Audio advertising is no longer restricted to radio campaigns.

With a plethora of new digital technologies and channels emerging, the options are more affordable and accessible than ever. Audio advertising has exploded over the past few years and isn’t set to slow down. With its growth in popularity comes a wide variety of advertising options, which are far more creative, targeted and affordable than limited analogue radio campaigns used to be.

Getting your message heard by a mass or niche audiences has become cost-effective and accessible for brands of all sizes from new startups to SMEs to large corporations; audio advertising is one of the most accessible formats.

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Radio advertising

Radio isn’t going anywhere

Radio remains to be a popular medium for music, news and information and attracts daily dedicated and loyal listeners. Radio advertising has become much more versatile in this digital age. Audio advertising on radio to national, local, or smaller communities can be highly effective with the right messaging, execution and targeting.

With such a wide choice of DAB channels now available, from sports, music genres, politics or the millennial generation, the potential for brands to reach a more specific and relevant audience is huge. Targeting within these channels is also a powerful tool, and can be done in a variety of ways.

 

Location targeting

For example, geographical targeting only plays ads to listeners within a pre-determined location, providing opportunities for all types of businesses to advertise on radio, even those with smaller budgets who only want to advertise to their local area.

 

Context targeting

Another way of targeting is based on consumer context; since it doesn’t require a listener’s primary attention, radio is often used to accompany a range of tasks and activities across the day, such as the school run or the drive home from work. With this knowledge, advertisers can use targeting to place their ads to coincide with these various tasks/activities.

The popularity of music streaming platforms such as Spotify or Deezer has opened up huge opportunities for brands.

Music streaming sites usually offer different subscription levels with the free option featuring advertisements served in between songs.  Spotify alone reported that they have 100 million regular listeners across the globe, and audio advertising through this platform enables you to reach a great number of these.

An important consideration when advertising on Spotify is that a large portion of listeners are millennials, for whom music streaming plays a central, always-on role in their lives. This presents advertisers a number of opportunities. For example, millennials intentionally use music streaming to escape daily pressures or to enhance moments they enjoy. Their relationship to audio streaming contrasts to social media, which 48% of millennials worry brings them a negative effect.

Programatic audio advertising

Programatic audio advertising for music streaming and podcasts.

Programmatic audio is the use of technology to automate the insertion of ads in audio content like podcasts, digital radio, and music-streaming services. It is set to be the standard for the personalisation and delivery of audio ads.

Podcasts

While podcasts have been around for a while now, podcast advertising is growing rapidly by the day and bringing in highly successful results for raising brand awareness and driving sales. Recent industry reports have shown that 60 percent of podcast listeners would buy a product if they heard it advertised in a podcast they regularly listened to, with 80 percent searching for a product online after hearing it advertised.

There’s one key reason that brands are paying more money for podcast advertising: it works, especially as traditional advertising mediums have become increasingly less effective over the past few years.