Although radio has long been a mainstay of local media, radio broadcasters face increasingly steep challenges selling their audio inventory to local advertisers due to the rise of digital and programmatic ad inventory.
Now, omnichannel advertising workflow platform Frequence claims it has a new way for audio companies to court advertisers.
On Tuesday, Frequence announced an integration with iHeartMedia-owned Triton Digital, a streaming audio and podcast tech company.
Audio companies can do audience reach extension through the integration, selling ads to targeted audiences outside their owned-and-operated sites. Via the reach extension, audio-only clients can sell CTV/OTT and search ads alongside their radio ads, going omnichannel instead of just spending on their audio inventory.
The integration, Frequence’s first in the audio space, will also give media companies more information about how their advertisers’ audio ads are performing, said CEO Tom Cheli. For instance, they’ll be able to see a visual map breakdown of the stations where the ads played and how impressions load in different ZIP codes.
Frequence is already integrated with DSPs like Cadent and The Trade Desk, Google and order management systems.
End to end
Adding these capabilities brings Frequence closer to its goal of being an end-to-end platform for broadcast radio and TV, cable, print and out-of-home companies, which use Frequence to automate tasks from advertising sales proposals to campaign planning, management and optimization to reporting, according to Cheli.
The company’s clients include local media conglomerates like Spectrum, Lee Enterprises, Hearst Newspapers, Beasley Media Group, Mediacom and Marketron.
In the display Lumascape, Frequence sits under the media management systems and operations category alongside the likes of Basis Technologies (which expanded its partnership with Triton in June to let brands buy programmatic ads in broadcast radio), Bionic and Theorem. The company has always been completely self-funded and plans to continue reinvesting in and building the business, Cheli said.
Frequence was born in 2010. In the beginning, it tested the platform with advertisers, but, a few years in, it started working with media companies and got “obsessed” with automating and configuring workflows in an omnichannel way. The company operates on two main business models: enterprise SaaS based and managed service.
“Integrations are key for us,” Cheli said, “because they’re the only way you’re going to be able to streamline those workflows.”
