—take the guesswork out of it.
Podcast ads ranked second in lead volume, just behind search engines. But as confirmed by Oxford Road’s Sound of Growth study, audio ads fuel branded search—with an average of 18% of clients’ branded search volume. This makes intuitive sense—you might hear a podcast ad while out on a run, and then search for the brand when you’re back home. Its effect on search is both immediate and sustained, with lasting impact that can extend for weeks beyond the ad campaign. Anecdotally, when our audio ads were paused; we saw a dip in sign-ups across channels—evidence of the power of adding podcasts to a media mix.
Test, learn and iterate
We’ve run a variety of campaigns, testing different creatives, targeting solutions and expanding into new markets and languages including Europe, Nordics, and Asia.
Creative messaging is where we’ve had the most fun—using the medium’s greatest strength to our advantage. For example, as an extension of our ‘Get Closer’ brand campaign making media planning sexy—we produced audio ads with the same messaging to reach hundreds of thousands of listeners in the exact same intimate environment we’re promoting.
We also see great results from more product-focused creative, especially when it comes to promoting a product that’s relatively new, and to a newbie audience who hasn’t taken the plunge into podcast advertising.
In 2025, we’re doubling down on podcast ads as a key channel to reach and influence our target audience—introducing new creatives and campaigns to leverage our own brilliant content. And testing powerful new targeting capabilities like Audience Attributes — a gamechanger for B2B advertising in podcasts.
Podcast listeners: expect to hear exciting new Acast audio creatives on the airwaves soon. And if you’re a marketer, here’s another message to come join us! You’ll be celebrating results with champagne in no time.
