• by Felicia Greiff , Staff Writer, January 7, 2016

Triton Digital, a tech provider for the audio industry, and Audio.Ad, a digital audio ad network serving the Latin America and U.S. Hispanic markets, announced a partnership to enable programmatic buying and selling of Audio.Ad’s online and mobile audio inventory through the Triton Digital audio ad exchange, a2x. 

Other publishers on the exchange include Spotify, Rdio, Cumulus, Slacker Radio, CBS Radio, MLB.com Gameday Audio, Entercom and Live365.

Benjamin Masse, SVP/GM of advertising at Triton Digital, said Audio.Ad is willing to try new things, and most countries in Latin America are pushing hard to spearhead innovation. 

"[Agencies in the area] want to show the U.S. and other advanced programmatic countries that they know what to do," Masse said. "They're really bright and willing to experiment." He added that he wants to make sure audio is not seen as an emerging channel but rather on par with other digital mediums.

One opportunity going forward is mobile audio streaming, Masse said, especially with so many Latin American mobile and smart-device users. (eMarketer predicts 434 million consumers will own and use mobile phones across the region by 2018.) "As soon as we reach that position, it will be good for the publisher," Masse said. "I don't know if it will take a quarter or three years. It's a huge market, and there's a lot of willingness to make that happen." 

In December, Triton Digital announced that San Francisco-based podcasting platform Spreaker joined a2x, an audio ad exchange that uses predictive modeling and audience targeting based on format, genre, geography, demo, gender, and first- and third-party data. In August, Real-Time Daily reported that Acast, a Swedish podcasting app, joined Triton Digital's a2x exchange.

Audio.Ad, part of Cisneros Interactive, was founded in 2014 and claims to reach more than 55 million unique users. The company has offices in Argentina, Mexico, the U.S., Colombia, Peru and Chile.