Meet the Acast co-founders looking to shake up digital subscriptions for UK publishers with Sesamy
Could one-off articles and podcast purchases be the future of publishing? That’s the vision of the co-founders of Acast, a podcast hosting and monetisation platform, as they expand their new digital content platform, Sesamy.
Swedish entrepreneurs Måns Ulvestam and Karl Rosander have developed a platform that offers an alternative to subscription models and paywalls. Sesamy allows customers to purchase single articles or podcasts as a one-time transaction.
Founded in 2020, Sesamy has already been adopted by major publishers in Sweden and Denmark and Ulvestam and Rosander are now turning their attention to the UK market.
Drawing on their connections from their time at Acast, the duo revealed to City PM they are currently in talks with all major UK publications and anticipate announcing their first partnership in the spring.
Ulvestam said the motivation behind the new platform stemmed from the limitations of traditional subscription models, stating, “the other option is you get a paywall in your face and that’s not good for a brand.
“We thought it was unsustainable for people to be able to afford all of these subscriptions that the suppliers want you to have,” he explained.
Sesamy believes the UK market is ripe for its model, offering customers a ‘try before you buy’ approach.
“Our system really helps [publishers] to find new customers for digital subscriptions,” Rosander said, “and we can see how likely an existing customer is to churn because we’ve built a really advanced AI engine to see what they read.”
He added that many British publishers have podcasts but struggle to monetise them except with ads, leaving a large potential revenue stream untapped.
While publishers can set their own pricing, the tech co-founders have found that customers are generally willing to pay “roughly £2” for an article or podcast. Revenue from subscriptions or one off podcast purchases can surpass ad revenue by more than 10 times.
It comes at a time when the UK media market is increasingly reliant on paywalls due to a weak ad market that has shrunk publishers’ revenues and forced them to cut jobs.
Just this week, the Guardian said it is limiting readers on its app to 20 free articles a month. In December, the Mail Online said it would make up to 15 articles per day paid-for under a new subscription service from the end of January.
“You’re seeing this experimentation in how you monetise content,” Ulvestam said. He added that the UK will act as “a gateway to the US”, where many British publications have set up operations.
According to data from Sesamy, up to 40 per cent of podcast listeners opt to purchase single episodes. Moreover, customers who buy individual articles are more likely to subscribe over time, with 5.5 per cent of purchasers becoming subscribers within 21 days.
After bootstrapping in the first year, Sesamy announced a $3.4m (£2.7m) seed round in November 2022.