Stuck at Home, Smart Speaker Owners Leaning on Devices More

With people across the country confined to their homes to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, many are increasingly turning to their smart speakers for news and entertainment, according to new polling from Morning Consult. That presents an opportunity for advertisers, said several audio marketing consultants and voice content developers, even for those with slimming budgets

“People are home, and they’re going to be using their smart speakers more often,” said Emily Binder, founder of the digital consultancy company Beetle Moment Marketing, which helps brands establish their presence on voice assistants.

Thirty-four percent of U.S. adults who own smart speakers said they are using the devices more often than usual in the past month, according to a March 31-April 1 poll conducted by Morning Consult. Three in 5 said they’re using their devices about the same amount, while 5 percent said they are using them less.

The poll was conducted among 2,200 U.S. adults and holds a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Many companies were establishing their presence in audio and on voice assistants even before the pandemic. Sonic branding first hit the radars of many marketers in 2018, proved itself to be a worthwhile marketing tool in 2019 and was expected to become more popular in 2020, said Will Mayo, the founder and chief strategy officer of SpokenLayer, which works with brands and media companies to create branded short-form audio content and distribute it on platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The costs associated with producing and placing branded content — such as podcasts, microcasts and smart speaker voice apps — on audio platforms also tend to be much cheaper than those associated with video, audio experts said.

Mayo said it could be up to 10 times more expensive to make video assets than audio assets for campaigns, but some advanced audio campaigns can add up to seven figures in yearly spend.

“We’re seeing a lot of advertisers that have never really done audio come in this year,” Mayo said. “The brands that are willing to jump on this are going to have a phenomenal ROI.”