2019: digital audio will soar

A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting to Lindsay Rowntree, the editor of Exchangewire. If you don't know this adtech/martech publication, you should look it up. She asked me if I'd write a 2019 prediction piece about one of ten topics. (I thought I was special but I see she writes she's asked "hundreds of industry thoughtleaders"!)

I chose the one closest to my heart ever since consulting to Steve Smith and the Arabian Radio Network back in 2016. Digital audio.

Here's what I wrote about digital audio. Do you agree? Or would you cite another channel as the most significant for 2019?

Some say 2019 will be the year of AR, VR, ML, AI or Blockchain. They are wrong.

2019 will be “the year of audio”. Why? Two specific areas:

Voice. Alexa utterance – is  not all we’ll need by the end of 2019, although Amazon is betting on it and now asking its suppliers to pay to promote it. Instead we’ll work out how to use ‘voice’ and how not to annoy audiences – if Amazon, Google and others will allow us access to useful audience data.

Programmatic audio. Streaming services and radio stations have been ramping up their audio inventory and – often – sharing new and interesting data to brands. Triton Digital, for example, has their sophisticated audience measurement metrics system. In 2019, Advertisers will engage with the data and start to see audio in a new light.

The late 2000s saw “year of mobile” announced over consecutive years. Mainly because the mobile ad execs spoke tech-for-techies. Times have changed; we don’t bamboozle with jargon, we now explain & demonstrate with data. We are starting to understand the power of the audio & audiences. In 2019, digital audio will soar.

https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2018/12/10/experts-explain-2019-crucial-audio/