What Is Programmatic Audio Advertising – A Beginner’s Guide

Programmatic audio advertising is now known as one of the easiest and most beneficial ways to market your business.

Over the past 2 years the popularity of audio content such as podcasts, radio and music streaming services has increased massively. The industry reached a record $1.9 billion in 2019, seeing a spike when the pandemic kept people in their homes. This is an increase of 30.1% in a single year.

This makes audio advertising a highly profitable marketing device, alongside the typical visual or social media advertising that seemed to be the norm in previous years. However, the audio advertising industry is

highly competitive, and it can be difficult to understand your audience and how to get the most conversion from your advertisement.

That’s where programmatic audio advertising comes in.

What is Programmatic Audio Advertising?

Programmatic audio advertising is the process of purchasing advertising space through an automated platform. This allows you to see all of the advertising space available to make an informed decision on the best slots for your advert.

The platform will allow people to bid on advertising space and see accurate analytics regarding the space’s popularity and reach so you can make an informed decision based on your target audience.

What are the Benefits of Programmatic Audio Advertising?

Programmatic audio advertising has a ton of benefits in comparison to the traditional process for purchasing advertising space.

Time Saving

Traditionally, purchasing advertising space would require a substantial amount of research for the company because you’d need to discover which channels your target audience used when they accessed and also decide whether you can afford this space.

You would then need to approach the company selling the space to negotiate a price and set up.

Programmatic audio advertising cuts all of this time out. You don’t need to train analysts to look into the data or attend negotiation meetings. All of the information that you require is right there on the platform in front of you. Anyone within the business can decipher and make an informed decision on the next big marketing move to increase conversion.

Cost Effective

Platforms that offer programmatic audio advertising are built to use real-time bidding (RTB). This means that buyers can bid against other companies for the same advertising space. The more valuable the space is based on the listeners that it usually gets, the higher the price is likely to go because more companies want the space.

This makes it beneficial for both sellers of the space and the buyers. The sellers will still make more profit on the higher value spaces, but the buyer has the ability to stop bidding when they reach their maximum spend allowance.

This works better than traditional sales meetings as the seller will often over-price the space knowing that the buyer is unaware of the potential

listeners. The buyer also can’t see directly how much other businesses are willing to spend on the space, giving them no frame of reference regarding what the price should be.

Data Insights

When working with programmatic audio advertising, you have access to see which spaces within audio advertising get the most listens. This may be due to target audience, the quality and popularity of the content (for example, podcasts with more subscribers will have more advert listeners) or the time that the space is available.

Radio adverts may get fewer listeners for example, as they are on at specific times of the day. This might mean that you only get a select listener profile based on the time those people will be tuning in. People on a commute at 6 pm may be more likely to hear an advert than an advert that is aired at 2 pm.

For this reason, music subscriptions and podcasting may present a more beneficial space, as the adverts will be available for longer during a specific podcast. However, you’re limited to accessing only the people who would normally listen. It’s less open to the wider population.

With traditional audio advertising methods, these things wouldn’t be taken into consideration, and you may be left with a gamble to see how your advert performs. This could, in turn, cost you more money as you evaluate different spaces.

Effective Targeting

Using audio advertising allows you to target your specific audience. If you have a service that’s related to a specific genre of podcast, you can reach your audience by bidding for space within this topic.

Again, with music streaming, you may be able to target a specific audience who likes a genre of music.

Programmatic audio advertising gives you the opportunity to review the habits of your specific target audience and plant adverts at times that they’re most likely to be listening, giving you more opportunity to convert them into customers.

Why Choose Audio Advertising?

Audio advertising is increasing in popularity. That’s because it can be more flexible for businesses than the more commonly thought of visual advertising.

Less Cookie Dependance

Visual advertising on the internet, for example, advertising spaces at the side of blogs or search engines, will leave a cookie trail. This puts implications on your business to use your customer’s browser cookies to track their movements and predict their spending habits.

Having this extra information about the customer base means it’s trickier from a security perspective for the business, as, from a GDPR perspective, the cookies are the customers’ data.

Audio advertising doesn’t have these issues as cookie data isn’t recorded unless they access the audio file through a browser. This puts less pressure on the company to keep up with data access demands.

Inability to Block Adverts

With audio advertising, the ability to block adverts is limited. If your adverts are accessed through the radio, then your customer base has no ability to skip them, making it more likely that they will listen and take in the information.

In comparison to TV adverts which allow the fast-forward button, even on an app, the audio method of advertising is much more likely to be heard.

Summary

Programmatic audio advertising is an amazing way to get the word out there about your business. You can access the customers that you know will be interested in your product or service for a lower price. You’ll also be able to keep track of essential data to keep your ads interesting and up to date for your audience.