RESPONSE Magazine - December 2017

Artificial Intelligence is Real

Another company, Veritone Inc. in Costa Mesa, Calif., is making a name for itself in AI among the tech and ad industries.

Veritone, in business since 2014, can track and monitor radio’s terrestrial signals via AI. So Veritone records, transcribes and catalogs audio — both programming and advertising — into searchable databases in near real time.

Veritone’s senior vice president, Drew
Hilles, says the company’s offerings grew
from the frustration of not being able to
get real-time data. “There were no sys-
tems that allowed for real-time reports,”
says Hilles, who has 20 years of radio
sales experience. “We had to listen to the
airplay to find the ad messages. Now with
AI, users can get content in real time. It’s
a dramatic improvement in ad verifica-
tion and attribution modeling.”
In essence, radio can now see all of its
content in one area: searchable, discover-
able, and trackable anytime. Radio sales
staff can track ad accounts to make sure
that advertisers are;getting reports in real
time.
Veritone says in one instance, eight
radio stations had 21 sales administrators
spending 80 percent of their day pulling
air checks for clients. With Veritone’s
technology, one person does it in 20
minutes.
One of Veritone’s products, ai-
WARE™,;can replicate some of what
the human brain does, such as language
processing, face;and object recognition,
sentiment analysis, anomaly detection,
and prediction.
This summer, Veritone gave audio
giant iHeartMedia a license to its ai-
WARE™ to automatically process iHeart’s
audio content in real time. Now iHeart
can track all advertising, content, and
host-read endorsements for more than
200 of its radio stations in the top 50
markets.
Veritone also gives iHeart comprehen-
sive analytics of its broadcasts and digital
audio streams. And iHeart will use Veri-
tone’s programmatic platform.
Tim Castelli, iHeart’s president of na-
tional sales, marketing, and partnerships,
says Veritone’s artificial intelligence capa-
bilities represent “another important step
toward a smarter future in audio [that will
give] us more opportunities to enhance
our advertising and content initiatives.”
iHeart will be able to use the Veritone
system
across its
platforms,
including
audio, so-
cial media,
podcasts,
Annika’s coworker
Abbot expands
Marketing
Architects’ AI
capability.
RADIO MARKET

The ad-supported audio streaming service Spotify is making it easier for advertisers to get their messages out with its new do-it-yourself ad studio. Spotify claims it’s the world’s first self-serve ad maker.

The concept is simple: advertisers create their own audio ads in minutes with professional voiceovers. Costs start at just $250.

Spotify says there is no experience
necessary to create the spots and that the
service is open to businesses of all sizes.

A Spotify spokesperson says the studio is in beta now and that the platform lets users set target audience and budget — and track results via a dashboard.

“It’s part of our ongoing commitment
to bring ad innovation to advertisers and
consumers,” the spokesperson said. “We’re
focused on re-imagining audio advertising;
we think there’s tremendous white space for
innovation here.”;
Spotify adds that the spots let
advertisers reach their audiences “where
the other big ad platforms and visual
mediums can’t: at the key
moments of people’s lives
where they’re listening to
music.”;
One of the first
customers testing the
beta version is the
University of Denver.
Victoria O’Malley,
director of marketing
and communications for
University College at the
University of Denver, says
the university “jumped at
the opportunity” to take
part.
“We were thrilled to
test it. It’s simple to use. I
chose an audience [with
an age range], set a budget, typed in a
script, chose some background music, and
then there was a fully produced Spotify ad
up and running,” O’Malley says. “For those
familiar with other social media advertising
platforms, the Spotify Ad Studio will be
intuitive.”
She says the tool gave her a lot of voice
options and that she could make changes
as needed. “This flexibility, especially
compared to traditional radio, is another
reason we were attracted to advertise on
Spotify,” she says.