The following is part of our Transform 2022 series, check out our blog for additional learnings from this event.
Everything is cyclical. This is especially true as we trace marketing trends from radio to television to digital video and now back to audio–digital audio, in this case. This vertical is ripe for engagement, but understanding how it differs from video and making sense of its fragmentation is key to finding marketing success.
Whether spurred on by the pandemic or just accelerated by it, audio is here to stay and the advertising opportunities within this channel are beginning to blossom. Similar to video, you have an array of players, some large like Apple and Spotify, and legacy partners like Pandora, mixed in with the likes of newer or emerging platforms like Clubhouse and Soundcloud. While audio advertising opportunities at scale are starting to be pieced together, the availability of custom and unique opportunities in the space are skyrocketing. Podcasts alone provide a multitude of opportunities from stand-alone content to advertiser inclusion. The barriers to create, distribute, and attract ears to your content are lower than ever before with publishers, platforms, and agencies helping out at every step of the way.
A majority of audio is also logged-in time, where consumers are likely to understand the advertising that they are hearing is (partially) in exchange for the content that they are seeking. This logged-in data is a premium asset for publishers and platforms, providing new opportunities to elaborate on existing targeting strategies with new, privacy-safe opportunities.
Will 2022 be the year of audio? It’s still a bit early to know for sure, but one thing is certain: the popularity of the medium will continue to grow, as will the opportunities to wisely integrate advertising and content within it.
