• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 12, 2018

Oath, a Verizon company, on Monday announced the ability to buy and manage digital audio advertising inventory that comes from an integration with digital exchanges, such as the Rubicon Project.

Through the Oath Ad Platforms DSP, advertisers gain access through these integrations to popular audio services such as SoundCloud, Targetspot and others. This means that advertisers can place campaigns against streaming music, podcasts and other forms of high-impact digital audio. 

Edison Research and Triton Research estimate that more than 180 million people listen to streaming audio monthly, and that 73 million consumers have heard a podcast in the last month. Avid podcast listeners on average listen to seven podcasts weekly. 

The integration allows advertisers to make real-time targeting and bid management changes as they add audio to their video and display campaigns in the demand-side platform. It offers greater opportunities to personalize audio advertising, including contextual targeting.

With display and video, the advertiser transacts inventory through the DSP to place their ads alongside it. Here, the inventory is simply digital audio. The campaigns will be served across top digital audio streaming and supply sources, explains an Oath spokesperson. 

The CPM pricing is often very similar to video inventor, given the impact and personalization made possible through digital audio, as well as the premium nature of the supply. 

There is a rich and growing set of metrics, from completion and listen rates to mute and pause rates. Audible duration is important in understanding the campaign’s return on investment and engagement.

“We have aligned with the MRC here, who has defined a digital audio ad as being 'audible' if it’s played un-muted at a non-zero volume for at least two seconds,” the spokesperson said. “This category of advertising is still very new, with benchmarking standards set to become even more in-depth and insightful over time. Similar to viewability, audible, as a metric, will grow much more sophisticated.”