Acast, the world’s largest independent podcast company, today launched Audience Segments on its self-serve podcast advertising platform. The new capability enables advertisers booking campaigns through the self-serve platform to target listeners based on Nielsen Audience Segments across Acast’s more than 92,000 podcasts.  

Available now to advertisers in the US, Canada, and Australia, Audience Segments marks Acast’s commitment to democratizing the podcast advertising industry by bringing professional-level features to brands of all sizes and levels of the podcast buying experience.

“We built our self-serve advertising platform as a response to the market demand from advertisers and have continued to innovate in ways that keep their needs central to the product,” said Niklas Lagerberg, Product Manager at Acast. “We’ve seen not just more advertisers, but more experienced advertisers booking podcast campaigns through the self-serve platform. These seasoned marketers expect the same experience that they receive when working with the Acast sales team: efficient buying and accurate audience targeting at scale. Audience Segments brings this first-class experience to the self-serve platform by enabling more accurate audience targeting at the moment of ad injection.”

Acast introduced its self-serve advertising platform in November of last year and since launch, the platform has continued to expand to fit the needs of its growing client base. Throughout that growth, Acast has worked with advertisers of varying sizes and levels of experience in podcast advertising to meet needs across the marketing funnel. From small and medium sized businesses eager to increase brand awareness to household name brands leveraging podcasts to drive purchases, Acast’s self-serve advertising platform has proved to be a valuable marketing tool.

One of those brands to leverage Acast’s self-serve advertising platform was Tortoise Media, which booked a campaign to promote their own slate of podcasts across content categories including the Curious Thinkers collection as well as News and Politics.

“As a media brand, we knew podcast advertising would be a seamless inclusion to our media mix. What we didn’t know was just how easy Acast’s self-serve platform would be to book the campaign, identify our target audiences, and measure the results,” said Claudia Collins, Head of Marketing and Membership at Tortoise Media. “Even though we were booking our own campaign, the Acast team was there to answer any questions we had so we never felt alone in the process.”

Previously, advertisers booking campaigns through Acast’s self-serve platform could only target podcasts by listener demographics, location, and show content category. Leveraging Nielsen Audience Segments and extensive insights, Acast’s Audience Segments targeting feature provides an extra layer of intelligence to its self-serve platform. This effectively enables brands to target listeners within specific segment categories including Business Leaders, High Income Earners, Tech Enthusiasts, Travelers, Parents, Pet Owners, and more.

Similarly to working with a dedicated sales team, Acast’s self-serve advertising platform allows advertisers to effectively measure their campaign performance at every step of the conversion funnel. Acast works with third party vendors including Podsights, ArtsAI, Claritas, Veritonic, and others to enable pixel-based solutions for impression tracking, verification, brand uplift, attribution, and more. 

To learn more about how Audience Segments on Acast’s self-serve advertising platform can improve your brand campaign, please visit https://advertise.acast.com/self-serve.