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Audio Ads
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Radio has been around for decades, but the audience for digital audio has really gained traction over the past 15 years — to the point where its listenership surpassed traditional radio for the first time in 2022. Now that's an audio trend metric.
Music streaming, internet radio, and podcasts are still exploding in popularity, not to mention newer additions to the entertainment zeitgeist like smart speakers and luxury headphones that drive growth even more.
Sure, this presents new opportunities for brands to promote their products and services, but even better — digital audio can be targeted and tracked. It can target a specific group of listeners based on their choices. And when your ads reach the right people, great things happen. The other side of the coin is just as important — tracking results through reliable metrics.
We're going to take a deep dive into what makes audio advertising metrics so valuable, and how AudioGO uses them to help small businesses and advertisers get the most out of their marketing budget.
Why audio advertising metrics really matter
When marketers throw information at the general masses and hope it brings people to their brand, they might be wasting a lot of valuable resources. Not to mention, it can really strain your budget allocation. The smarter marketer knows effective marketing depends on customer data — and not just the basics like brand awareness or ad impressions, although those are important.
Beyond measuring campaign performance, audio advertising metrics help you dive deeper into audience insights like behavior and preferences as they relate to demographics. Metrics like skip rates and engagement levels tell you how listeners interact with an ad, how long they stay engaged, and whether they take action after hearing the message.
At the end of the day, when you can close the loop on marketing initiatives and final sales, you can optimize, improve, and maximize your audio ad ROI. But that requires the right tools — and we have those.
Measuring audio advertising effectiveness through attribution
When we say "attribution," we're talking about the process of tracking and measuring the impact of your advertisements on consumer behavior. The end goal is to determine how effective an audio ad is at driving outcomes like website visits, purchases, app installs, or whatever you're hoping your audience gets out of an ad. To do this, you'll collect data from different sources and analyze it to connect an audio ad exposure to specific consumer behaviors.
Here's where we start. Inside the AudioGO platform, you can collect campaign metrics like:
- Audio impressions. Tracks each ad play with detailed breakdowns by publisher, listener demographics, and more.
- Audio reach. Displays the number of unique individuals who heard your ad, including insights into the age, gender, and location of your audience.
- Audio engagement rates (clicks). Measures the number of unique users who clicked your display banners, allowing you to gauge engagement with your ads.
- Listen-through rate (LTR). Shows the percentage of audio ads played in full, giving you a clear indication of engagement.
And the best part — it's all in real-time data. These metrics help marketers understand the impact of their ads on their brands. But there's one big metric that really matters: conversions. A conversion is when an ad listener converts into a site visitor; regardless of whether they clicked your companion banner at the time of listening or they visited your site directly at a later time. You can find all these metrics on AudioGO's Campaign Stats Dashboard, recently upgraded to make campaign management simpler, smarter, and more effective.
Tracking the audience response
Once you have audio analytics on how audiences are spending time with your ads, you also want to know what's driving them to take the next steps. This is a cross-platform endeavor, but you can use different audio ad formats to follow your audience's journey.
Promo codes are a very popular way to measure advertising effectiveness — and they've been used for a long time. This is when you tell listeners to sign up for service or buy a product using a specific discount code.
"Go to MyWebsite.com and use promo code "freetrial"
A modern spin on coupon codes is using a vanity URL or landing page to measure website visits coming in off an audio ad.
"go to MyWebsite.com/trial for a free 2-week trial"
Tracking text in is an easy way for consumers to reach out to an advertiser via their mobile phone. You can collect prospect phone numbers and automatically send them coupon codes or offers they requested.
"Text #sample to 1-800-MYBIZ to get a free sample package sent to you"
Tracking phone numbers is another traditional method of measuring ad effectiveness and offers a better choice than a website if back and forth conversation is needed to start the buyer's journey. This is usually the case for plumbers, locksmiths, and other quote-based businesses.
"Call 1-888-dial-now to get started"
Tracking link clicks from online radio platforms, podcast show notes, and popup ads is a pretty concrete measurement and can be done easily with tracking links.
Finding the right people
As long as we're talking metrics, let's talk market analysis and targeting — because that's where great metrics start. AudioGO's Automated Targeting Recommendations help you target the right audiences with greater precision. Based on your business category and usage patterns, this feature will suggest relevant behavioral and predictive segments as you're setting up the campaign. That means it's easier to connect with the audiences that matter most.
AudioGO's Audience Guide can also help you better understand your campaign performance. This guide provides clarity around deliverability and a visual feedback system that uses color coding to represent the effectiveness of your targeting. Its metrics help you to make real-time adjustments so your campaigns will reach the right people at the right frequency.
Brand Suitability is a cutting-edge podcast analytics tool, implemented in partnership with Comscore, this AudioGO tool helps advertisers to avoid specific types of content that don't suit their standards or identity. It delves into context at a deeper level than keyword-based solutions provide. With Comscore’s contextual brand protection filters, powered by artificial intelligence, you can avoid unwanted content and decide what content you wish to be associated with.
Targeting and Retargeting
With targeting and retargeting, we can monitor the same users or segments again after they’ve already been exposed to an ad. Users hear your audio ad, then later see a banner as a part of the same campaign. And you could get 4x the click-throughs. This helps brands and ad agencies understand the long-term effectiveness of an ad or campaign. It can also help you refine targeting strategies and improve messaging for better results.
AudioGO Pixel
In the past, due to the nature of audio ads being screen-free, it was tough to determine which ads and demographics were taking action and becoming customers. AudioGO saw this and rose to the challenge, meeting customers' needs with conversion tracking. The latest version of the AudioGO Pixel adds additional tracking and reporting for direct response campaigns. It specifically tracks user behavior involving total and unique visits to a website or webpage after a person listens to an audio ad (conversion), whether that is by clicking the companion banner at the time of listening or visiting the site directly at a later time. And that means SMBs and ad agencies have even more accurate data analytics tools to move new prospects along the buyer journey.
Make the most of audio advertising metrics
AudioGO makes programmatic advertising and audio branding more accessible to dynamic creatives and businesses looking to extend their digital marketing budget. The AudioGO platform allows advertisers to set up and run targeted campaigns super quickly and track results in real-time. If you're ready to start using digital audio analytics to measure the effectiveness of your audio campaigns.
