ARN reveals two new podcast partnerships, fresh data for May

Australian Radio Network’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia has announced two new commercial partnerships with leading podcast creators Audioboom and Kast Media.

Under the new deals, the iHeartPodcast Network has added titles from Kast Media including On Purpose with Jay Shetty, The Fighter & The Kid and Impaulsive with Logan Paul.

New titles from Audioboom include Casefile, No Such Thing As A Fish, The Totally Football Show and F1: Beyond The Grid.

These popular podcasts increase the content diversity across the Entertainment, True Crime and Sports categories for the podcast network and bring new commercial opportunities for clients.

On the two new partnerships, ARN’s head of commercial audio & podcasts, Corey Layton said: “ARN continues to dominate the podcast space, and these new partnerships with Audioboom and Kast Media will further extend and diversify our offering, giving brands access to some of the world’s most compelling and popular content.”

The announcement comes as ARN releases new podcast listener data for May with leading podcast technology provider Megaphone.

Again showing growth month on month, the data captured for May shows strong audience growth with an increase of 6% compared to April.

Overall, listening on the iHeartPodcast Network from when the pandemic was declared (mid-March to May) is up 22% compared to listening pre-pandemic (January to mid-March 2020).

Growth in genre listening also shows an increase in listening across May.

Comedy and Catch-up Radio had the biggest increase in listeners with each category up by 33%, listeners for the Business and Finance categories up 17%, while Entertainment and Lifestyle continued as the most popular podcast category overall.

“May was ARN’s strongest month for audience growth this year, as we continue to see more and more people turning to podcasts for entertainment, education and escapism,” Layton said.