Castos Picks Up $756K in Funding from Automattic and Joost de Valk to Expand Services in the Private Podcasting Market

Castos, a WordPress-powered podcast hosting provider, announced a $756K pre-seed fundraising round today from Automattic, Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO, and other individuals. The company raised money from all the investors in this round via a SAFE note, which founder and CEO Craig Hewitt said is a fairly standard investment vehicle for companies at Castos’ stage of growth. …

Google Podcasts Manager Adds More Data from Search: Impressions, Top-Discovered Episodes, and Search Terms

Google announced an expansion of listener engagement metrics today for those using its Podcast Manager. Previously, audience insights included data about the types of devices listeners are using, where listeners tune in and drop off during a given episode, total number of listens, and listening duration, but the service lacked analytics regarding how visitors were discovering the podcast. Google is …