From the Hustle newsletter: Traditional wisdom says that podcasts and investors go together like oil and water. Difficulty tracking ad performance has made ROI notoriously hard to calculate -- and most investors aren’t too keen on throwing money at a black box.
Yet, Brooklyn-based podcast startup Gimlet Media just closed a $15m series B (at a $55m valuation) led by Stripes Group to scale the success of their popular series Reply All and StartUp.

So what’s changed?

24% of Americans say they listen to podcasts monthly (up 2x from 4 years ago), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau projects an 85% increase in ad revenue from 2016 to 2017, hitting $220m this year.
A pittance, sure, when compared to search and video ad revenue, but as co-founder Matt Lieber sees it, podcasts are a golden opportunity to seize the few hours of our days not fully consumed by screens (think commuting or at the gym).
Plus a little market validation from a tech media darling doesn’t hurt
Spotify is making a push into podcasting, launching 3 original series in February, with more coming after that. Lucky for all you Ira Glass fans out there, that competition means one thing: more great pod-tent coming down the pipe.