Spotify has announced the acquisitions of two podcast technology companies, Podsights and Chartable. While the former is a leading podcast advertising measurement service that helps advertisers measure and scale their podcast advertising, the latter is a podcast analytics platform that enables publishers to know and grow their podcast audiences through promotional attribution and audience insight tools.

Measurement and attribution are two major challenges for podcast advertisers. Spotify plans to solve this pain point through the acquisition of Podsights. The company will be able to help advertisers understand how podcast ads drive actions that matter to their businesses. With the acquisition of Chartable, Spotify will be enhancing Megaphone’s suite of tools with the integration of Chartable’s audience insights and help publishers grow their businesses with robust insights and promotional tools.

While these solutions add value, it will be awkward for Spotify to be perceived as a neutral platform. According to Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable, a weekly newsletter about adtech in podcasting, “Third-party analytics and attribution are critical to a growing advertising ecosystem. In podcasting, Chartable and Podsights were two of the three core providers that helped drive that point home. Spotify has bought great technology and acquired an all-star technical and sales talent, but these companies are no longer third party solutions due to Spotify’s role as a publisher, hosting platform, and ad seller.”

According to eMarketer, annual U.S. digital audio advertising revenue is poised to grow to nearly $8 billion—and of that, $2.7 billion for podcast advertising alone—by 2025. Spotify believes that the next step to unlocking this growth is demonstrating audio advertising’s impact through innovations in measurement and attribution for advertisers and audience insights for publishers.

Additional reading:
A Q&A with Khurrum Malik (Head – Advertising Business Marketing, Spotify) and Sean Creeley (Podsights’ Founder and CEO)
Blog posts: Chartable | Podsights