Greg Glenday is CEO of Acast — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Greg spoke to Sam Sethi in the Podnews Weekly Review podcast, where you can listen to a longer audio version.
Greg Glenday: I’ve been with Acast now for two and a half years. I started as Chief Business Officer until a few months ago where I moved into the CEO role. In my old role I actually had the Managing Directors reporting up to me, along with content and sales. So this is really a slight change internally. We’ve focused on alignment, moved product and engineering a little closer to commercial and I think for our next decade we’re just trying to get really good alignment for the future. So a little bit of an operational strategic shift.
Sam Sethi: Now the biggest market for Acast since you came on board has now been the US market. Is the US now the biggest focus for Acast going forward?
GG: It’s always been a really big focus. Obviously there’s more upside in the US. Eventually it should become your largest market if you’re doing things right. We were founded in Stockholm, where we’ve got a lot of great people. The UK became our biggest market and is our centerpiece for our European expansion, and now the US is our largest market. I wouldn’t say that it’s any more important than anything else, but it’s nice to have those three beach-heads that we now have. That was always the plan when Acast was launched.
SS: You’ve had a good Q1, Q2, and you are EBITDA profitable. When can we expect Acast to become fully profitable?
GG: Sam, that’s a great question. Podcasting is twenty years old, Acast is ten years old;you ask how you can pay back those shareholders? How do you become profitable? So we’re really proud of that. I know in an adjusted EBITDA number it’s still profitable. Once you become profitable, as you know, it’s not a 100-meter dash where you collapse after the finish line. You have to keep doing it. So everything we’re doing now is around growing the top line, being strategically fit for the future for podcasting and what that’s becoming, and doing it with discipline so that we can remain profitable.
SS: Rumor in the market is you’re looking to become a full listing on the NASDAQ. Is that something that Acast is aiming for?
GG: Yeah, we’re exploring the possibility of a change to the NASDAQ. That would be a natural next step. No announcements. We will come to you first when we have one - but we are exploring it, of course.
SS: Now one of the things that it appears that companies are doing is putting out metrics - some call it vanity metrics - about how much they’re paying the creators that are using their platform. Does Acast have a nice number that you can put out there into the podosphere?
GG: We do: and it’s something that we’ve been doing for quite a while. In aggregate, our 10 year old company has paid out over half a billion dollars to our creators. We’re really thrilled that it’s at the level of 500 million US dollars. But, like listens, these are metrics that kind of give you a direction for a company - but not overly precise.
SS: You opened up a lovely new studio in London with video capability. I hear you’re going to be opening up a new studio as well in New York. Where is video within the Acast strategy?
GG: I think video is really important to the future of podcasting, and the future of Acast. I think its share of conversation in the industry is probably a little too high. I think there’s a bit of hysteria.
A lot of our creators are asking about video - they’re looking for consultation, they’re looking for advice. Our belief is podcasting is so unique. I think a lot of people think we’re at the mountaintop. I think we’re at base camp. Even though it’s 20 years old, the industry is just starting to mature: we’re really starting to answer some of the objections that the blue chip brands and big creators have had.
I think each creator is different and I think if your show does not work unless someone is sitting on a couch with their eyes glued to the television, the show does not work. That may not be a podcast in the future. I think that might be something else. But for us, if you have a show that maybe is enhanced with video, or there’s some some guests where it is better, or there’s going to be some visual presentations, that’s fair game - and we’ve always thought about the creator in the center, and how they reach their audiences is up to them. We really want to empower the creator.
Some of them need to do video. Some of them do social promotion. Some of them only use video for promotion but not for the episodes. The power is in the hands of the creator with podcasting. That’s what makes us special. There aren’t network executives greenlighting things and messing with your strategy. It’s you, as the creator, and your audience. So it’s not up to us to get in the way if you want to reach them via video. Acast is committed to making sure that we focus on the creator and however they reach that audience. That means partnerships with all the video platforms and being able to enable our creators to reach their listeners. If video is video, we’ll help them. That’s why we’ve got studios around the world now that are all video enabled. That’s just a natural part of what we do if the creator wants it.
SS: Next year, what do you think is going to change? How do we get podcast advertising to the $7 billion mark, $10 billion mark? How do we move the needle rapidly?
GG: That is probably the thing I think about every day when I wake up. So 2026, I think, is going to be watershed, because these things don’t happen overnight. The podcast election is one thing. Taylor Swift getting engaged on a podcast, you know everyone kind of jokes about that, but five years ago that would have been an Instagram post.
We’re spending tons of time with advertisers who are curious - but it’s not like they just show up with a truck full of money, Sam! It’s hard. There’s brand safety, and it’s not easy to buy. So we’re focused on just removing that friction, because they are kicking the tires. They are curious, they would love to be here, but we just have to make it easier.
We have to work together - every company has different processes, we all have different language we use. We call different products different things. We’re not making it very easy for the Verizons, the BMWs, the Coca-Colas to come in in a big way to our industry. They will get here, but it’s up to us to make it really hospitable when they get here.
My career has always been thinking of products like how do we challenge the status quo? Thinking of products like how do we challenge the status quo? Is it a startup? And there’s a lot of history of these things showing up in a market where it’s like, oh, we don’t need that. No one thought you needed TikTok - there was sort of no space in the market for them. So we can’t just rely on letting the market sort itself out and they’re going to find us. We have to go make it happen and be proactive.
In my, first year I went to every podcast show. It was awesome, and everyone loves Acast. We had a great time. But I wound up realizing that we’re talking to ourselves a lot. If we wait for the audio buyer at an agency to get a podcast RFP to us, it’s going to take a long time. We have to go make that happen. We have to go convince them, show them research, show them insights, build some trust, do some tests at a high level and then more money will start coming to the industry. But we have to kind of do it together.
SS: Congratulations once more on your new role and look forward to talking to you in 2026.
GG: Same here. Thanks again, Sam.