• by John Hallenborg , June 14, 2002

Most newer-generation PCs are equipped with improved audio capability, which has prompted a fresh surge in advertising over audio band frequencies, including online radio. But tracking audio ads has been difficult at best, so activity has been slow to develop. Help is now available from theDial, a Seattle-based company (www.thedial.com) offering real-time audio ad verification services for its client advertisers. Claiming new technology, the company’s tool tracks each stream as an ad plays and sends an electronic blip, a ping, to the ad agency's server to record the activity.

Audio ads on theDial are streamed for 15 seconds along with original entertainment and news interspersed across two dozen genre-based music channels. Listeners respond to ads by using theDial Player’s interactive features, which link them directly to a point of purchase or to additional information, depending on the advertiser’s goal. theDial expects audio ads to be coordinated with the banner and sponsorship campaigns common to visual media.

Insofar as online audio advertising is just beyond the fledging growth phase, results may be logically incorporated into overall multi-media campaigns with cost-per-thousand accounting. Perhaps the growth rate for online radio will quicken now that there is a way to measure audio impressions. Given that click-through rates for audio ads are much higher than their visual banner ad counterparts (14 times the average banner ad rate, according to theDial), 2001 may be a strong year for sound in online ads.

Launch customers for theDial included Hewlett-Packard, and more recently, NextCard Visa, Sears, and Folgers coffee have come aboard. Ed Bruno, vice president of sales for TheDial, says that "the ping code, which follows the end of a streaming audio message, is gathered at Exodus (Exodus Communications, an applications service provider for high volume data processing). There is also directional code, which routes the information to the appropriate agency."

"At the end of the day, I know exactly how many spots I’ve loaded in the pipe to buyers, I know how many people have heard an ad, and how many people have acted on an offer. We have a standardized call-to-action, by clicking the ‘Go’ button," Bruno adds, so measuring return-on-investment becomes a largely automated function.

In terms of pricing, Bruno reports that "the lowest CPM we’re clearing is $35 per thousand. As we get better at targeting the message, demographically and geographically, we’ll be asking a premium for that."

Justin Fortune, president of San Francisco-based agency Hot Liquid Media, just completed a one-month (December tracking) holiday program for computer hardware giant Hewlett-Packard, using theDial device on HP’s online shopping site. Fortune is pleased with theDial.

"By tracking an audio ad’s performance day by day, monitoring how effective the ad really is, changes can be made quickly to get people to the ‘Go’ button," he says. Responses for the one-month test numbered 254,684 gross impressions and 7,410 direct responses, reflecting a response rate of 2.9 percent. theDial is available to an estimated 50 million Internet users on 47 affiliate sites nationwide.