Day three of ABU DBS 2021 featured a presentation by Aditya Summanwar, Director of Monetization, APAC, Triton Digital, about Insertion of Advertising in Streaming and Podcasts.

Summanwar works with agencies, brands and publishers to unlock liquidity in the digital audio ecosystem by building structured programs that inform and educate the market value-chain about the benefits and advances in the space.

There has been a huge growth in streaming consumption through the pandemic, as audio has acted an escape from screen fatigue as people work more from home.

Previously, there was simple simulcasting, which meant what was broadcast was also online, which just needed an encoder in the studio to send the content to a website or a mobile app. The streaming breaks had to be the same duration as ones on-air, but it could be sold as additional inventory.

“Today, advertisers are expecting more from digital audio publishers. They want streaming ads to mimic what they display in OTT videos. We can now create an individual stream for each listener so you can create an entirely new set of inventories and synchronise it with display. You can also target audience better and not be limited by the length of ad breaks,” he said.

The key actors in the podcasting value chain include creators; hosting platforms – which share and serve content, stitch ads and generate RSS feed; directories – consumption platforms which aggregate audiences and play the content; and the listeners, who are on many platforms.

When a listener requests a content, the distributor interprets it and sends it to the host who then stitches an ad based on the info and sends the file to the listener through the distributor, with an ability to target based on IP, content type and genre, increasing the value of the inventory.

This is a big leap from traditional podcast advertising, where ads are ‘baked in’ to the RSS feed and the information flow is limited between host and distributor.

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