Independent podcasting company Acast struck a new partnership with TED Audio Collective to be the exclusive ad sales, hosting and distribution partner for the brand.
The TED Audio Collective includes 26 podcasts in business, tech, health and wellness, and other genres, with popular titles including TED Talks Daily, How to be a Better Human, TED Business, TED en Español and more. The network has 176 million listens globally each year.
The partnership, which will see the podcast widely distributed, applies to all regions except Australia and New Zealand. The TED Audio Collective was previously with PRX, and remains with ARN in Australia and New Zealand.
“We’ve had a relationship with Ted for a while internationally. We represented some of their sales internationally, and now to have a global deal with them is really exciting,” Acast CEO Ross Adams said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “They want to grow globally and really, truly have a stance from a global standpoint, not just from a kind of American standpoint, and we do exactly that.”
“At TED, we are dedicated to discovering, debating and spreading ideas that spark conversation across our global network,” said Alan Seiffert, head of global business development at TED. “With Acast’s leading ad tech tools and partnerships, we’re confident that this partnership will help to continue to scale the TED Audio Collective around the world.”
Adams added that the categories in the TED Audio Collective, including business, tech, health and wellness, are high-demand areas for advertisers and stand to help Acast grow its monetizable listens. In Q3, the company saw a 31 percent increase in monetizable listens over the same period last year, with more than one billion listens to Acast podcasts.
The company, which operates worldwide but is headquartered in Stockholm, has 135,000 podcasts, 2,700 advertisers, and one billion quarterly listens, which are monetized across any podcasting app or other listening platform.
