Digital Audio Driving Shift In Media Spending

The growing audience for advertising-supported streaming audio is driving a shift in media spending as marketers seek to reach listeners of music and podcast programming. The portability of smartphones and the popularity of unlimited mobile data plans help to reach consumers wherever they are, while smart speaker ownership is rising among connected households.

“I’ve been in audio for about 20 years, but there’s really a lot of attention coming to audio today, which is fantastic,” John Morris, vice president of streaming and on demand at ad management platform WideOrbit, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Audio is driving significant revenue for a lot of our broadcast clients, who now have repurposed or turned their over-the-air audio products digital, and are doing fantastic jobs monetizing that inventory both through their direct-sold efforts and also programmatic efforts."

WideOrbit not only provides an advertising traffic system that’s used by about half of the terrestrial radio stations in the U.S., but also provides technology for streaming audio, podcasting and programmatic ad sales. U.S. digital radio ad spending will rebound by 27% to $4.72 billion next year, researcher eMarketer forecast, and growing portion of that spending will go through programmatic placements — including those in podcasts.