We have big news to share with you today.
We are turning up the ‘volume’ of programmatic advertising in radio by announcing a strategic multi-year partnership with iHeartMedia, the media & entertainment company, with the largest reach of any radio or TV outlet in the United States.
Jelli has been chosen to be the platform for all programmatic initiatives of iHeartMedia for broadcast radio advertising.
Reinventing the Radio Ad
In 2012, we launched our ad platform to “reinvent the radio ad.” Could we make buying a radio ad as easy as buying a Facebook or Google ad?
Many overlook how powerful radio is, with huge reach and great effectiveness for many advertisers. Radio connects with us in the car, a place that is hard for even Google and Facebook to reach. Radio ads can be one of the last brand impressions made before the purchase decision. This leads to high ROI, and approximately $1 in $10 of all advertising dollars flowing into the medium.
However, at the same time, for many marketers, radio seems too hard to use. While digital has experienced rapid innovation in programmatic buying, data targeting, attribution and advanced analytics, radio has remained primarily an “offline” experience, with traditional sales processes, manual trafficking of ads, and a lack of real-time data. Radio hasn’t gotten harder to use, it just hasn’t changed over the years… and that is the issue.
And trends are only accelerating. In 2014, $10 billion of advertising was bought programmatically versus the traditional model, doubling 2013 levels. This is expected to surge to $20 billion annually within 24 months. Radio lacks the existing infrastructure, the “plumbing,” to tap into this sea change in advertising, and thus it receives very little programmatic spending today.
This a problem for both radio publishers who wish to tap into surging budgets, and also marketers who wish to connect with the consumer in the car using programmatic tools.
First Industry-Wide Radio Ad Exchanges with Scale
Today, we are announcing a major initiative with iHeartMedia that will change this paradigm.
Jelli has entered a strategic partnership with iHeartMedia to launch a programmatic and automated ad buying solution for its broadcast radio stations. This is the foundation for iHeartMedia to be able to offer its ad inventory to advertisers and agencies looking to leverage programmatic and automated technology including private marketplace and exchange environments to improve the buying process and reduce administrative hurdles and delays.
As part of this announcement, iHeartMedia is immediately deploying Jelli’s platform in all of its 850 owned & operated radio stations, in major cities across the country.
This will mean the ad infrastructure is now in place to pursue advanced programmatic strategies, at an audience scale unrivaled by any other media type, digital and video included. This initiative will allow iHeartMedia to apply its rich data and insights to the sales process and will utilize data sets to enable unique forms of targeting, such as music-based psychographic groups, weather and traffic patterns, purchase behaviors and other environmental, population and consumer trends.
Additionally, Katz Media, the top national sales firm for radio representing hundreds of broadcaster groups, will launch the first industry-wide radio ad exchange, called Expressway from Katz, powered-by Jelli’s platform.
Watershed Moment for Radio and Programmatic
This is a watershed moment for radio, as radio can now be bought programmatically at scale for the first time, driving new ad dollars to the medium. This is a watershed moment for programmatic advertising as well, as radio is now added to the programmatic media mix.
It is also a major milestone for Jelli. This partnership will expand our platform to reach 245+ million people on 1,200 radio stations in all major cities in the United States. According to ComScore data, our platform’s reach will be greater than even Google or Facebook’s - larger than any digital publisher, ad network or ad exchange in the U.S.
Jelli’s platform provides services for the entire ecosystem, advertisers and radio stations, to allow radio to enter the world of programmatic advertising. Jelli enables broadcasters to tap into programmatic budgets, and together we bring an offline medium, ‘online,’ for today’s generation of marketers.
This will be big year for programmatic and radio, as radio takes a major seat at the table as a key participant in a $10+ billion market.
We are excited to work with our new partner iHeartMedia to combine the effectiveness of radio with the power of programmatic.
