iHMedia, Sounder Launch Best-in-Class Brand Safety Tools

iHeartMedia announced a partnership Wednesday with Sounder, an audio intelligence platform that builds foundational podcasting technology to drive monetization, brand safety and discoverability for audio content.

iHeartMedia will leverage Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud’s automated best-in-class AI and ML brand safety solution to ensure advertisers can confidently invest in the iHeartPodcast Network’s expansive and rapidly growing line-up of diverse content with more than 392 million downloads and streams a month (more downloads than the next three podcast publishers combined). The brand safety solution enables iHeartMedia’s marketing partners to buy across a wide array of creators with the assurance that the content adheres to industry safety standards. The technology will quickly expand to also allow advertisers to customize their brand safety guidelines, unlocking new and more diverse publishers to provide even more effective ad placements.

“As the leader in podcasting, the iHeartPodcast Network hosts the most diverse group of high-quality creators in the world and produces the most podcasts that generate over one million plus downloads. It’s critical that we learn from the challenges advertisers have had with video and social media to deliver safety tools and controls that allow brands to customize their campaigns and ensure that their ads will be delivered at scale in a brand safe environment,” said iHeartMedia Chief Data Officer Brian Kaminsky.

Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud enables large publishers the ability to perform brand suitability analysis, topic analysis, content summarization, and dynamic segmentation. These solutions help accelerate the size and engagement of the iHeartPodcast Network’s large and growing audience from the biggest and most diverse shows in the network, to the rapidly growing number of up-and-coming creators. Audio Data Cloud leverages Sounder’s proprietary automated speech recognition technology and powerful AI/ML models. In doing so, it unlocks uncaptured value for all enterprise audio content.

In addition to this commercial partnership, iHeartMedia has also announced a strategic investment in Sounder, as lead investor in the company’s Series A round.