Playlists, Podcasts and Programmatic: The Future of Audio Advertising

The world of audio ads is evolving fast, turbo-charged by programmatic tech. We're breaking down the latest trends, the journey so far, and future predictions, with some exclusive insights from industry experts.

Considering the success programmatic has seen across a myriad of advertising forms, its more mainstream expansion into audio ads was inevitable. Companies like Spotify now have a programmatic suite, while SoundCloud, Pandora, and TuneIn are all joining in on the trend.

This is audio’s bumper year - more consumers worldwide will engage with audio entertainment overall in 2024, bringing the number of monthly average podcast listeners to over 1.7 billion. This unprecedented growth in the audio sector signals a growing trend for consumers, and where people go, advertisers will inevitably follow.

Revolutionising Ad Buying

The first thing to note is that we’re talking about a space that is still very much in its infancy, especially when compared to the other segments of advertising. The IAB only introduced a first-of-its-kind template for delivering audio ads in 2014, with the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST). Yet, the scene has rapidly advanced since then, fueled by a surge in digital audio consumption, from podcasts to streaming tunes. Algorithms now smartly optimise where and when ads hit, ensuring they're more effective and efficient. The advent of smart devices and connected homes further enriches this landscape, offering tailored and timely audio ads to a captive audience.

Enter VAST for audio ads: the Video Ad Serving Template. Initially designed for video, VAST has evolved, accommodating audio ads' nuances. It standardises the ad delivery process, ensuring compatibility across platforms and devices. This means smoother integration, tracking, and reporting for audio ads, making the marketer's job more straightforward and the listener's experience seamless.

Targeting and Personalisation

At its core, programmatic audio excels in precision. It taps into vast data, enabling targeting by specifics like geolocation across various devices, from smartphones to in-car systems. Ads can even be integrated into playlists, niches, and genres that align with a campaign's theme or mood. This ensures ads are not just heard but are contextually relevant to the listener's location and behaviour, sharply boosting conversion rates.

Third-party cookie deprecation won't shake the programmatic audio ad world much. Why? Audio streaming is not cookie-dependent, it thrives on first-party data and context. Music streams and podcasts collect their own insights, enabling sharp targeting by what users listen to, not browse. Ads also match the mood of the audio, making them relevant and effective without tracking each click. In short, programmatic audio's adaptability and focus on content over cookies keep it strong in a changing digital landscape.

Conducive to the idea of brand authenticity and relevance, the more intimate format of audio allows for heightened emotional responses and in turn, greater brand recall. In fact, a recent study by Nielsen - Podcast Ad Effectiveness - found that podcast ads drive an aided brand recall rate of 71%, while 56% of podcast listeners say they pay more attention to ads read by the host(s).

What Could the Future Look Like?

Audio will be an increasingly valuable branding channel

I think we will see more audio advertising being traded programmatically. As with display and other forms of online advertising, it’s the most efficient way to bring buyers and sellers together when there is such a plethora of choice on the sell-side and pent-up demand on the buy-side.

What’s of particular interest to us, however, is how brands and publishers can measure the effectiveness of their audio campaigns to prove the case for the channel as an effective medium for brand advertising, rather than purely as a performance channel. Our first engagement of this nature, for FD Mediagroep in The Netherlands last year, demonstrated the power of audio advertising to move brand metrics the right way, and as we turn our attention to more campaigns running across more publisher sites, I can only see more brands coming to recognise the value of audio as a branding channel.

Sean Adams, chief marketing officer at Brand Metrics