Acast Partners With Tortoise Media

Acast has signed Tortoise Media to its network of publisher partners, which includes BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Economist, gal-dem and Hearst. 

The partnership will enable the fast-growing, audio-first media platform to distribute its journalism podcasts, such as The Slow Newscast and Sensemaker, to every platform supported by Acast.

It will also be able to monetize its content for non-members through dynamically inserted ads and sponsorship as part of the Acast Marketplace.

Tortoise Media launched in 2019 with a slow news approach to journalism and a membership-subscription model, focusing on meaningful, in-depth stories in the U.K. and around the world.

Its slate of podcasts launched with the weekly Slow Newscast, hosted by former Guardian and HuffPost journalist Basia Cummings. The podcast takes a considered approach to news podcasting and is Tortoise’s flagship podcast. 

At the start of 2021, Tortoise launched Sensemaker, a daily news podcast that examines one story every day to help listeners make sense of the world. Episodes typically run for five minutes and distill topics such as the race for COVID-19 vaccines into digestible podcasts that can be listened to in the time it takes to brew a coffee. 

Tortoise Studios is headed by Ceri Thomas and Cummings. Thomas is former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Panorama.

“As an audio-first publisher, Acast was the logical podcasting partner of choice for Tortoise’s growing podcast journalism,” said Thomas. “We’ve seen a significant rise in listeners of our podcasts in recent months. I look forward to building on our success, and unlocking our audio strategy as a new revenue stream through Acast’s bespoke podcast monetization model.”

Acast hosts more than 20,000 podcasts worldwide. It pioneered a dynamic ad insertion technology in podcasting, which allows for the delivery of timely, contextualized podcast ads specific to listeners across any device or platform.

“Tortoise Media is one of the most innovative news organizations in the world right now, and its approach to the newsroom is exceptional — especially at a time where it’s critical to take stock and consider the facts of a unravelling story,” said Sam Shetabi, director of U.K. content at Acast. “Adding Tortoise to our portfolio of publisher partners strengthens our growing journalistic podcast offering, and is indicative of the flexible and powerful hosting and monetization solution Acast offers.

Tortoise Media’s podcasts are distributed via Acast and are available on every podcast listening platform, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Advertisers who want to work with Tortoise Media podcasts will be able to exclusively via the Acast Marketplace.