What Is Programmatic Audio and How Does It Work With Radio Ads?

Well, today we're going to talk about another launch that we've had recently at FDS and also with our radio reps, which we talked about briefly under the digital essentials, but I want to go deeper on the programmatic audio conversation and really dig in so our listeners, as well as some of our radio reps can dive in deeper on how programmatic audio works and how great it couples with an already existing platform that they're doing on the radio side, right? With the local stations.

It's a much needed enhancement to what we already do,

right? 100%.

As somebody who listens to almost exclusively digital audio, I'm very excited about it.

Yes.

Let's start with the basics.

Programmatic audio.

For a listener who hears the word programmatic and they start to tune out or they're like, that sounds too technical.

What is programmatic audio? What does it actually mean?

So programmatic is really just describing how it gets bought, right? It's the fancy word for the auction.

It's the way it gathers multiple versions of audio.

And we can talk about music and podcasting and other radio stations and audible, bringing all of that inventory together and doing it from a programmatic buy.

So it ties into the auction, right? The software matches the ad to the right listener based on targeting geo, right? and layers into the right listener, and it can happen and deliver within an hour of the buy, right? So just like what we do on the digital side when we have programmatic display and programmatic CTV, this is exactly the same thing.

It's just what is the delivery and what the channel is, right? In this case, it's all audio.

So it's programmatic audio.

To simplify, we just call it digital audio.

But it's what we're doing every day, right? We're getting in our car and we're listening to our local radio.

We're putting in a podcast.

You know, yesterday I'm out mowing the lawn.

I'm listening to a different podcast.

I've moved over to music.

I'm listening to Spotify.

Just listen to some 80s hits, right? So it's doing it as a better way of deciding whether where our listeners are, where our customers are consuming what we do, we're going to reach them through the programmatic buy.

Right.

So fancy word.

Well, today we're going to talk about another launch that we've had recently at FDS and also with our radio reps, which we talked about briefly under the digital essentials, but I want to go deeper on the programmatic audio conversation and really dig in so our listeners, as well as some of our radio reps can dive in deeper on how programmatic audio works and how great it couples with an already existing platform that they're doing on the radio side, right? With the local stations.

It's a much needed enhancement to what we already do,

right? 100%.

As somebody who listens to almost exclusively digital audio, I'm very excited about it.

Yes.

Let's start with the basics.

Programmatic audio.

For a listener who hears the word programmatic and they start to tune out or they're like, that sounds too technical.

What is programmatic audio? What does it actually mean?

So programmatic is really just describing how it gets bought, right? It's the fancy word for the auction.

It's the way it gathers multiple versions of audio.

And we can talk about music and podcasting and other radio stations and audible, bringing all of that inventory together and doing it from a programmatic buy.

So it ties into the auction, right? The software matches the ad to the right listener based on targeting geo, right? and layers into the right listener, and it can happen and deliver within an hour of the buy, right? So just like what we do on the digital side when we have programmatic display and programmatic CTV, this is exactly the same thing.

It's just what is the delivery and what the channel is, right? In this case, it's all audio.

So it's programmatic audio.

To simplify, we just call it digital audio.

But it's what we're doing every day, right? We're getting in our car and we're listening to our local radio.

We're putting in a podcast.

You know, yesterday I'm out mowing the lawn.

I'm listening to a different podcast.

I've moved over to music.

I'm listening to Spotify.

Just listen to some 80s hits, right? So it's doing it as a better way of deciding whether where our listeners are, where our customers are consuming what we do, we're going to reach them through the programmatic buy.

Right.

So fancy word.