BREAKING Podscribe expands audio incrementality with synthetic controls & randomized holdouts IAB-CERTIFIED & SOC 2 TYPE II COMPLIANT 18 QUALITY CHECKS PER AD PLACEMENT MEASURES PODCASTS · STREAMING · YOUTUBE · CTV · RADIO CHARTABLE SUNSET 2025 — PODSCRIBE STAYS ON FOUNDED 2017 · AUSTIN, TEXAS BREAKING Podscribe expands audio incrementality with synthetic controls & randomized holdouts IAB-CERTIFIED & SOC 2 TYPE II COMPLIANT 18 QUALITY CHECKS PER AD PLACEMENT MEASURES PODCASTS · STREAMING · YOUTUBE · CTV · RADIO CHARTABLE SUNSET 2025 — PODSCRIBE STAYS ON FOUNDED 2017 · AUSTIN, TEXAS

Company Profile · AdTech / Measurement

The company that made podcast ads answerable.

Podscribe is the independent, IAB-certified measurement engine for podcast and audio advertising - proving conversions, verifying placements, and measuring lift across every audio channel.

2017Founded

~57Team

18QA Checks

5Channels Measured

The Podscribe wordmark. A measurement company that prefers being the least dramatic name in the room - the referee, not the player.

The Scene

A media buyer, a spreadsheet, and one uncomfortable question

It is Tuesday morning at an agency in New York. A performance marketer opens a campaign report for a podcast buy - a warm, host-read spot on a show with a devoted audience. The download numbers are enormous. The vibes are excellent. And then the CFO asks the only question that matters: did any of it sell anything? For most of advertising's history, the honest answer was a shrug. Downloads meant someone might have pressed play. A promo code caught a fraction of buyers. The rest was faith. Podscribe was built to end that shrug.

The company sits between the advertiser who wants proof and the publisher who wants to be paid fairly - and it does the one thing both sides can live with: it keeps score independently. Pixel-based attribution ties an ad someone heard to a purchase they made. Incrementality testing separates the sales the ad actually caused from the ones that were coming anyway. Verification confirms the spot even ran the way it was bought. It is not glamorous work. That is exactly the point.

The download is a rumor that someone might have listened. Podscribe follows the rumor all the way to a purchase.

- The Podscribe premise

Origins

From a transcript search box to a measurement engine

Podscribe did not start as adtech. In 2017, founder Pete Birsinger - a UC Berkeley EECS and Math graduate who had spent seven years writing code at Cisco Meraki and Tapad - launched it as a searchable library of podcast transcripts. Useful, tidy, and a long way from where the company would land.

The pivot came from a better question. If you can read what was said in a podcast, you can find the ads. If you can find the ads, you can verify them. And if you can drop a pixel, you can connect the ad someone heard to the checkout they completed. Each realization pulled the company deeper into measurement, until the transcript tool had quietly become a full-funnel attribution platform for the entire audio economy.

2017
Founded in Austin, Texas as a podcast transcript-search tool.
~2019
Early angel funding; pivot toward ad verification and pixel-based attribution.
2020–2024
Grows into cross-channel measurement: streaming, YouTube simulcasts, CTV and radio.
2025
Chartable sunsets; Podscribe emerges as a leading independent alternative.
2026
Expands incrementality with synthetic controls and randomized holdout testing.

What You Can Do With It

Six tools, one uncomfortable honesty

Podscribe is a B2B SaaS platform used by advertisers, agencies, and audio publishers. Here is what it actually does - stripped of the buzzwords.

Pixel Attribution

Multi-touch, pixel-based attribution with adjustable look-back windows. Connects the ad exposure to the on-site conversion, in real time.

Incrementality

Synthetic controls, randomized holdouts, ghost holdouts and PSA groups isolate the lift the ad truly caused - not the sales already in motion.

Ad Verification

Automated placement checks - 18 of them - confirm the spot ran in the right show, position and creative, exactly as bought.

Real-Time Analytics

Live dashboards for pacing, reach, frequency and geo. Optimize while the campaign is still running, not a week later.

Audience Overlap & Planner

Map audience overlap across shows and networks to plan reach and cut wasteful frequency before the buy.

Ranker & Transcripts

Competitive-intelligence dashboards plus transcript search with brand-safety scoring - the original tool, still earning its keep.

By The Numbers

Why independence is the whole pitch

In measurement, trust is the product. Brands and publishers rarely agree - but they can agree on a neutral scorekeeper. Podscribe's credibility rests on a stack of certifications, coverage and rigor. Illustrative view below.

The Podscribe Trust Stack

// relative emphasis across the platform — illustrative

Cross-channel coverage5 environments

Verification rigor18 checks / placement

Attribution latencyreal-time

ComplianceIAB-certified + SOC 2 II

Incrementality methods4+ holdout types

Who Uses It

Brands, agencies and the biggest names in audio

Podscribe's referee role means it works all three sides of the market at once - advertisers proving spend, agencies planning it, and publishers proving their inventory delivers.

ADVERTISERS

BetterHelpShopifyAthletic Greens VuoriThe New York TimesWise FanDuelLand Rover

PUBLISHERS

AcastSiriusXM MediaWondery iHeartMediaNPRAudacySpotify

AGENCIES

Oxford RoadGroupMWPP Media

The Landscape

The referee who stayed on the field

In December 2025, Chartable - long a default name in podcast attribution - shut down, leaving indie creators and large networks alike scrambling for a replacement. Podscribe, independent and still standing, absorbed much of that demand. Its remaining rivals include Magellan AI, ArtsAI, and Spotify-owned Podsights - but Podscribe leans on a distinction that is hard to buy: it sells measurement, not media.

The best measurement companies are boring on purpose. No hype - just a number you'd stake a media plan on.

- On Podscribe's positioning

The File

Podscribe, on the record

Legal Name

Podscribe, Inc.

Founded

2017

Headquarters

Austin, Texas, USA

Founder & CEO

Pete Birsinger

Team Size

~57 employees

The shrug, replaced

Return to that agency desk. Same media buyer, same podcast buy, same CFO leaning in with the same question - did any of it sell anything? This time the report does not end at downloads. It shows the households that heard the spot, the conversions that followed, and - the part that used to be impossible - how many of those sales would not have happened without the ad. The buyer does not shrug. She points at a number.

That is the small, unglamorous change Podscribe set out to make. It did not reinvent podcasting or promise to disrupt an industry. It just took the oldest excuse in advertising - "half my ad spend is wasted, I don't know which half" - and made it answerable for the medium everyone was buying on faith. The download stopped being a rumor. It became a receipt. And a Tuesday-morning question that had no honest answer for a hundred years finally got one.