AudioBoo lets publishers add advertising to content

Audio publishing platform AudioBoo this week introduced a new advertising opportunity for publishers who use the platform to share audio.

In a press release AudioBoo said the "advertising on demand" service, which will slot in advertising at the beginning or end of uploaded audio files, will also "serve adverts across HTML5 players, audio apps, Twitter media cards, Facebook embeds, XML feeds and iTunes".

"Adverts can also be geo-targeted, rate limited or source targeted, depending on a broadcaster’s individual requirements," the release adds.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Rob Proctor, chief executive of AudioBoo, said this service is available to "anybody who has a content channel". AudioBoo has been engaging with "pilot partners", including the Guardian, in the lead up to the public launch, and has now signed-up additional media outlets to the service.

"We see the advertising capability as a way of attracting great content," he said, "but also to help our publishers monetise the cost of producing that podcast, or that piece of audio."

For now, those interested in the service will need to sign up by reaching out to AudioBoo directly, but the intention is to introduce a more "automatic process" within around six months, Proctor said.

He explained that "up until now, all audio ads have only been designed to be served in-stream for digital radio".

"We've been working with them to develop a new platform that will allow advertising on demand, like you would see for video advertising, or even graphic display advertising online... We're doing the same thing for audio".

For publishers, they can either sell the advertising space themselves, and then pass it on to AudioBoo to be processed, or they can hand the whole operation to AudioBoo to manage, with the London-based company taking a cut of the revenues. This would be 25 per cent where the advertising has already been sold by the publisher. In cases where AudioBoo itself sells the advertising, this can range from around 40 to 70 per cent, with the split decided "on a publisher-by-publisher basis", and based on the content in question.

The publisher will maintain control over factors such as the length of the advert, or type of advertiser, Proctor confirmed, although the service prefers to "only serve up to a maximum of 10 second pre-roll, and then 30 seconds post-roll."

"For some of the guys we work with, that have longer-forms, if they're happy to then we can serve any length, but we would advise all of our publishers that the most you would ever go to is 30 seconds pre-roll, but we would hopefully keep it to 10 seconds".

He said this guidance was arrived at by looking at "in-stream advertising from radio", as well as the approach to online video pre-roll on YouTube.

The release also explains that AudioBoo has initially been working with a collection of "pilot partners", including the Guardian and others in the UK and US. The platform has "served over four million adverts in the past month," the release says, adding that "the company aims to scale this up to over 10 million in Q1 2014".

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