Listen Up! Why Revolution Ventures is Investing in Indianapolis-based Casted
By Revolution Ventures Managing Partner David Golden and VP Alex Shtarkman
As voracious consumers of podcasting content, we could not be more excited to announce our investment in Indianapolis-based Casted, a company reinventing the traditional digital content marketing playbook. Casted leverages audio and video podcasting as the core of an innovative Amplified Marketing Platform enabling B2B enterprises to drive brand awareness, thought-leadership, sales lead generation, and customer engagement strategies. Their customers include PayPal, HubSpot, Drift, and ZoomInfo, among many others, and their platform is the system of record for Salesforce’s 25+ podcasting shows worldwide.
We have been paying close attention to the rapid evolution of podcasting — both its impacts on consumer behavior and its strong use case in B2B. As short-form media consumption and the effectiveness of influencer-style marketing have increased, and as enterprises continue to search for better customer acquisition and engagement channels, podcasting has been fueled to a multi-billion-dollar category with nearly 2M shows hosted in 2020¹. The pandemic has only accelerated these trends with increasing Zoom fatigue and the search for additional forms of entertainment accessible from home. In a recent study by Spotify and WARC, data suggests that ~30% of time spent online since the start of COVID is characterized by audio streaming with ~29% of consumers listening to podcasts more frequently due to the pandemic².
Not only has listenership increased, but engagement with brands via audio content is higher: ~60% of consumers pay more attention to audio-delivered ads and brand mentions with on average ~16% higher engagement and ~12% higher memory encoding. These trends also hold true for B2B content — business decision-makers listen to podcasts for over one hour per day on average (52% longer than an average consumer) and are ~29% more likely to view podcast advertisements and sponsored content as a strong source of brand discovery².
Yet, producing podcasting audio and video content is a time-intensive exercise, and most organizations today self-publish their content in a silo, cobbling together point solutions. As a result, they lack the ability to extract valuable engagement metrics, integrate content and data with their existing marketing / CRM technology stacks, or effectively atomize and recycle their content in a highly engaging manner across marketing channels. Casted, with its category-defining platform, is the first to help B2B marketers accelerate a digital transformation in their businesses and shift to audio and video content to build more authentic relationships with their customers and followers. Casted enables its users to easily: publish (hosting and syndication); access (transcription, tagging, content search, deep integrations); amplify (content atomizing and cross-channel distribution, SEO optimization); and attribute (metrics, data, and AI insights) across all of their audio and video digital content, all in one easy to use, self-serve platform.
We got to know Lindsay Tjepkema, Co-Founder and CEO of Casted, along with her two co-founders Zachary Ballenger (Sales & GTM) and Adam Patarino (Product & Technology), entirely over Zoom over the past six months, a new reality for our team (and we look forward to discovering just how tall members of senior management really are when we get to meet in person). Lindsay, her co-founders, and team are rock stars with a rare passion, unique product, and category-defining vision of Amplified Marketing. Their headquarters in Indianapolis is notable as the city is a recognized martech hub and the SaaS capital of the Midwest, which strongly aligns with our underlying approach of investing in disruptive startups across the country. We are honored and excited to be on this journey with Casted and look forward to building a category-defining platform for B2B audio and video content. Stay tuned!
[1] Podcast Insights: 2021 Podcast Stats & Facts
[2] Spotify and WARC: Changing Channels in B2B
