Audio ID: a world first in digital audio ad buying

Commercial Radio and Audio will soon introduce AUDIO ID, a new tool to allow media buyers and agencies to plan targeted digital audio campaigns across all stations and, eventually, across podcast inventory as well.

Audience measurement innovations in recent years have broadened the scope of ratings data gathered in surveys, allowing Australia’s Radio360 measurement system to capture digital audio listening. With that as the backbone, GfK will now add a digital ID that will evolve the system further, allowing advertisers to identify de-duplicated demographics across all stations to make buying digital audio easier.

Speaking about the innovation last week at the Sound Bite event, CRA’s CEO Lizzie Young told advertisers that it has been in development over the last 9 months and will become active in the next quarter.

The panel discussion, hosted by Young and featuring panellists Jeremy Adams, Head Of Operations at GfK ANZ, Michelle Golding, Digital Strategy Director at Nova, and Olly Newton, Executive Head ‑ LiSTNR Commercial, went into more details than has previously been revealed about the new system.

“Audio publishers are always forward thinking. With the changes to collect streaming data we are now able to create an ID across the industry in a programmatic sense across all audio platforms,” explained Adams.

“There are nuances between live streaming and podcast audiences… It improves how you can buy, with audience-based-selling across the networks.”

All the networks have been involved in the development of AUDIO ID, with Nova’s digital strategy director Golding making the point that “no one else in the world is doing this yet, it is an Australian first.”

There is an “enormous amount of inventory in audio,” with traditional broaadcast radio still delivering a huge mass audience and the new system allowing further targeting of digital audio consumption across streaming devices such as phones, smart speakers and connected cars.

LiSTNR’s Newton said AUDIO ID “shows the effectiveness of audio and removes barriers to buying audio and getting a good return on investment.  It can also paint a colourful picture of what people are doing in their life as they consume all their audio.”

“There is a misunderstanding about the power of the combined reach of radio, we reach 11.8 million Australians, much more than the reach of free ad-supported Spotify. You can only reach one third of Spotify’s audience with advertising, we have four times that amount of people listening.”

Privacy considerations have been included in the innovation, with individual data anonomised and managed in accordance with Australian privacy laws.

Advertisers know that there is continuing growth in the audio consumption market. “We want to make it easy for you to buy,” said Young, who encouraged media buyers to “lean into this product… it will help you reach the audiences you want to reach and make every ad count.”

“No matter what DSP [Demand Side Platform] you use, you will be able to access the product. This is the future of audio industry trading and a great opportunity for clients in the future.”

In a later session on podcasting, SCA’s ‘podfather,’ Grant Tothill and a panel of podcast experts reinforced the ability of podcasts to increase hyper targeting by interest. The panel made the points that podcasting is “on demand and personalised,” with “incredibly loyal and involved audiences.”

Two myths were busted by the panel, that included  Belinda Cook, Head of Audio Sales, Mamamia, Dominique McDermott, Senior Audio Strategy Manager at News Corp, Mia Stern, Head of Digital Growth at Nine Radio, and Kim Kerton, Head of Podcast Partnerships at Nova Entertainment. The myths were that Spotify can reach more listeners and that True Crime is not brand safe.

“The podcast environment offers high engagement… Call it investigative journalism and the worry about brand safety disappears,” said Stern.

With the introduction of AUDIO ID, the audio industry can now demonstrate how it delivers:

• mass reach through live to air radio (via both broadcast or streaming)
• niche demographic and geographic reach using AUDIO ID
• curated lifestyle music listening through music channels on platforms such as the iHeart app
• niche reach through podcasts, delivered on radio company apps and also on every available podcast app

The innovations are also one more tool to debunk mastaken beliefs that audio is not a digital medium or is an ‘old’ medium. Audio continues to evole in today’s digital media world.

With AUDIO ID, campaigns can now plan a big splash on broadcast radio across networks,  then niche messages to reinforce the campaign to specific segments of radio listeners, reinforced by hyper local or hyper targeted preroll messages in streams or podcasts, and finally host-read messages in podcasts that are aligned with the product. To take full advantage of what the new system offers, advertising creatives will need to put more effort into their audio production and create lots of different versions of their ads to deliver the right messages to many target audience segments.

While the system is designed for the commercial industry, the results will also help the ABC communicate the complex mix of audience interactions it has across all its audio offerings. Block programming on Radio National and the rolling formats of News Radio are not captured well in the ratings system, but AUDIO ID will allow those public service formats to explain more effectively how they reach specialist audiences across both broadcast and podcast platforms.

Reporting and analysis: Steve Ahern