Acast has launched Sponsored Stories globally to provide advertisers with longer ad spots across its platform.
The new ad offering, which has also launched in Australia and New Zealand, is available exclusively through the Acast Marketplace.
Sponsored Stories can run from 90 seconds to four minutes, giving advertisers longer spots and therefore a greater share of voice within ad breaks.
Sponsored Stories act like traditional Acast ads and sponsorships in that they are dynamically inserted in ad breaks across a show’s entire back catalog, unlike branded segments which are baked into specific podcast episodes.
Sponsored Stories are available to buy across any of the network’s global portfolio of more than 25,000 shows.
“Podcast advertising here in Australia and in New Zealand is growing, with significant demand from brands to advertise within the unique audio environment that podcasting provides,” says Tom Roach, Acast AUNZ creative strategy lead.
“By introducing Sponsored Stories, we’re allowing our podcasters and the brands they choose to work with even more space to be creative — to do something a little different to the traditional sponsorship read — while at the same time creating an immersive experience for the listener.
“Many of our publishers and independent podcasters don’t have the resources to create large scale branded content campaigns, so this product also gives them an opportunity to work with brands on creative executions with high production values.”
Sponsored Stories has already been adopted by the Department for Education in the UK which ran a campaign to promote its Get Into Teaching program.
The department sponsored the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, with the hosts talking to teachers at different stages in their careers about why it’s such a rewarding profession.
Acast claims that the partnership has led to more than 70% of the department’s target audience agreeing that teaching is a career for people like them — the campaign’s main objective.
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