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3 Targeting Tips to Supercharge your Digital Audio Campaigns

Thursday 18 August 2022

The audio advertising landscape has come a long way from just being the ‘black box’ in the corner of the room, and with the increased adoption of digital audio, it is now one rife with innovation and disruption. The latest IAB ad spend report places digital audio growth at 58% between 2020 and 2021 worth over £164m and Statista expects it to hit over £250m by 2025.  Challenges such as the dissolution of the 3rd party cookie (forever pushed back), Windowless smart devices and complex consent concerns keep the industry on its toes.

Octave is no stranger to these challenges and we are always on the lookout for new and innovative solutions for our clients. One of these solutions is our Smart Contextual suite, launched in early 2022 we have been adding more and more features, here are three ways you can get the best out of them;

#1 location, location, location – going beyond the postcode

Location data can be one of the most valuable components to the success of a campaign and can be utilised in many innovative and exciting ways. While simple postcode targeting can be effective, the real fun starts when you overlay national statistics data to allow you to build out accurate demographics at scale. This is particularly important when running campaigns across podcasts, where traditional demographic segments often struggle to scale. Another location evolution to consider is point-of-interest targeting, this allows you to focus on Gyms, stadiums, supermarkets and even in some cases filter down by brand. Allowing you to target users who are in or have been to these locations, or focus on bringing users who live within a certain radius to your brand, increasing footfall and awareness.

#2 Target Real behaviours, Real actions 

One of the most common issues with using 3rd party data across your campaigns is the lack of accuracy of the segments, however, often it is the only way to be able to ‘reach’ those hard-to-find audiences. How do you know that these are real user behaviours and real user actions? The truthful answer is that you don’t.

Luckily there have been some great strides made in this space by Octave audio and businesses such as Covatic. The benefit of having direct 1st party relationships with the publishers Octave represent, means we are able to utilise these innovations to great effect. For example, using these integrations you can measure the position of a device, its angle, speed and location to show whether a user is running or driving, then find trends based on time of day and distance to bucket users into real commuters or runners. Another benefit of this relationship is the ability to utilise connected devices such as CarPlay, which allows us to see the make of car the user is connecting to, which when you pair that with declared data from insurance brands or auto publications creates incredibly valuable segments for the auto industry.

#3  It’s all about the connection

Life is all about the connections we make and how we make use of them, at the same time tells us a lot about ourselves. The Covid 19 pandemic has changed the way we work, with more people than ever having the flexibility to work from home. To adapt to this new normal,  we have been able to look at the classification of IP addresses to tell us whether a user is connected to commercial or residential addresses, with so many people continuing to work from home, this has proven invaluable for those activating audio ads in the post-pandemic world.   
Tom Mckay,
Head of Product & Strategy