Acast reported second-quarter net sales of SEK 775.6 million on July 23, 2026, up 28% year over year, while the audience metric underpinning that revenue grew just 2%. Average revenue per listen or view climbed 26% to SEK 0.69, the highest figure the Swedish company has recorded in any quarter.

The arithmetic is unusual for a media business in a growth phase. Volume barely moved. Price did almost all of the work.

Acast said listens and views reached 1,120 million in the quarter, against 1,102 million a year earlier. Net sales rose to SEK 775.6 million from SEK 606.7 million. Organic growth, adjusted for currency and acquisitions, came in at 29%, against reported growth of 28%. The gap between the two narrowed sharply from the first quarter, when reported growth of 20% sat well below organic growth of 30%, a difference the company attributed to a much smaller currency headwind in the April to June period.

Price, not volume

Average revenue per listen or view, which Acast abbreviates as ARPLV, has now risen in six of the past eight quarters on the company's own disclosed series: SEK 0.43 in the second and third quarters of 2024, SEK 0.54, SEK 0.48, SEK 0.55, SEK 0.58, SEK 0.66, SEK 0.58 and SEK 0.69. The quarterly pattern is jagged, reflecting seasonality that the company describes as softer in the first quarter and strongest in the fourth.

Asked during the earnings call which levers were moving the metric, chief executive Greg Glenday pointed to inventory utilisation rather than headline rate cards. "The primary levers behind what we're calling average revenue per listen and view, including the HLS views, is sell-through expansion, omni-channel growth, which includes video in the mix, with higher CPMs," Glenday said. He added that the shift traces back to demand composition: "Mostly I can attribute it to more upstream engagement with bigger brand advertisers, pulling more demand into podcasting itself."

Acast does not disclose CPMs, ad load or sell-through rates quarterly. That leaves ARPLV as the only public proxy for monetisation intensity, and it is a blended figure that mixes rate, fill and format.

Glenday was blunt about how the market is discussing pricing. "Nobody's talking about CPMs," he said, describing conversations at industry events during the quarter. "Brands are really, truly thinking about attention and outcomes and much more tangible results."

Where the revenue came from

Europe generated net sales of SEK 398.3 million, up 25% and 26% organically. North America reached SEK 319.3 million, up 34% reported and 37% organically. Other Markets contributed SEK 58.0 million, up 17% reported but only 13% organically.

In absolute terms the two large regions were near-identical contributors. Chief financial officer Anders Hägg put the incremental figures at SEK 79 million for Europe and SEK 81 million for North America. He also framed the organic run rate historically: "That extends a run to six consecutive quarters above 25% organic growth, underlining the consistency of underlying demand."

Contribution profit told a more divergent story. Europe delivered SEK 101.5 million at a 25% contribution margin, up from 24%. North America delivered SEK 40.6 million at 13%, up from 10%. Other Markets slipped to an 11% margin from 13%.

Hägg attributed the persistent European lead to market maturity and sales structure. North America, he said, "reflects North America being a younger, less penetrated market, plus the continued local sales investment needed to win the larger managed service deals in the U.S." On Europe's acceleration, he offered a comparative caveat that the written report does not carry: "In some markets, we had a bit of a softer Q2 last year, which also helps explain some of the strong performance in Q2 at Europe in this year."

Group gross margin came in at 39%, down from 40%, with gross profit of SEK 305.2 million. Acast attributed the softening to product and country mix as North America, which carries a lower margin while scaling, takes a larger share of group revenue.

The metric changed mid-year

From this quarter Acast replaced its listens KPI with listens and views, which now incorporates all IAB-validated listens plus HTTP Live Streaming listens and views. The company said reported numbers currently reflect RSS and HLS consumption, and that it expects to add YouTube by the third-quarter report.

The timing matters for anyone comparing the series. The prior-year comparative of 1,102 million sits on the older basis, which means a metric that has been widened to include a video component still produced only 2% growth. Acast has not published a like-for-like split showing how much of the 1,120 million figure comes from HLS.

Glenday framed the change as an industry alignment exercise rather than a presentational one. "We're excited to be actively working with them on establishing industry standards for HLS measurement, podcast audience consumption that may be either audio or video, or a hybrid of the two," he said, referring to the IAB.

That work has a public counterpart. IAB Tech Lab released version 2.3 of its Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines for public comment on July 21, 2026, two days before Acast reported, extending download and ad-delivery counting rules to video podcast episodes distributed through open RSS feeds and replacing the term listener with podcast consumer. Acast appears on the contributor roster. The draft also defines three separate measurement window types that can produce three different totals from identical server logs, a detail that bears directly on how comparable any cross-platform listen or view figure actually is.

Measurement fragmentation has been a running theme in the channel. Spotify redefined a podcast play as a 30-second listen or view on June 11, 2026, aligning with a definition from the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting.

Video inventory is still small

Acast said more than 180 shows are now enabled for video on Apple Podcasts, publishing more than 1,000 episodes. That compares with 117 shows at the point when Acast ran the first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts on May 13, 2026, with State Farm and T-Mobile as lead brands.

Against a network of more than 140,000 shows, 180 is a rounding error. Glenday said as much when pressed on video pricing. "Video alone is right now still a small percentage of the podcast industry, and from a revenue standpoint, and a small percentage of our revenue," he said, declining to disclose comparative rates while noting that "those blended CPMs will be higher than audio only."

The commercial gap between formats is documented elsewhere in the sector. Audioboom reported audio revenue per thousand downloads of roughly $71 against video rates below half that figure, according to figures cited in coverage of the IAB Tech Lab draft. Whether Apple's HLS environment closes that gap or reproduces it is not yet answerable from Acast's disclosure.

The infrastructure behind the format arrived earlier in the year. Apple announced HLS video podcasts with dynamic ad insertion on February 16, 2026, naming Acast among four launch hosting providers, and Acast activated the distribution in Sweden on April 30, 2026 alongside two video-specialist hires and studio upgrades in Stockholm and Oslo.

Costs, incentives and the profit line

Operating expenses excluding depreciation and amortisation fell 13% in reported terms to SEK 274.7 million, but the prior-year quarter carried SEK 59.1 million of items affecting comparability tied to a chief executive transition and a re-listing. Stripped of those, operating expenses rose 8%.

Hägg attributed a large share of that increase to a mechanical effect rather than a strategic one. "Part of that OpEx growth reflects the increased social security contributions tied to the incentive program driven by the share price rising sharply during the quarter, which is more of a mechanical link and not the change in the underlying cost strategy," he said. He gave the quarterly split directly: "Our quarter one OpEx growth was 2% and in our Q2, it was 8%, so year-to-date, that's 6%." On forward policy, he said Acast "will continue investing in sales and product capacity but at a pace materially slower than revenue growth."

EBITDA reached SEK 57.7 million, a 7% margin, against SEK -43.2 million a year earlier. Operating profit came in at SEK 31.6 million for a 4% margin, against SEK -66.4 million and -11%. Net profit was SEK 27.3 million, versus a loss of SEK 79.7 million. Basic earnings per share moved to SEK 0.15 from SEK -0.44.

One presentational point deserves flagging. Acast's investor deck compares the current quarter's SEK 31.6 million operating profit against SEK -7 million a year ago on one slide, using the adjusted figure, and against SEK -66 million on another slide covering cash flow, using the reported figure. Both are accurate; the improvement is either SEK 38.9 million or SEK 98 million depending on which baseline is applied.

Cash flow from operating activities was SEK 50.1 million, an improvement of SEK 103.5 million year over year. On a rolling twelve-month basis, operating cash flow reached SEK 176 million. Cash and equivalents stood at SEK 629.5 million at June 30, up from SEK 589.3 million at the end of 2025.

Headcount reached 475 full-time employees at the end of June, against 416 a year earlier, plus 28 consultants. Glenday put net additions during the quarter at "15 or so full-time heads."

For the first half, net sales reached SEK 1,420.6 million, up 24% reported and 30% organic. EBITDA of SEK 86.8 million compared with SEK -51.3 million, and adjusted EBITDA rose from SEK 12.5 million to SEK 86.8 million, a near-sevenfold increase that the company describes as nearly 600% growth.

Content and the acquisition ledger

Three signings landed in the quarter. The Washington Post partnered with Acast on two new multi-format shows involving journalists Carolyn Hax, Shane O'Neill and Michelle Singletary. The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast joined under a multi-year deal. The Comment Section with Drew Afualo also moved onto the network.

Glenday was specific about the structure. "These are exclusive deals. They are coming to the Acast network for us to distribute and monetize those shows exclusively, and that's what we do," he said. "They aren't IP or licensing deals. They're coming to us to host."

The company also disclosed two awards in the quarter: a 2026 Peabody Award for Divine Intervention from Acast Creative Studios, the unit formerly known as Wonder Media Network, and a Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting for Pablo Torre Finds Out.

On the balance sheet, the purchase price allocation for Wake Word GmbH, acquired December 19, 2025, was finalised during the period. The fair value of acquired net assets was set at SEK 13.3 million against a preliminary SEK 18.8 million, reducing recognised other operating income by SEK 5.5 million and prompting a retrospective restatement of 2025 comparatives. Wake Word Studios contributed SEK 2.5 million in net sales and SEK -5.3 million in contribution profit to the European segment during the quarter.

Asked whether acquisitions would return as a volume lever given the 2% audience growth, Glenday kept the answer open: "We're opportunistic. I think if it's easier to build it, we'll build it, borrow it, partner, or buy it."

Why this matters for the marketing community

The central figure for media buyers is not the revenue line. It is the divergence between a flat audience base and a 26% rise in revenue per unit of that audience. For advertisers planning podcast budgets, that combination describes a market where the same reach costs meaningfully more than it did a year ago, and where the increase is being driven by demand composition rather than by supply expansion.

The wider spending data is consistent with that reading. Global podcast advertising peaked at $408 million in December 2025, the highest single month in Magellan AI's dataset, and spending grew 32% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 as 1,482 brands entered the channel for the first time. United States podcast ad revenue reached a record $2.9 billion, a rise of more than 17%, according to figures cited by Integral Ad Science.

Confidence in measurement has not kept pace with the money. Only 13% of advertisers confidently use audio attribution tools, according to Bauer Media Audio research, even as 96% plan to maintain or increase audio spend. A separate survey found podcast adoption among marketers at 44.9%, with just 16.8% tracking formal return on investment. Acast's own targeting infrastructure has been built against that gap: the company launched the podcast industry's first pre-bid episode-level targeting integration with Barometer on January 21, 2026.

There is a second consideration for buyers weighing inventory sources. Acast's model keeps ad sales and audience data with the hosting provider rather than the distribution platform, which is the structural distinction between the Apple HLS route and platform-controlled video environments. That distinction determines who reports the numbers a campaign is judged on.

The company reiterated its 2028 EBIT margin target, which sits at 10% under the performance stock unit programme launched on June 15, 2026. The third-quarter report is scheduled for October 28, 2026, and will be the first to include YouTube consumption in the audience metric.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Acast AB, the Stockholm-listed podcast company connecting more than 140,000 shows with more than 4,000 advertisers, with chief executive Greg Glenday presenting from New York and chief financial officer Anders Hägg from Stockholm.

What: Second-quarter 2026 net sales of SEK 775.6 million, up 28% reported and 29% organic; EBITDA of SEK 57.7 million at a 7% margin; operating profit of SEK 31.6 million at a 4% margin; listens and views of 1,120 million, up 2%; and average revenue per listen or view of SEK 0.69, up 26%. The company also replaced its listens KPI with a combined listens and views metric including HLS consumption, and reported more than 180 shows and 1,000 episodes live with video on Apple Podcasts.

When: The interim report covering January 1 to June 30, 2026 was submitted for publication at 07:00 CEST on July 23, 2026, with the results webcast held at 14:00 CET the same day.

Where: Reported across three segments, Europe at SEK 398.3 million, North America at SEK 319.3 million and Other Markets at SEK 58.0 million, from a company operating in 32 markets and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

Why: The results quantify a podcast advertising market where revenue growth is being driven by monetisation intensity rather than audience expansion, at a moment when video inventory, cross-format measurement standards and attribution confidence are all being renegotiated across the channel.