Spotify paid (reportedly) over $100m for Joe Rogan's podcast

"Spotify signed an exclusive agreement with comedian Joe Rogan to carry his popular podcast on its audio streaming platform starting Sept. 1, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer. The company is paying more than $100 million for the rights to stream new episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience" and its library going back to 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the deal.
The podcast will be free to all Spotify users, including paid subscribers and people who listen to its ad-supported service. Spotify also will carry video episodes of the podcasts as in-app "vodcasts," the company announced.​
Rogan will maintain full creative control over the show, which features interviews with celebrities and experts on topics such as neuroscience, sports, comedy, health, infectious disease and culture. After the September debut, all prior episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience" will be exclusive to Spotify by the end of the year, per Spotify."
Source:  Mobile Marketer, 20th May 2020

Spotify spent nearly $340m to buy podcasting companies Gimlet and Anchor

"Spotify  doubled down on podcasts last week with a double deal to buy podcast networks Gimlet and Anchor. Those acquisitions were initially undisclosed, but Spotify has quietly confirmed that it spent €300 million, just shy of $340 million, to capture the companies.
That’s according to an SEC filing — hat-tip Recode’s Peter Kafka — which reveals that the transactions were “primarily in cash,” Spotify said. Kafka previously reported that Spotify paid around $200 million for Gimlet, which, if correct, would mean Anchor fetched the remaining $140 million."

Source:  TechCrunch, 14th February 2019

US Podcasting ad revenue exceeded $300m in 2017

"U.S. podcast ad revenue hit an estimated $314 million in 2017, an 86% increase from $169 million in 2016, according to findings from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC made available to Marketing Dive. The report, the IAB's second annual Podcast Revenue Study, forecasts that podcast revenue will reach $659 million by 2020, a 110% increase from 2017.
The preferred type of podcast ad was host-read, which made up two-thirds of podcast ads in 2017. Direct response ads accounted for 64.2% of campaign revenue, with brand awareness ads at 29.2%. Ads integrated or edited into programming made up 58% of the podcast ad inventory in 2017, up from 43.6% in the previous year."

Source:  Marketing Dive, 12th June 2018

35% of the ads on the top 100 podcasts were for 5 companies

"Midroll sells ads for over 200 podcasts, including some of the most popular ones like WTF with Marc Maron and the Bill Simmons Podcast. The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top 100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct marketing variety."

Source:  Stratechery, 7th June 2016

Full FiveThirtyEight piece is here, with more stats