Yet another vote of confidence in podcasting — this time from the people who buy ads for a living: WPP, the biggest ad holding company in the world, has put $5 million in Gimlet Media, the Brooklyn-based podcast startup. This is an extension of the $15 million round Gimlet raised last month, which valued the company at $55 million pre-money; it brings the company’s total funding to $27 million. It’s part of a small flurry of podcast investments we’ve seen in the last few weeks. The deal is as small as it gets for WPP, which generated $19.4 billion in revenue last year. But getting a nod of affirmation from an ad heavyweight is a big deal for Gimlet; you could also argue that it’s meaningful for the rest of the podcast business, which is still in the process of figuring out how advertising will work for the sort-of new format. WPP’s press release notes that Gimlet has been able to work with both direct response clients like Blue Apron, which currently dominate podcast advertising, as well as traditional brand advertisers like Ford, Pepsi and Microsoft. This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
Leading advertising group WPP has backed podcast start-up Gimlet Media with a $5m investment. Gimlet already raised $15m in the last few weeks, with the new funding making a total of $27m in backing so far. The company was valued at $55m pre-investment.