Why Your Business Needs a Digital Audio Strategy

If you're thinking of jumping onto the audio advertising train, there's never been a better time. Let's take a look at eight great benefits of audio advertising — excellent reasons you should be using digital audio ads to reach the people who are most likely to become your loyal customers.

1. Digital Audio is everywhere

218M+ Americans stream music, radio, news, and podcasts on phones, tablets, smart speakers, and computers every single month. 208M+ are doing so weekly. It's clear that the “smart” device triumph is nearly total.

By all other major metrics, we are currently living in the middle of an audio revolution.

If that is not enough — most of today's listeners are of working age and use free, ad-supported subscriptions to do their streaming.

Music to any marketers' ears. Here are some other statistics that you might show you why it’s important to have a clear audio advertising strategy:

• 76% of Americans over age 12 tune in to Digital Audio every month.
• US adults spent an average of 1 hour and 49 minutes a day with streaming audio.
•  People aren't just ditching old audio media, they're adding streaming platforms to their lineup. From 2021 to 2024, audiences coupling streaming and podcasts with traditional broadcast radio has increased by more than 66%.

2. Digital Audio gets — and keeps attention

As any good advertiser knows, every second counts. Especially when you're trying to make an impression. But with primarily visual ad media, it's becoming harder and harder to get audiences hooked. On Facebook, research indicates, people spend less than 2.5 seconds looking at a display ad on their desktop. On mobile, that number drops to a mere 1.7 seconds. That's not very much time, and the attention span for younger audiences is narrowing. Not to mention — most users there are watching these ads without sound, meaning they don't even get the opportunity to experience any accompanying audio branding or expensive music licensing you paid for.

But when it comes to retaining audiences through exclusively audio formats, the numbers tell a different story. With a streaming audio ad, 61% of listeners are likely sit through an entire 30-second spot from start to finish. 60% of monthly streaming audio listeners also reported that streaming audio messages were harder to tune out than other online messages.

Keeping their attention during an ad is one thing — it's another that they're able to retain that info later. A DISQO study by SiriusXM Media reported 89% of digital audio listeners potentially learned about a new brand, product, or service through an audio ad. Even streaming audio subscribers are reachable with streaming audio ads. 81% of monthly streaming audio listeners in the US with paid streaming audio subscriptions reported they also listen to ad-supported streaming audio content at least monthly. There's no denying: When it comes to reaching and impacting people, audio ads reign supreme.

3. Digital Audio streaming services evolve

As new devices, platforms, and innovations such as voice assistants, AI-powered recommendations, and better targeting capabilities continue to shape the landscape, digital audio advertising adapts quickly, too. This flexibility allows advertisers to reach audiences in innovative ways — and follow where they go so campaigns stay relevant and effective.

• In 2024, an estimated 258 million Americans owned a smartphone, 207 million owned a smart TV, and 98 million owned a smart speaker.
• From 2017 to 2023, smart speaker ownership increased by more than 414%.
• Smart speaker owners reported listening to audio for 4 hours and 46 minutes a day, over 12% longer than non-smart speaker owners.

Moreover, digital audio can take advantage of real-time data, offering more precise and personalized ads, while constantly evolving to match the latest technological trends.

4. Digital Audio goes where Facebook and Google don't

Think about all the times you’re driving, exercising, cooking, or cleaning the house. Think about all those moments in the day when screens are off and your favorite music or podcast is on. 

Many people listen to audio while engaged in shopping-related activities, too: 

• 62% listen while running errands.
• 58% listen while driving to and from the grocery store.
• 56% listen while heading to a retail store or mall.

In these moments, an audio ad can jump into the messaging gap. Digital audio can reach your audience in ways and places that search and social marketing can't. At the same time, it can reinforce your overall digital marketing.

This is also what's called omni-channel advertising — the act of bringing your brand wherever your customers go in their journey, online and off. It's been proven to bring about better ROI and more engagements — and it's one of the biggest reasons why your business needs a digital audio strategy.

5. Digital Audio is targeted

The digital, data-based nature of today’s audio allows for audience targeting at such granularity that ad personalization can truly become more 1 to 1. In fact, our behavioral targeting feature is a perfect example of how narrow your ad personalization and audio reach can get with AudioGO.

It's a tool that lists up to 60 different interests and statuses for our users to select. You can choose from all kinds of options, like:

• Retail shoppers
• Tech enthusiasts
• Job seekers
• New parents

If you want to see our behavioral targeting feature in action, then you should read what happens to this small business that takes full advantage of it in this case study. 

And if you really want to make an impact, you're going to want to know about our new display retargeting feature.

Think of it like a one-two punch through cross-platform integration. It works by taking the banner ads from your AudioGO campaigns and displaying them on websites your listeners visit after they hear your audio ad. It requires no pixel and just one click to effectively create your own multichannel marketing campaign (on one platform, no less), while potentially gaining you 4X more clicks than you would otherwise get from just running display ads on their own.

6. Digital Audio is effective

Around 89% of digital audio listeners say they discover new products and brands through audio ads. And that kind of impact on consumer behavior doesn't come as a surprise, given how the medium lends itself to highly effective techniques like creative sound design, audio storytelling, and establishing a solid sonic identity.

And it's not just about awareness, it's about sales, too. 77% of digital audio listeners reported they'd purchased a specific brand, product, or service after hearing an audio ad, and 66% said that audio ads are key to influencing their purchasing decisions.

But effectiveness needs to be measured with some serious data analytics — and we have those. Our updated Campaign Stats Dashboard is built to give you deeper insights and greater control over your audio analytics and campaign data. And if you want to see exactly how user engagement is connected to conversions, you can employ AudioGO Pixel, a snippet of HTML code added to your website to track and measure conversions after someone listens to your audio ad.

7. Digital Audio is affordable

It certainly is with AudioGO.

With minimums as low as $250, you won't find a more affordable solution to market your business on some of the biggest music streaming, digital radio, live sports, news, and podcast apps around.

Not to mention, if you don't have an audio ad to get started, it'll only run you $10 to have one recorded by our team of real, professional voice actors.

And if you're looking to minimize audio production costs, you can select our free creative tool that leverages the latest text-to-speech technology to generate voiceovers for audio content.

AudioGO has also recently introduced dynamic pricing. This new, flexible, bid-based pricing model is designed to deliver more value and better results for your advertising budget.

8. Digital Audio is the future

There's much to anticipate as the audio industry evolves — whether that's AI soundscapes, more immersive sound, or interactive audio ads. To fully understand what's happening in the world of audio, it might help to know that it’s not just today’s creators and listeners who are moving toward a digital transformation.

The ad industry as a whole is in the middle of its own digital reckoning. For decades, it has maintained an old-school service model for radio spots. Lots of middle men get involved in ad planning, creation, buying, and placement.

But only in the past few years has a smarter way to advertise emerged. Now, intelligent algorithms on digital platforms take up the roles and automatically fulfill those functions in a matter of clicks. That's how AudioGO works.

So instead of the back-and-forth of speaking to a salesperson about what your ad campaign is, who it’s for, where your target audience is, when you want it played in the day, etc. – today’s ad tech empowers users to complete those tasks in mere minutes themselves.

This new way of digital advertising — called programmatic advertising — is the future, with real-time bidding for advertising space. As we’ve seen already, it's targeted, it’s data-backed, it's faster, it's easier.

And if you ask one of our agency advertisers, they’ll even tell you that it's a whole lot better.

See what the benefits of audio advertising can do for your business.

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