The Best One Yet, a daily pop-business podcast that has accumulated over 80 million lifetime downloads, today announced a multi-year exclusive partnership with Acast, the Swedish-founded podcast company, along with the appointment of its first General Manager. The deal, disclosed on February 18, 2026, grants Acast exclusive global distribution and ad sales rights for both the audio podcast and its video simulcast - a structural arrangement that positions the show as a unified inventory across audio, video, and social channels for advertisers.

The podcast, co-hosted by Nick Martell and Jack Crivici-Kramer, began life in 2018 as MarketSnacks, a daily newsletter the two created while working in finance. Robinhood acquired the property in 2019, rebranding it as Snacks Daily. In 2022, Martell and Crivici-Kramer completed a spinoff and relaunched under the current name, The Best One Yet - often abbreviated to TBOY. According to the press release, the show has generated over 40 million downloads since that 2022 independence, pushing total lifetime downloads past the 80 million mark across more than 1,600 daily episodes. The podcast won the 2024 Webby Award for "Best Business Podcast."

The partnership with Acast comes at a moment when the two founders are pushing the brand well beyond its audio origins. A live touring component, a video simulcast on YouTube, and now a formal management layer are all being added simultaneously. Whether a daily business podcast can sustain that kind of multidirectional expansion - while maintaining its editorial identity - is the central question the new structure is designed to answer.

Acast's omnichannel argument

For Acast, the deal represents another addition to a growing roster of exclusive content partnerships. The company - which signed an exclusive global deal with The Athletic in April 2025 covering more than 35 sports podcasts - has pursued a strategy of combining content aggregation with technical infrastructure that allows advertisers to buy across platforms in a single transaction. According to the press release, Acast's technology allows advertisers to follow TBOY's audience - referred to internally as "Yetis" and "Besties" - across multiple touchpoints, with a single buy securing placement across audio, video, and social.

Yishai Seidman, Senior Development Manager at Acast, described the rationale in the announcement: "Their ambitious expansion into video and live touring aligns perfectly with Acast's own omnichannel strategy - proving that great stories can find audiences and advertisers wherever they live. We are perfectly poised to help them scale their influence, reach even more audiences, and turn advertising partnerships into genuine connections."

Acast currently operates a marketplace spanning over 140,000 podcasts, 3,300 advertisers, and one billion quarterly listens, according to the company. A crucial aspect of its technical model is the ability to monetize listens across any podcasting app or platform - a deliberate contrast to walled-garden approaches. That infrastructure received a significant upgrade in January 2026, when Acast and Barometer launched the podcast industry's first pre-bid episodic targeting integration, enabling real-time brand safety verification at the individual episode level rather than the show level. That kind of granular targeting capability becomes more commercially significant when applied to a daily show with a highly engaged, identifiable community.

The GM appointment: Mike Muney

Running parallel to the Acast deal is the appointment of Mike Muney as the show's first General Manager - a role that did not previously exist. Muney holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Southern California, where he served as President and Vice-President of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity and was a member of Order of Omega. His career has been built across successive roles in the creator economy.

He spent time at Spotify before moving to Yahoo, where, according to his LinkedIn profile, he built and led the business strategy and content partnerships for Yahoo Creators - a platform for writers and creators that reached millions of monthly readers, overseeing creator recruitment and platform development. He subsequently served as Head of Creator Partnerships at Moment, a creator monetization company that was later acquired by Patreon, a role he held from June 2021 to April 2023. According to the press release, Muney generated over $6 million in revenue during his time at Moment and has advised creators on YouTube-first video growth strategies. The announcement was also covered by Podnews, the industry newsletter, which Muney acknowledged directly in a LinkedIn post on the day of the deal.

His mandate at The Best One Yet centres on business operations, revenue growth, and the expansion into video and live events. The appointment is a formal acknowledgment that the show has outgrown the informal operational structures typical of independent podcasts. Adding a General Manager from a company with fewer than a handful of full-time staff - which is the implied scale at this stage - signals intent to build a media company rather than simply continue producing a show.

Jack Crivici-Kramer addressed this in the announcement: "This expansion isn't about changing that DNA; it's about amplifying the brightness our show brings to our 'Yetis' and 'Besties,' as our audience calls themselves. Acast and Mike give us the infrastructure to take The Best One Yet from a show to a ubiquitous media brand."

The deal was negotiated by UTA, which represents both Martell and Crivici-Kramer.

Live events add a third revenue stream

The show's push into live events adds a dimension not typically associated with daily news podcasts. In December 2025, TBOY announced its "IPO Tour (In-Person Offering)" for 2026, a series of live shows across multiple U.S. cities. According to the press release, the initial four shows - in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Arlington, Virginia - sold over 50% of their tickets within the first two weeks. As of the announcement date, the Austin and Los Angeles dates are sold out. The tour has since expanded to seven cities.

Nick Martell highlighted the significance of that sell-out performance: "Seeing our 'IPO Tour' sell-out in major cities proved that The Best One Yet has evolved from a morning ritual into a massive community. Bringing Mike on as GM and partnering with Acast allows us to scale our magic further, onto YouTube, live events, and other new ventures."

Live events represent a distinct revenue category - one that is harder to replicate through streaming and that generates direct consumer revenue rather than advertising-dependent income. That diversification matters in a market where podcast advertising spending hit 32% year-over-year growth in Q4 2025 but where individual shows remain exposed to advertiser concentration risk.

Video and the Apple context

The timing of the Acast deal overlaps with a broader structural shift in how podcasts handle video. On February 16, 2026 - two days before this announcement - Apple announced HLS video podcast capabilities coming to Apple Podcasts this spring, with Acast confirmed as one of four launch hosting providers. That announcement introduced dynamic video ad insertion capabilities, enabling automated ad placement within video episodes while preserving host-read authenticity.

The two developments - Apple's infrastructure announcement and TBOY's Acast deal - are distinct. But they converge on the same underlying question: whether podcast audiences that are already loyal to audio will migrate to, or supplement their consumption with, video. Research cited in the Apple HLS coverage indicates 46% of U.S. podcast listeners never skip episodes of their favorite shows. The loyalty data reported by The Trade Desk and YouGov in January 2026 showed comparable rates across the U.S., U.K., and Germany, underscoring the stability of engaged podcast audiences as a commercial proposition.

Why the ad sales structure matters

The arrangement by which Acast manages global ad sales for both audio and video simultaneously is technically and commercially significant. Most podcast shows still separate audio and video monetization, often using different platforms and different ad tech stacks for each format. By consolidating both under Acast's single marketplace, TBOY's advertising inventory becomes a unified product - one that can be bought programmatically across formats without requiring separate campaigns or creative adaptations.

This mirrors a broader industry push toward omnichannel audio buying. Audio advertising research from AdsWizz in July 2025 noted that 59% of U.S. podcast listeners use both audio and video platforms, and that 84% of Generation Z podcast listeners prefer podcasts with video components. For a show targeting a millennial and younger professional audience - which The Best One Yet explicitly does - the ability to follow that audience across both formats in a single media buy is a meaningful selling point for brand partners.

The structural gap between audio engagement and advertiser spend remains a reference point in these discussions. Consumers allocate 31% of media time to audio platforms, while advertisers direct only 9% of budgets there, according to industry measurements. That 22% gap is frequently cited as both an opportunity and a persistent friction point - one that deals like this, which simplify the buying process, are partly designed to address.

Acast acquired Wonder Media Network in December 2024 to establish Acast Creative Studios, a division providing branded content and integrated campaign capabilities. That creative infrastructure becomes relevant when a show like TBOY - with a highly defined audience identity and live event presence - approaches brand partnerships that extend beyond pre-roll and mid-roll placements.

Background on the show and its founders

The Best One Yet follows a consistent daily format: three business stories, delivered in approximately 20 minutes, with pop culture framing and what the hosts describe as natural chemistry between two college friends. Martell holds a Bachelor's degree from Brown University and an MBA from Wharton. Crivici-Kramer studied at Middlebury and holds a Master's from the University of Michigan. Both were working in finance when they started MarketSnacks as a side project.

The show's audience self-identification - "Yetis" for regular listeners, "Besties" for more engaged community members - reflects the community-oriented positioning that distinguishes it from more transactional news formats. That audience identity is also what makes the live touring strategy commercially credible: a sold-out show in Los Angeles or Austin is evidence of a community willing to pay directly for the hosts' presence.

The show's companion property, The Best Idea Yet, won a Signal Award and focuses on origin stories of viral products - a different editorial angle that nonetheless reaches a similar audience.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Best One Yet (TBOY), the daily pop-business podcast hosted by Nick Martell and Jack Crivici-Kramer, and Acast, the independent podcast company operating a marketplace of over 140,000 podcasts and 3,300 advertisers. Mike Muney, a media executive who holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Southern California and previously held roles at Spotify, Yahoo (where he led Yahoo Creators), and Moment (acquired by Patreon), has been appointed as the show's first General Manager. UTA represented the founders and negotiated the deal.

What: A multi-year exclusive strategic partnership granting Acast global distribution and ad sales rights for both the TBOY audio podcast and its video simulcast. Simultaneously, Muney was appointed to oversee business operations and revenue growth, with a specific focus on video and live events. The show's "IPO Tour" live event series has already sold out in Austin and Los Angeles.

When: The announcement was made on February 18, 2026. The live touring component was initially announced in December 2025. The show itself has been operating as an independent entity since 2022, accumulating over 80 million lifetime downloads.

Where: The announcement originated in New York, where the show is based. Acast is a global company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The live tour spans seven U.S. cities. The partnership covers global distribution and ad sales across all markets.

Why: The deal formalises TBOY's transition from an independently operated podcast into a structured media business with professional management and a dedicated distribution and monetisation partner. For Acast, the partnership extends its exclusive content strategy into a high-engagement daily show with a clearly defined audience community, at a moment when the broader podcast advertising market is growing at over 30% year-over-year and the industry is actively building infrastructure for unified audio and video ad sales.

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