AdTonos had the great privilege to attend ATS London 2022. Many thanks to the ExchangeWire team for putting together such a brilliant event!
Listen Up: Why Audio Needs to Make its Mark in the Digital Advertising Landscape
We were so excited to have the opportunity to talk about how digital audio is having its heyday, with the rise of podcasting and music streaming projected to continue in the next 5 years.
Curious about what tools are available for marketers to deliver the best tailored ads, get campaign metrics and develop the best omnichannel strategy? Keep reading for the AdTonos take on these questions and more!
AdTonos on the Best Programmatic Tools on the Market
There’s no doubt that audio streaming is a strongly growing channel that marketers are showing more and more interest in, but how do they access the right audiences in this channel?
Accessing the right audiences is easy if you use the right programmatic tools. With the technology currently available at our fingertips, every marketer can set up a digital audio marketing campaign that specifically replaces ads to better target potential customers based on geolocation and 400 IAB taxonomies, such as device type, language spoken, age, gender and the previous level of brand exposure. They can also adapt campaigns to reach people who were recently on e-commerce or price comparison sites, gardening aficionados to healthy foodies and gym bunnies.
Platforms like AdTonos’ allow advertisers to gain real-time updates on the performance of their marketing campaigns, allows marketers to switch parameters as needed and receive advice on how to conduct the campaign should they wish. Over time with solutions like Sandstorm SDK on mobile gaming applications, each unique user’s preferences and in-app behaviours also factor into the types of ads that are shown.
Are marketers starting to understand audio as part of an omnichannel approach?
If research is anything to go by, then yes! Last year, WARC recommended that marketers triple their adspending on digital audio. Why? Digital audio is occupying a growing proportion of digital’s overall revenue. In the UK alone as of 2021, digital audio is worth £164 million. That’s a 58% increase from 2020. IAB’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report shows that there has also been a 58% increase in adspend on digital audio.
The Association of Online Publishers and Deloitte also report that while digital publishing has experienced an 18% year on year growth, it is digital audio publishing that’s stealing the limelight; in Q1 2022, digital audio revenues increased by 500 per cent to £4.2m when compared to Q1 last year. There is more compelling evidence to allocate more budget to audio to ensure a good media mix.
What are the metrics and measurement tools which are helping to prove the value of audio and why an omnichannel approach will work best for particular marketers?
By using AdTonos’ DSP, advertisers have tools to measure the effects of audio campaigns, similar to those available for other forms of Internet advertising, at their disposal. Our SaaS platform is integrated with more than 21 DSPs and we also provide innovative tools to measure the results and effectiveness of every ad playout and audio campaign.
We share two types of reports: one from the campaign launch, and from Audiopixel which tracks traffic generated by audio ads to a target webpage. Our reports offer a range of immediate traffic tracking options, including conversion calculation on the advertiser’s website, measurement metrics such as click through rates, bounce rates and post-campaign analytics that help our advertisers achieve better results and optimise spend.
Audiopixel can be easily integrated with Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager for remarketing or performance tracking, and provides great insight into campaign performance, unique listeners, and integration with Google Analytics IDs.
Have technical integrations improved, to enable buyers to access inventory more conveniently?
From attending industry events, the Adtonos team have been struck by how open companies in digital audio are to creating partnerships. Increasingly in the digital audio adtech space. ‘Competitors’ are more willing to collaborate in audio than in other digital marketing segments. For example, we’re partnered, supported by or integrated with Triton Digital, Acast, Nielsen, Xandr, MediaMath, Xaxis, E2E, GroupM, Havas Group, OMG, Publicis Groupe, Amillionads, Adtheorent, Adform and so many more. So in short, yes, as more and more partnerships are formed, it will only get easier to integrate new buyers and open them up to a whole new world of opportunity.
Initially thought of as a disadvantage, audio has never relied on cookie-based measurement to prove reach and effectiveness. Is this now seen as an advantage and how are buyers and sellers taking advantage of this to promote the environment as privacy compliant and safe?
Companies that have little to no first-party data and rely heavily on cookies are now faced with the mammoth task of quickly adapting to the cookie apocalypse due in 2023. Unless these companies are investing very heavily in their own R&D teams to quickly address these issues, the most prudent option this late in the game is to form partnerships with companies that have future-proofed themselves.
What challenges need to be overcome in order to continue seeing growth in audio advertising?
A lot of education needs to be done around digital audio as even in major industry events, audio can sometimes be sidelined. This is despite our company seeing a tenfold growth in revenue compared to this time last year, and despite the massive proliferation of podcasts and increase in consumption of digital audio we’ve seen in recent years.
Another thing that needs to be done is to guide marketers through how to market in times of geopolitical uncertainty and economic recession. What tools are available to ensure the biggest ROI without compromising on earning potential? How should marketers approach budgets and make the right choices in terms of which cuts – if any – should be made? Which segments of digital advertising should be prioritised in their marketing strategies?
Thank You ExchangeWire!
Thank you to all of our partners and contacts for attending ATS London, for having insightful conversations with AdTonos and for making this event as enjoyable and fruitful as it was. We look forward to our next get together!
