Programmatic advertising has been one of the biggest and most important trends in the market, spanning across an array of media channels and formats. One of the newest advertising formats is programmatic audio, which places ads within audio content such as podcasts, music streaming apps, and online radio. With more than million people worldwide owning smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, not to mention the soaring growth in popularity of podcasts, audio advertising is predicted to be a goldmine for advertisers. In addition, the popularity of voice-activated devices has also been on the rise, helping to fuel the growth of programmatic audio. Audio ads quite literally allow advertisers to speak to their customers in an intimate setting, where they are completely engaged with the audio content they are absorbing.
The Rise of Programmatic Audio
What Is Programmatic Audio Advertising?
In , we saw consumer behavior and technology trends align with marketplace forces in a way that suggests is going to be a banner year for programmatic audio. The volume of available streaming audio content, across music and spoken word, has seen astronomical growth in recent years. Most people continue to stream audio on their mobile devices, but the rise in smart speaker adoption and new in-car integrations has made streaming audio even more ubiquitous. People can and do listen wherever they are, whenever they want, throughout the their entire days. This shift has certainly piqued the interest of major industry players. Pandora entered the programmatic audio space on the sell side, adding its impressive inventory to the already-impressive mix from providers like Spotify, TuneIn, as well as the many radio stations working with aggregators like TargetSpot. Meanwhile, on the buy side, Google introduced the ability to buy programmatic audio ads through its DSP.
The Power of Programmatic Audio with The Trade Desk
Digital audio listening is continuing to reach record levels each year, with now an estimated million in the US alone listening every month. And with so much listening, there is bound to be audio advertising as a way to monetize the thirst for eardrum-oriented content. Programmatic audio advertising is automated selling and insertion of ads in audio content such as podcasts, audio articles, digital radio, and streaming music services. As a result, advertisers get better targeting, measurement and retargeting to execute campaigns with great efficiency. Another way to look at programmatic audio is as a natural extension of the online advertising ecosystem. Having audio inventory in the mix has opened up a new way for brands and publishers to connect with audiences.
In , an innocuous, simple banner was displayed on Wired. These were the meager beginnings of display advertising, and programmatic quickly arose to automate the growing demand for this emerging ad-delivery process. There was no turning back from there; the novel way of buying media and managing online inventory took the industry by storm and was quickly adopted by publishers and advertisers. Today, programmatic is an expected and accepted way of buying digital media: online display ads, video ads, search ads, social media ads, advanced TV and outdoor ads. However, recent developments in programmatic suggest that the needle is slowly moving and programmatic audio ads may soon gain more traction. A number of big players are either looking at or already implementing programmatic audio. The interest seems to stem from other ongoing changes in the advertising industry, like the constant optimization of advertising processes, the decline of non-digital media and conversion to their digital counterparts streaming TV and music services and digital radio. The advertising industry closely follows where audiences are, and there are more and more people using podcast and music-streaming services today than ever before. The digital-radio listener base has been on the increase over the past few years. Source: Statista.
