Dynamic Audio Advertising: Machines & music in concert

From podcasts to audiobooks to digital radio to music streaming services, there’s never been so much high-quality audio content available. And that means there are plenty of new opportunities for advertisers to engage with audiences. However, advertisers' approach to audio will need to change if they’re to gain cut-through with an audience grown used to personalised experiences in other digital channels. 

Tomorrow's audio advertising will be more adaptive and much more relevant. Creatives will be able to find the perfect tune to meet their branding needs, every time, at the touch of a button – and with none of the trade-offs that traditionally characterise soundbed selection. Media buyers will be able to seamlessly scale campaigns across publishers, platforms and even demographics. Consumers will experience audio advertising as a seamlessly integrated part of their listening journey, as opposed to today's often jarring experiences. 

Dynamic audio is helping engineer this change – enabling audio to catch up, and perhaps even overtake, the wider digital advertising industry in terms of delivering one-to-one, personalised, context-aware advertising at scale. Significantly, the audio advertising industry is leveraging lessons learned during the rollout of programmatic display to ensure that the underlying technology and processes are optimised from the outset.

The benefits of dynamic audio are already clear. Advertisers have long seen the advantages of creating personalised audio experiences, but the costs of producing and scaling such campaigns were prohibitive. Quite simply, the technology didn’t exist. However, thanks to the latest generation of artificial intelligence tools, music and other sonic assets can be endlessly reconfigured and shaped to fit the preferences and contexts of each individual listener.

The approach expands Dynamic Content Optimisation well beyond voice. Leveraging AI to automate and simplify it empowers creatives with a broad pallet of sounds spanning voice, music, samples, beats, effects and more.

Just ask US-based cable TV company Cox Communications. Combining AI-enabled real-time contextual genre targeting with an intuitive audio advertising platform, the company produced dynamic and personalised audio ads that complemented a listener's music genre – and all in a matter of minutes. Its campaign resulted in a staggering 238% higher engagement while also slashing production costs 20% and production time 95%.

There are currently three main use cases for machine learning-enabled dynamic audio:

1. Bespoke audio production - the technology creates the ideal soundbed based on creative selections and voiceover

2. Dynamic alteration of soundbeds to match a listener's context 

3. Enhancing the searching of music libraries by moving towards semantic search

Looking ahead, dynamic audio will become even more integral to omnichannel marketing strategies. Whatever the audio context, the ability of AI to ‘mix’ and produce new compositions instantaneously will make tailored audio a common component of advertising. 

With a universe of music and sounds available to creatives and unlocked through AI-enabled discovery, the sonic pallet will become as important to brand building as colour pallets, fonts and imagery. Certain sounds in certain contexts will trigger immediate associations of a brand and product and – if triggered at the right moment and in the right context – can build brand affinity and drive purchase intent. Audio will come to play an important role in driving engagement and sales for brands now that it actually works as intended, rather than alienating listeners.

What can advertisers do to prepare for this emerging world? AI comes with a lot of hype and it can be hard to discern the wheat from the chaff. Yet when it comes to dynamic audio, we believe there are three key elements to consider:

1. Simplicity: Production capabilities need to be intuitive so that audio can quickly be pulled together to reflect what people are doing at any given moment

2. Access: Ensure you have access to a broad sound library based on your needs. For example, you might need access to sound libraries with perpetual and global licensing across all audio advert formats in order to accelerate content creation

3. Automate everything: Put AI intelligence at the heart of your dynamic audio capability. The right algorithms will automate everything from music discovery to content delivery, ensuring a smooth and seamless experience for listeners

Audio content is entering a golden age. With more ears than ever to target, the use of AI-enabled tools for dynamic audio advertising will, we predict, accelerate exponentially. Forward-thinking advertisers and brands should ensure they have the right capabilities in place now.

Reading about innovations in sound is great, but for a true taste of music created by artificial intelligence, check out one of these AI designed mixtapes - whether you’re a fan of Lo-Fi Hip Hop or if Jazz is more your thing.