Audio advertising has a scale problem.
While Spotify, Pandora and iHeartMedia dominate industry attention, roughly half of the ad-supported audio market sits outside those platforms.ย
Hundreds of streaming audio publishers, podcast creators and niche content providers are competing for advertising dollars without the sales teams, audience data or measurement capabilities needed to consistently attract large media budgets. Which means this inventory often goes overlooked by audio advertisers.
Harnessing this untapped scale is the opportunity DAX has spent the last decade pursuing.
The audio SSP and sales company works with audio publishers on both the buy side and sell side, helping them monetize audiences through direct and programmatic demand while attracting new listeners to their content.ย
But DAXโs broader challenge reflects one facing the audio industry as a whole: proving that fragmented audio inventory can deliver the scale, measurement and outcomes advertisers increasingly expect.
Solving for scale
Through its growing audio publisher network, DAX has already addressed the scale part of the equation.
โWe have 40 million monthly uniques that are exclusive to DAX,โ said Brian Conlan, president of DAX US. โWe have access to over 100 million uniques combined in our audio SSP, and we reach roughly 80% of the US audio landscape.โ
Still, despite the reach that can be achieved by combining smaller audiences, attracting advertiser attention remains difficult for many independent audio publishers.ย
Large agency buyers often know the biggest audio platforms, Conlan said, but smaller publishers can struggle to communicate the value of their audiences.
โThe holding company buyers probably donโt know what Deezer has in the US,โ Conlan said, referring to a streaming music publisher the SSP works with that boasts more than 10 million US unique listeners. โThey just know the big three or four in the space that they see…