Acast runs first video ads on Apple Podcasts with State Farm and T-Mobile
Acast today launched the first integrated video ad campaigns on Apple Podcasts, with State Farm and T-Mobile as the lead brands using Apple HLS technology.
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Acast yesterday announced the launch of the first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts, with State Farm and T-Mobile as the inaugural brand partners. The announcement, made on May 13, 2026, marks the moment Apple's HTTP Live Streaming video infrastructure moves from a structural capability into a commercially active advertising channel, with real campaigns, real budgets, and measurable reach data attached.
The scale of the initial deployment is notable. According to Acast, 117 shows have already enabled its Apple HLS video integration, with more than 1,000 video episodes published to a global audience. The top five markets by audience are the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Those numbers position this not as a limited pilot but as a live commercial product operating across multiple territories from day one.
The HLS infrastructure underneath it all
To understand what Acast is selling, it helps to understand the technical architecture. Apple's HLS protocol - HTTP Live Streaming - delivers content in small adaptive segments rather than as static files. The system adjusts video quality in real time based on available bandwidth, which makes it particularly suited to mobile consumption where network conditions shift constantly. Listeners on Apple Podcasts can switch between audio and video modes within the app, move to full horizontal display, and download episodes for offline use.
The critical distinction from platforms like YouTube or Spotify is what happens to advertising control. When creators publish to YouTube, the platform takes over advertising inventory. The HLS model within Apple Podcasts, by contrast, maintains the open RSS architecture that has defined podcasting since its origins, preserving publisher and hosting-provider control over audiences, ad sales, and measurement. As PPC Land reported in February 2026, Apple confirmed at launch that it would not charge hosting providers or creators for distribution but would instead charge ad networks an impression-based fee for delivering dynamic ads in the HLS environment.
Apple named four hosting providers at its February 2026 launch: Acast, ART19 (an Amazon company), Triton's Omny Studio, and SiriusXM - including SiriusXM Media, AdsWizz, and Simplecast. Acast entered the integration carrying more shows than any other provider, according to the company. That positioning as a lead launch partner carries commercial weight because the scale of inventory available from the outset determines how quickly advertisers can plan and execute campaigns at meaningful reach.
From Sweden to global campaigns in six weeks
The progression from technical partnership to live brand campaigns happened fast. On April 30, 2026, Acast announced two new video-specialist hires, upgraded studios in Stockholm and Oslo, and activated its Apple Podcasts HLS video distribution in Sweden - one of the first geographically specific deployments among the initial hosting-provider group. Less than two weeks later, the first US brand campaigns are live. The speed of that transition reflects both the readiness of Acast's ad-tech infrastructure and the appetite among major advertisers to enter the format early.
Acast describes itself as having spent 12 years building what it calls the open creator ecosystem. The company, listed on Nasdaq Stockholm under the ticker ACAST, connects more than 140,000 podcasters with more than 4,000 advertisers globally. According to the press release, it has paid out more than $600 million to creators over the course of its operation. That history of creator and buyer relationships is central to Acast's argument for why it - rather than a newer entrant - was positioned to be the first to monetize Apple's HLS environment at scale.
What the 60% additive growth figure means for advertisers
The most commercially significant data point in today's announcement is not the raw show count. It is the additive growth figure. According to Acast, 60% of its HLS daily growth is additive - meaning the video format is bringing in listeners who were not previously reached through audio alone. For media buyers, this distinction matters enormously. If video podcasting simply pulled existing audio listeners into a different format, the total addressable market would remain unchanged. The 60% additive figure suggests the opposite: that video is expanding the pool of people engaging with these shows.
Acast's 2025 Podcast Pulse report, cited in the press release, found that nearly 4 in 5 global listeners now both watch and listen to their favorite shows. The company also states that adding a visual dimension to the audio experience can extend a brand's total reach by as much as 39%. These are Acast's own figures, and independent verification of the reach expansion claim would strengthen its credibility with buyers evaluating budgets. Still, the directional argument - that dual-format campaigns reach more people than audio-only buys - aligns with how audio measurement has evolved. Research tracked by PPC Land has shown that video podcast consumption among Generation Z is substantial, with 84% of monthly Gen Z podcast listeners engaging with video content, according to Edison Research data.
State Farm and T-Mobile as first movers
Both brands named in today's announcement are large enough that their participation signals category-level validation rather than experimental testing. State Farm and T-Mobile are running what Acast describes as integrated, multi-sensory campaigns that combine audio and video creative in real time, delivered through Acast's ad-tech and Apple's HLS infrastructure.
Alyson Griffin, Head of Marketing at State Farm, described the rationale in the press release: "As consumer habits shift toward more visual podcast experiences, working with Acast allows us to lead the market with impactful, dual-format campaigns that capture both the eyes and ears of podcast audiences everywhere."
Laura Hagen, SVP Americas at Acast, framed the commercial implications in broader terms: "This isn't just a new feature; it's a major commercial evolution. By partnering with innovators like State Farm and T-Mobile, we are setting the standard for how video podcasts are bought, sold, and measured."
The language around measurement is worth pausing on. Measurement has been the persistent challenge in podcast advertising for years - not the reach itself, but the ability to verify it in ways that satisfy advertiser and agency requirements. The HLS technical architecture gives Apple impression-level data that traditional MP3 distribution does not produce, because the segmented delivery model creates server-side events for each chunk of content served. Whether that data translates cleanly into the third-party verification workflows that large advertisers require is a question the market will answer through early campaign reporting.
The structural argument against siloed buys
Acast's commercial framing positions this integration as a solution to a structural inefficiency in how podcast advertising has historically been purchased. Audio podcast buys and video podcast buys have typically been handled as separate line items, often by different teams within agencies, measured by different vendors, and reported against different KPIs. The new hybrid offering is designed to consolidate those buys into a single measurable stream.
This consolidation argument is relevant context for the marketing community. Podcast advertising spending grew 32% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Magellan AI data tracked by PPC Land, and the channel has attracted sustained investment from brand categories including insurance, financial services, and telecommunications - precisely the sectors that State Farm and T-Mobile represent. The ability to treat a podcast campaign as a unified audio-video buy rather than two separate executions reduces operational friction and simplifies attribution, at least in theory.
The hosting-level architecture matters here too. Because Acast manages both the audio and the video distribution for the shows in its network, it can theoretically link audio impressions and video impressions to the same campaign, the same show, and the same episode - producing a unified view of reach that neither platform-specific nor audio-only measurement approaches can provide. Whether that unified reporting holds up under scrutiny from independent measurement vendors remains to be seen.
Brand safety, targeting, and the video premium
Video podcast inventory commands higher CPMs than audio, and with higher rates come stricter brand safety requirements. Acast and Barometer launched the podcast industry's first pre-bid episodic targeting integration in January 2026, enabling real-time brand safety verification at the individual episode level before programmatic bids execute. That infrastructure becomes more commercially valuable as video inventory grows, because advertisers applying visual content standards need confidence that the surrounding content meets their criteria before the impression is served - not after.
The Barometer integration scores each episode against IAB categories and proprietary long-form audio definitions the moment creators upload content. For video episodes, the same scoring infrastructure applies, meaning the brand safety verification that Acast has built for audio is designed to extend directly to the new format. Initial campaigns tested on the integration achieved 100% alignment with advertiser brand standard profiles at the episodic level, according to the companies.
What Acast's creator network brings to the format
The 117 shows active on the HLS integration represent a subset of Acast's broader network of more than 140,000 podcasts. The company has spent several years assembling a portfolio that includes exclusive commercial partnerships with high-profile properties. The Athletic signed an exclusive global podcast deal with Acast in April 2025, granting Acast exclusive rights to sell audio advertisements across more than 35 sports-focused podcasts. Sports podcasts attract 18.6% of new brands entering podcast advertising for the first time, according to Magellan AI Q4 2025 data, which makes a sports-heavy inventory particularly valuable as brands evaluate where to place early video podcast budgets.
For creators, the HLS integration preserves a capability that has been structurally important to the independent podcast economy: the ability to maintain dynamic advertising insertion even when distributing video content. Publishing to YouTube removes that control. The Apple-Acast model is designed to maintain it, keeping creator revenue streams intact as formats evolve.
Why this matters beyond the first campaigns
The significance of today's announcement extends beyond State Farm and T-Mobile. Every advertiser that has historically separated audio and video planning is watching whether unified buying works. Every agency trading desk that has questioned how to classify podcast video inventory - as digital video, as audio, or as something else - will look at how these campaigns are reported and measured. And every hosting provider watching Acast move first will be calculating its own timeline for bringing brand campaigns through Apple's HLS environment.
Triton Digital expanded Omny Studio with video podcasting support in December 2025, making it one of the four original HLS partners to build out video capabilities. ART19 and SiriusXM round out that initial group. The competitive dynamic among hosting providers will now turn partly on which can bring major brand campaigns to market fastest and demonstrate measurable results.
The 117-show, 1,000-episode baseline that Acast reports today is a starting point. The more telling metric will come in the next quarterly cycle: whether additive reach holds as the format scales, whether CPMs for video podcast inventory land where Acast and its advertisers expect, and whether the measurement infrastructure can satisfy the verification requirements that moved State Farm and T-Mobile from interest to active spend.
Timeline
- February 2026: Apple announces HLS video podcast support, naming Acast, ART19, Triton's Omny Studio, and SiriusXM as the four initial hosting partners. PPC Land coverage
- January 21, 2026: Acast and Barometer launch the podcast industry's first pre-bid episodic targeting integration. PPC Land coverage
- December 4, 2025: Triton Digital expands Omny Studio with video podcasting support, becoming one of the first HLS-ready hosting platforms. PPC Land coverage
- April 30, 2026: Acast activates Apple Podcasts HLS video distribution in Sweden, hires two video specialists, and upgrades studios in Stockholm and Oslo. PPC Land coverage
- May 13, 2026: Acast announces the first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts with State Farm and T-Mobile, reporting 117 active shows, more than 1,000 episodes published, and 60% additive daily growth in HLS reach.
Summary
Who: Acast, the Swedish podcast company listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, together with brand advertisers State Farm and T-Mobile, and Apple as the platform provider through its HLS video architecture.
What: The launch of the first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts, consolidating audio and video creative into a single measurable campaign delivered via Apple's HTTP Live Streaming technology through Acast's hosting and ad-tech infrastructure.
When: May 13, 2026. The announcement follows Apple's HLS launch in February 2026 and Acast's Nordic HLS activation on April 30, 2026.
Where: The campaigns reach a global audience, with the United States, France, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia as the leading markets. Acast operates the infrastructure from its global network, with editorial and technical presence across multiple markets.
Why: Podcast audiences are consuming content in both audio and video formats at growing rates. Acast's data shows 60% of its HLS daily growth is additive - meaning new audiences rather than format shifts among existing listeners. The integration addresses a structural problem in advertising planning by allowing brands to consolidate audio and video podcast buys into a single campaign instead of running separate executions across siloed channels.