Several podcast companies have made headlines with fundraising news, and VCs seem ready to keep opening their wallets. TechCrunch monitored some of the recent developments of money funneling into podcast operations and found large leaps in both the number and dollar value of deals made in 2017. The year saw several high-value funding rounds for companies such as Acast, Anchor, Art19, Castbox, and Gimlet Media.
TechCrunch chalked up the spike in investments to the increase in analytics that support the popularity and audience for the audio format, such as Appleās new data tools. In addition, several recent reports have also pointed to the strong advertising potential of the medium. In the past 12 months alone, Nielsen, Westwood One, and Edison Research have released numbers showing the effectiveness of podcast advertising.