Adelicious and Audioboom: How ‘good synergies’ led to an ‘incredibly straightforward’ merger

The Media Leader interview

In July, Audioboom acquired Adelicious in a deal valued at up to £10m. Whilst the compatibility of this purchase may seem obvious, Craig Eastwood, Audioboom’s new vice president international, reveals just how seamless it has been.

Audioboom is a global podcast publisher, and Adelicious is a platform which connects podcasts to advertisers. Adelicious has now become the UK-facing part of the global business following the acquisition.

As part of the merger, Eastwood, the commercial operations director at Adelicious since 2022, was appointed to his new role at Audioboom. He has been with the business since its launch in 2020.

Reflecting on the differences between the jobs, Eastwood says: “At Adelicious, I was there from day one, and working in a startup, I did lots of different things. Audioboom is a much more defined role.”

Eastwood says that in this new position, he works explicitly on all markets except the UK and the US, focusing on expansion in those markets and on growing programmatic partnerships.

Audioboom has a presence in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and South America.

Speaking to how he is settling into the new position, Eastwood says: “It’s nice to be able to focus on one job and know what my aims are rather than being spread thinly across a lot of things.”

The power of two

Adelicious’s success in the UK market caught Audioboom’s eye. Even though Audioboo is a UK company, its primary market is the US, where it ranks as the fifth-largest podcast publisher.

Eastwood says: “The two companies have different strengths —  but there were good synergies.”

For instance, baked-in host reads are bread and butter for Audioboom, whereas Adelicious’s strength lies in its access to different agencies.

“The two teams together were a really strong partnership,” Eastwood adds.

In answering why now was the right time, Eastwood points to Adelicious’s rapid growth and how it “made sense to have the support of a bigger company.”

Meanwhile, the process of merging, whilst Eastwood admits has taken “a lot of work internally,” was “pretty seamless” and “incredibly straightforward.”

In terms of the reaction from advertisers, Eastwood underlines the streamlining of processes as a point of relief.

He says: “Advertisers and agencies are really pleased with it — it’s one less person for them to speak to, one contact covers two joint networks.”

What’s more, there is increased opportunity for advertisers, with Audioboom’s team’s expertise in selling video, and Adelicious’ team’s knowledge on branding segments, and integrated campaigns — a complementary combination.

The rise of the influencer and video

Audioboom’s focus on video will be a formative part of the strategy moving forward, as evidenced by its partnership with Spotify.

“Publishing video podcasts on Spotify helps growth for podcasters on Spotify,” Eastwood explains.

However, discussing the rise of podcast viewing on YouTube and how this fares against video on Spotify, Eastwood underlines how Audioboom is also selling across YouTube.

He outlines: “The strategy is making shows available in as many places to as many people as possible and making that deliverable to advertisers to maximise the reach of any campaign.

“It’s definitely a younger audience thing watching podcasts on YouTube, but Spotify is investing in challenging that.”

Eastwood also highlights the growing “influencer” trend around podcasts.

“Going back six years, you could be someone with very little status in terms of celebrity, and you could grow one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

“Now it’s the case that when a podcast is launched, if there isn’t a celebrity or established influencer associated with it, it becomes extremely difficult to launch a successful podcast that advertisers are keen to be involved in, unless it’s very niche.”

Measure to scale

Moving on to measurement, Eastwood highlights the importance of “using what is already available”, referencing attribution methods that can track consumers’ journey from hearing the ad to the advertiser’s website and to the final purchase.

Eastwood also points to uplift studies, but outlines the “vast majority in the UK don’t do that, even when it’s available, because it takes work on the advertiser’s side to add pixels and they don’t really want to do that.”

However, the consequences of this are clear, especially compared to America, where the UK’s per capita spend on podcasting is five times lower than in the US.

“That’s because American advertisers see the value of it because they do that tracking,” says Eastwood.

Problematic or programmatic?

Despite the value of the targeting options it provides, Eastwood points out an important caveat to programmatic.

He says, “Wastage can be a good thing.

“If you’re doing that targeting, then you’re not speaking to the people who might not be in the market for your product today, but they could be next month.

“If you’re voting so much on programmatic targeting, that can really reduce the effect of your marketing.”

Instead, Eastwood votes for a “good mix” of programmatic, host reads, and baked-in ads.

“Where possible, you should be doing as much of a mix as possible to reach people and give them different messaging, but still have that consistent tone,” says Eastwood.

The growth trajectory

The next steps for Eastwood and Audioboom will be to grow sales through acquiring locally in different markets or partnering with third parties.

“My responsibility is to work out what works best in different countries, and it will vary by market,” says Eastwood.

Audioboom will also be looking to expand its shows into different languages, with Spain and Germany among the markets of particular interest.

Coming to the numbers — it’s crunch time — with Adelicious having 25m downloads a month and Audioboom having 100m, the combination is 125m.

Eastwood explains how they will be looking to push this higher: “Growing that number further is a priority.”