Audio platforms are fed up with tolerating the persistent gap between the amount of time people spend listening to podcasts and how much advertisers spend on podcast advertising.
So instead of waiting for advertisers to change their habits, these platforms are making their podcast inventory available through the same tools advertisers already use to run omnichannel programmatic campaigns.
The thinking is that if it’s easier to buy podcast ads alongside CTV, display and online video, then advertisers will actually do it. Comscore, for one, is leaning into this trend.
On Wednesday, Comscore announced that it’s adding Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast and Libsyn to its Proximic contextual targeting solution.
Using Proximic’s automated transcription of individual podcast episodes, Comscore can package this inventory into pre-bid contextual audience segments in the same way it does for website and TV inventory. The solution gives buyers more precision than the show-level or genre-level targeting that’s long been the norm for podcasts, said Jessica Trainor, head of partnerships at Proximic by Comscore.
“It’s putting audio a little bit more at parity with some of the other channels that [buyers are] used to targeting on,” Trainor said. “We’re bringing audio up to that level and making advertisers feel even more confident moving dollars toward that channel.”
Better targeting and optimization
With episode-level transcription, Comscore can categorize podcast inventory according to standard IAB content categories. But it can also go deeper and apply semantic intelligence to find connections between inventory that can’t be captured by standard content categories or keywords, Trainor said. Comscore models how well those audiences are likely to meet a brand’s KPIs, and turns them into pre-bid segments buyers can activate programmatically.
Transcription at the episode level also allows advertisers to apply their brand safety solutions to podcast inventory just like they do for other media channels, Trainor added.
To be clear, using audio transcription for brand safety verification and contextual targeting is nothing new. All of the digital audio platforms that have integrated with Comscore also offer some form of transcript-based content categorization.
But while Spotify, for example, can offer advertisers a similar feature set on its own, it’s also important to integrate with a variety of other widely used ad platforms, said Anne Bouttier, global head of automation sales at Spotify. That way, brands and agencies can buy Spotify’s inventory however they prefer to.
Plus, she said, they can use Comscore’s measurement capabilities so they don’t have to rely on audio platforms grading their own homework.
Giving ad agencies in particular that degree of flexibility should help get podcasts included in more omnichannel campaigns, Bouttier added – something that many platforms, Spotify included, believe is the key to closing the gap between audience engagement and advertiser investment.
Because digital audio currently only commands a small share of programmatic spending, she said, it means there’s plenty of room for growth, which is why integrating with programmatic platforms like Comscore is a good source of incremental revenue.
Standardizing omnichannel strategy
Acast likewise has its own transcription-based contextual targeting capabilities. But having a major programmatic platform like Comscore bring so many big audio players into a unified solution helps establish transcription-based contextual as an industry standard, said Valerie Reimer, SVP of business development and strategic partnerships at Acast.
“Audio needs to band together so that we can see some of that share of spend shift into the audio space,” she said. “Solutions like this that allow for scale across the industry as a whole are incredibly important.”
A more standardized approach to targeting and brand safety verification for podcasts also helps shift more revenue toward long-tail audio content, rather than letting most of the demand flow to big-name creators.
“I spend probably too much time thinking about how we can get advertisers to spend on our longer tail,” Reimer said. “Being able to use this type of technology has allowed us to open up budgets and get brands and agencies to feel more comfortable spending across the long tail, because they understand with significantly more transparency where their advertisement is landing.”
In addition, Reimer said, bringing audio targeting and brand safety in line with other media channels lays a foundation for audio inventory to be included in agentic AI deals going forward.
“We talk a lot about agentic and where the future is going, making sure that all channels can have commonalities for addressable audiences [and] contextual audiences,” she said. The goal is for buyers and their AI agents to be able to look more holistically at content and audiences, rather than having to drill down into specific media types.
And speaking of AI, giving buyers assurance that programmatic audiences are brand safe before they bid on inventory will be essential as audio platforms introduce AI-generated podcasts and music, said Spotify’s Bouttier.
Overall, the podcast market is evolving to not only give advertisers more ways to buy audio, but also a buying experience that matches other channels and more confidence in what they’re actually buying.
“Advertisers want consistency in how they’re buying across CTV, audio [and] display, but it’s challenging because there’s a lot of fragmentation,” said Comscore’s Trainor. “Any solution that’s helping advertisers have that consistency across channels is really helpful, and we’re so excited that we’re doing this for audio.”
