NEW YORK — Nearly 300 audio and podcast advertising influencers, including representatives from major brands, agencies and publishers, gathered on February 15 for Veritonic’s second annual Audio Intelligence Summit.
The goal? To dive deep into key advancements and technologies in audio advertising.
Veritonic assembled “the brightest minds in the industry” to share best practices, creative and analytics uses, and innovative measurement and optimization strategies that drove the most successful audio and podcast advertising campaigns throughout the past year.
The summit highlighted the creative testing and measurement practices that are furthering campaign relevance, amplifying on-brand messages, and increasing ROI.
Participants included:
- James Clarke, Senior Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo
- Jon Gibbs, Global Director and Principal Data Scientist for Advertising Sciences, Spotify
- Hetal Patel, EVP/Smart Audio and Insights, iHeartMedia
- Samantha Sweig, Associate Director/Analytics, Havas Media
- Margaux Natiello, Senior Partnerships Manager, Athletic Greens
- Steve Keller, Sonic Strategy Director/Studio Resonate, SXM Media
For Clarke, the event allowed him to demonstrate how Pepsi and its associated brands is “a big believer in the power of audio.” In fact, PepsiCo has been increasing advertising investment in audio-first channels for several years. “Audio was once the medium of choice for marketers a generation ago but fell out of favor with the advent of TV and subsequent introduction of Digital and Social Media advertising,” he noted. “It seems what was old is new again, however, as consumer time spent with audio is on the rise thanks to the surging popularity of streaming audio, podcasts, and voice technology – it is truly a second ‘audio renaissance.'”
The summit also offered data and insights around the impact of individual audio elements on campaign success, including voice, music, tone, pacing, use of sound effects and functional sounds, keywords, and calls-to-action, Veritonic Founder and CEO Scott Simonelli notes.
“Audio continues to evolve in amazing ways,” said Gina Garrubbo, President and CEO of National Public Media, the sponsorship subsidiary of NPR and a key sponsor of the Audio Intelligence Summit. “More brands are leveraging audio as a key element of their overall media strategy and storytelling ability. Television and digital advertising are effective but the intimacy that on-brand audio and podcasts brings is unmatched and delivers a stronger, more immediate brand lift.”
