There’s no better time than now to embrace audio advertising. There’s been rapid growth in audio content available for streaming, and today’s connected consumer spends over 6 hours per week listening to digital audio.
With programmatic audio advertising, you can connect with a growing audience in today’s highly mobile and connected consumer environment, right in their ears.
In this article, we’ll break down what programmatic audio is, the benefits it can bring for your brand or organization, and how to create your first set of audio ads.
What’s Inside:
- A breakdown of what programmatic audio advertisements are.
- The benefits of using this digital channel for your brand or organization.
- How to create your first audio ad.
- Best practices with audio to increase engagement.
- Building brand awareness for B2B through audio campaigns.
- How to include audio in your digital strategy.
- “Americans Are Spending More Time Listening To Digital Audio
- B2B Audio Campaigns Are Effective at Boosting Brand Awareness
- The Perfect Channel to Convey Your Brand Personality
- Audio Ads Have High Engagement and Recall Rates With Listeners”
Table of Contents
Content Summary
The Rise of Audio
Programmatic Audio Explained
The Benefits of Programmatic Audio
How to Create Your First Audio Ad
Audio Best Practices
Use Case | Leverage Audio to Build Brand Awareness in B2B
Including Audio in Your Digital Strategy
The Rise of Audio
In recent years there’s been rapid growth in audio content available for streaming. Podcasts, audiobooks, music, and playlists are now all available to listen to through mobile devices. This screen-free entertainment has quickly gained popularity:
- >70% Of US adults listen to digital audio content at least once a month.
- 71% Of the US population are listening to digital audio in 2021.
- 6h 14m Average time individuals spend per week on digital audio in the US.
The growing adoption of audio isn’t set to slow down. In 2022, the average time spent listening to digital audio should rise to 1 hour and 37 minutes per day.
Programmatic Audio Explained
Programmatic audio enables you to run audio ads through your demand-side platform (DSP). It uses a process similar to display advertising, which automates the selling and insertion of ads into audio content.
With programmatic audio, you can buy targeted ads from all the major audio publishers using one system. Ads reach your audience through various devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet. Programmatic audio enables your ad to be placed before or during the streaming of a playlist.
The Benefits of Programmatic Audio
This ad format has many growing benefits and impressive engagement rates. According to Nielsen Media Lab, programmatic audio ads have a 24% higher recall rate than traditional display ads— music to a marketer’s ears!
Highly Targeted Ads
As with all digital advertising, programmatic audio enables marketers to fine-tune their targeting. Leverage data from audio partners to target specific genres, playlists, moods, moments, and more. Use that information to target your audience based on household income, online behavior, location, and other demographics.
Reach Younger Audiences
Audio is popular among digitally savvy millennials and Gen Z, so you can reach a younger audience that is entering, or already in, their prime spending years. And, you can form long-lasting relationships that with nurturing, will result in a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) over time.
Brand Messaging and Awareness
Audio commands the listener’s full attention, which leads to them feeling intimately connected to the content they are hearing. This results in a better connection and receptiveness between a listener and a brand, which drives engagement.
How to Create Your First Audio Ad
Your audio ads will quite literally speak to your audience. Here is how to get started with creating pre-produced commercial audio ads.
Write Your Script
Your script should be simple, with a clear message that includes a value proposition and one defined call to action (CTA). For a 15-second audio ad, aim for a script length of 40 words. For 30-second ads, aim for 55 to 75 words. Keep in mind that your brand name or website should be repeated 2 to 3 times throughout the ad. When writing an ad script, remember that the best audio ads tell a memorable story that keeps the listener engaged.
Cast for Voice Over
Find a voice that is on brand and relatable (or appealing) to your target audience. For audio ads, a friendly, conversational tone is key. You’re not looking for the theatrical types of voices often heard in radio ads—that’s because with programmatic audio you’re reaching people when they’re already actively listening. You don’t need to be flashy to get their attention.
Record and Mix
Script delivery should be slow-paced, with a consistent tone and tempo. Make sure to stay within the ad length of 15 or 30 seconds. When mixing the final edit, transitions in and out of the ad shouldn’t feel jarring to the listener. Use minimal background music and add subtle environmental sounds to create imagery in the listener’s mind. Export your ad in the format OGG, MP3, MP4, WAV, FLAC, or AAC, and make sure the file is 500MB or smaller.
Do you need resources to help you create your audio ads? Here are a couple of useful tools to check out:
- Read these sample scripts to guide drafting your ad’s voiceover script.
- Head to Voices.com to find and hire the right voice actor for your ad.
- You can find stock music through Adobe to include in your ad.
Once you’ve created a great audio ad, it’s time to run your digital audio campaign through your DSP. With programmatic audio, you can buy targeted ads from all the major audio publishers using one platform.
Your DSP will enable you to use the same audience targeting parameters from your native, display, video, and connected TV (CTV) campaigns, making it simple to integrate audio into a holistic plan alongside your other channels.
Audio Best Practices
6 Sound Steps to Create an Engaging Audio Ad
- Develop a message for your ad that is clear and to the point.
- Incentivize your listeners to take action with a call to action (CTA).
- Tap into your listeners’ imagination using music and sounds.
- Stick to a conversational and friendly tone.
- Keep it brief so that your audience remembers your message.
- Test creatives for creative insights and to minimize ad fatigue
Use Case | Leverage Audio to Build Brand Awareness in B2B
For B2B marketers, the attributes of audio ads combined with user listening habits make audio campaigns well-positioned for targeting the needs, interests, and challenges of a business or organization. Audio campaigns are particularly effective at building brand awareness, paired with positive brand association.
Here are 4 tactics to help marketers get started with scaling and maximizing the impact of B2B audio campaigns.
Target specific and niche audiences.
Leverage data segments from audio partners to ensure your audio ads target the specific demographics you want to reach. Fine-tuned targeting will drive strong performance results, and you’ll have access to reporting metrics that you can analyze to optimize future campaigns.
Use audio ads to educate your target audience.
Leverage audio to build and grow awareness, recognition, and interest. With an audio ad, you can address a common pain point your target audience has in a way that resonates with listeners, and direct their attention to the B2B solution that you’re offering.
Capture your audience by conveying brand personality.
Brand personality helps B2B businesses to resonate and connect with the right consumers by eliciting a positive emotional response. An audio ad speaks to the audience, creating ample opportunity to express personality.
Retarget your qualified B2B users.
By speaking to qualified B2B users in undistracted moments, your ad will have more of an impact. Collect audiences that have listened to your entire audio ad, retarget them with the display or native ads on other devices, and move them down the funnel.
Including Audio in Your Digital Strategy
Here are some benefits of leveraging audio within a multi-channel strategy:
Audio is emotionally engaging.
Unlike other forms of media, it captures listeners in an undistracted environment. This makes audio a perfect medium for building brand awareness.
Native is best for engagement, information and education.
Leverage blogs to inform customers about different product highlights and reviews.
CTV and video are ideal for telling brand stories.
Lean on these videos to mass communicate a promotion, event, or featured product.
Display is your workhorse.
Use it to lift the performance of the other channels. The display is best used with a call to action such as “shop now,” or “book a test drive.”