Digital Audio Advertising

How Digital Audio Buying Works

Digital audio is bought the same way as programmatic display: you buy impressions, not airtime. An impression counts when the ad starts playing to a listener, and most inventory is sold on a CPM basis, meaning you pay per thousand ads served.

There are two different products under the same label, and they behave differently.

Streaming audio runs between songs on platforms like Spotify, Pandora and iHeartRadio. Spots are usually 15 or 30 seconds and are non-skippable, because the listener is mid-session and often has the screen off. Most streaming audio placements also carry a companion banner, a clickable image that appears on the now-playing screen. That banner is where the clicks come from, since the audio itself cannot be clicked.

Podcast advertising runs inside episodes, in a pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll position. Mid-roll generally holds attention best because the listener is already invested in the episode. Ads are inserted one of two ways: dynamic ad insertion, which drops your spot into the episode at download time and lets you target and swap creative, or baked-in, where the ad is recorded into the episode permanently. We use dynamic insertion for campaigns that need targeting and flexibility.

What You Can Target in Digital Audio

Targeting in audio is narrower than most people expect, because platforms know a lot about listening behavior:

• Location, down to the metro, ZIP code or a radius around an address
• Demographics, including age and gender where the platform has it declared
• Listening context, such as genre, playlist type, podcast category or specific shows
• Daypart, so you can buy the morning commute, the workday or late-night workouts separately
• Device, including mobile, desktop, smart speakers and in-car systems
• Retargeting, reaching listeners who already visited your site

Dayparting matters more in audio than in most channels. The same listener is in a different mindset driving to work than they are on a Saturday run, and the buy can reflect that.

What You Can Measure

Audio does not produce clicks the way search does, so the metrics are different:

• Impressions delivered, the count of ads actually started
• Listen-through rate, the share of ads heard to completion. Streaming audio typically completes at a high rate because the format is non-skippable
• Reach and frequency, how many unique listeners heard the ad and how often
• Companion banner clicks and click-through rate, for streaming placements
• Site traffic attributed to exposure, matched through a pixel on your site
• Vanity URLs and promo codes, the simplest way to attribute podcast response

We report all of it in plain language, and we tell you which numbers are directional and which are hard counts, because in audio that distinction matters.