Audio ads should be personalized, too.
That’s the thought behind Adobe’s partnership with A Million Ads, which powers dynamic creative optimization in digital and programmatic audio, announced Monday.
Adobe launched programmatic audio capabilities in July 2017, after receiving an uptick in demand from its customer base, said Justin Merickel, VP of media optimizer at Adobe Advertising Cloud. In the past six months that demand has increased significantly, especially among CPGs and retailers.
“As publishers ramp their capabilities and more inventory is opening up, the market is starting to create demand,” he said. “It’s no longer an anomaly to think about audio this way.”
Adobe’s integration with A Million Ads offers an extra layer of personalization for brands as their investments in programmatic audio grow. After Adobe executes the programmatic audio buy, A Million Ads personalizes the creative by tagging different versions of commercial scripts with location, device and other third-party data, like weather, to serve relevant ads to each listener.
For example, an ad served during a rainy evening in New York would sound different than an ad served on a sunny morning in Los Angeles, said Steve Dunlop, founder and CEO of A Million Ads.
“We can discern roughly where you are, what the weather’s like, if you’ve heard the ad before and what device you’re using,” he said. “Using that, we can personalize the ad to make it feel like it’s for each individual.”
So far, five brands buying programmatic audio through Adobe are using the A Million Ads integration, although Adobe declined to name them. CORT Furniture, which recently launched programmatic audio through Adobe on Spotify, is interested in testing dynamic audio creative as it extends its programmatic audio buys to other platforms, like Soundcloud and iHeartRadio, said Jake Taylor, marketing analyst at CORT.
The furniture rental company, which was able to reach a 95% unique audience on Spotify, appeals to college students, military personnel, nurses, athletes or anyone in a temporary living situation.
“We have a lot of different audiences that need different messaging,” he said. “Being able to update that makes sense for us.
