Conan O’Brien makes a $150 million podcast deal

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic

I think getting acquired is cool again. Or maybe he's tired. I didn't spend three decades as the good king of late night. I will be out for a few days, so send your thoughts and pitches to Jake.

Brien's network is acquired by SiriusXM.

So much for sticking to mid-tier deals, SiriusXM. On Monday, the audio giant announced it has acquired the production company of O'Brien and locked him down in a five-year talent contract. The transaction is not the industry's largest, but it is similar to the kind of M&A that was happening before top podcasters embraced licensing agreements.

Team Coco, which was established in 2010 shortly after the end of O'Brien's run on The Tonight Show, has become a podcasting force thanks to the success of its flagship show. The show was ranked at number 26. The network has expanded to include shows from stars like Why Won't You Date Me? with Nicole Byer. Rob Lowe's licensing rights have been given to SiriusXM. Team Coco brings in 180 million downloads a year.

"Conan has built an amazing brand and organization at Team Coco with a proven track record of finding and launching compelling and addictive podcasts." said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM's chief content officer.

O'Brien is an outlier as top podcasters like Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper choose to maintain ownership of their brands and instead license their shows to streamers for eight or nine figure sums. His deal is similar to the acquisition of The Ringer by Bill Simmons. Team Coco is still dependent on its main star, like The Ringer. Simmons has been given additional responsibilities as the streamer grows its international sports programming. The Team Coco deal gives SiriusXM five years to figure out how to keep O'Brien, or expand the brand to the point it can stand without him.

The nature of the deal was not surprising. Team Coco had a distribution and ad sales deal with Stitcher. The audio company has increased its offerings as it has lost subscribers to its flagship service. The company is looking to O'Brien to help in that department as well, as part of a new, exclusive Team Coco channel on SiriusXM.

This acquisition is related to ad sales. Team Coco's digital video, social media, and live events will be sold by SXM Media. Team Coco will continue to release wide releases across major platforms to maximize their audience.

Now off to Jake for some other items.

Acast has a sign for ad sales by Maron.

The company is losing a big one this week as well as a big one with Team Coco.

Acast signed a three-year agreement to be the exclusive ad-sales partner for the show. Maron's show hits 55 million listens per year, making it one of the top shows out there. It is the 29th biggest show of the year, just a few slots below Conan O'Brien needs a friend.

The show will be hosted by Acast, with bonus content and archives offered through Acast Plus. The show's archives will be pulled down once the Acast deal starts on July 1st, according to Ryan Hatoum. Acast wants to make the subscription more than just old episodes. The show's back catalog will be open to the public, and the subscription will be promoted by offering live events. New episodes of the show will be published twice a week.

In the last few months, Stitcher has announced a number of exclusive ad-sales deals. Acast has shows from Anna Faris and Margaret Cho, as well as deals with major networks. I'm not sure if it's the biggest title that I'm aware of, but it's adding a top name to its ad sales.

Political ads are brought back on the platform.

Political ads can be purchased for US candidates, parties, PACs, and elected or appointed officials on the platform. Protocol reported yesterday that political ads are making a return after the company stopped selling them in early 2020 due to its lack of ability to properly review and verify ads.

Protocol was told that it has spent two years strengthening and enhancing its systems. According to Protocol, the company has begun selling ads for third-party shows across thousands of podcasts on and off the platform. The ability to target ads to podcasts that discuss issues relevant to the candidates could make for a fairly powerful ad offering. The ads will not run on the free music tier.

If you want to remain out of the picture, you will have to opt in to political advertising. You need to talk to a sales rep and can't use an automated system, but the company has put protections in place to make sure who those ads are.

The verification process for political advertisements has been strengthened to make sure they are only being purchased by US entities. Advocacy issues or ballot measures won't be accepted by Spotify. Styles said that political ads will still be held to the rules against deceptive, false, misleading, or fraudulent content that attempts to manipulate or interfere with election-related processes.

There will be a lot of ads to sell during the election season. In the past couple of years, major online platforms have gone back and forth on how they want to handle political ads; for instance, Facebook banned ads ahead of the 2020 election, then brought them back just a few months later. In an election year, the stakes are much higher, so it's important for Spotify to make sure its systems are blocking bad actors before they start advertising.

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