SiriusXM, Comscore Bring Cookie-Free Audience Targeting to Podcasts

SiriusXM and media measurement firm Comscore have agreed to bring the latter’s cookie-free targeting tool, Comscore Predictive Audiences, to the audio company’s podcasts and ad tech podcast ecosystem Adswizz. With more targeting capabilities, the audio company is aiming to increase programmatic podcast ad revenue.

The deal will let marketers target their audio ads at hundreds of audiences on podcasts, based on attributes tied to content consumption, using Comscore’s global opt-in panels and Adswizz’s artificial intelligence contextual categorization engine. As such, the companies note Predictive Audiences is developed from an initial set of privacy-compliant consumer data. The cookie-free targeting capability will let marketers target consumer audiences, based on topics like their TV and streaming consumption, gaming habits and life stage, among others.

The audio company said Predictive Audiences will reach its combined advertising sales organization, which includes SiriusXM, Pandora and Stitcher, SXM Media, later this year.

Predictive Audiences for audio is backed by Comscore’s audience behavior data, collected from screens like desktop, mobile and streaming, which then is used to understand the types of content suitable for that audience, according to Comscore vice president, ad platforms partnerships Jessica Trainor.

Podcast ad revenue is expected to grow to $2 billion by 2023. As it increases, the industry is trying to balance keeping the environment premium, while supporting the efficiencies of programmatic trading.

According to SiriusXM’s Q1 earnings, Pandora’s ad revenue and its podcast business made $336 million in Q1, an 8% year-over-year increase. The company’s total Q1 revenue amassed 2.19 billion, a 6% year-over-year increase.

SiriusXM is the representative of four of the top fifteen podcasts in the country, including Office Ladies, Dateline NBC and Pod Save America, its senior vice president and head of communications Jessica Casano-Antonellis told Adweek. This also includes true crime podcast Crime Junkies, with over 22 million downloads a month. The company also holds the number one spot for podcast advertising network in weekly U.S. listener reach, per Edison Research.