A fundamental part of the music business, advertising’s latest evolution is arriving at Pandora in the form of interactive voice ads, built in partnership with Instreamatic around AI tech and with an alleged ability to understand listeners’ speech beyond simple “yes” and “no” commands.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Advertising is a necessary evil. We all hate ads no matter what the format, but they help pay for the entertainment content that we consume. Simply put, no ads, no money, no content, and we all pay for subscriptions instead. The marketing industry is always trying something new to get our attention, and the latest is “interactive voice ads” that streaming service Pandora is slated to debut later this year.
The interactive voice ads will allow listeners to speak directly to the advert to get more information. Pandora has partnered with ad-tech company Instreamatic, which specializes in new ways to present ads to customers online, to get the new format up and rolling.
The interactive voice ads heavily revolve around AI, and supposedly can understand natural speech patterns beyond just “yes” and “no.” It’s said to understand user intent and be able to anticipate it even before the user speaks.
This type of advert actually makes a ton of sense. So many people that interact with Pandora (or other streaming services – or even radio) do so when they are engaged in another activity like driving or working out or cooking, for example. They may hear an ad that they’re interested in, but aren’t able to act on it right at that time because their hands are full. Being able to talk to the ad in order to get more information could be breakthrough that marketers have long been waiting for.
Instreamatic isn’t the only company in the Interactive voice ads space. Pandora says it will also support other vendors that are working on similar technology, like AdsWizz, later in the year.