iHeartMedia is deploying a new “brand safety” technology to make sure podcast episodes are “brand safe” before an ad runs.
It is using technology from Sounder. “iHeartMedia is the first to go live with Sounder’s AI and Machine Learning technology, giving brands episode-specific safety assurance, a level of precision previously unavailable in podcast inventory, at scale,” the media company states in its announcement.
“With the rapidly growing podcast advertising market expected to surpass $3 billion in 2023, there has never been a greater time to prioritize brand safety.”
The announcement was made by iHeartMedia Chief Data Officer Brian Kaminsky and Chief Marketing Officer Gayle Troberman. They said that until now, checking content for brand safety was “labor intensive, fragmented and often failed to deliver the level of protection brands truly needed.” The Sounder tool will allow brands to opt out of content they consider inappropriate.
Troberman said marketer demand for podcast marketing “is at an all-time high” but that marketers are “not willing to accept unnecessary risk.”
The tool allows iHeartMedia to run brand suitability analyses, topic analysis, content summarization and dynamic segmentation, ahead of an ad flight. The system works in conjunction with iHeartMedia’s podcast hosting platform Omny Studio, which is part of Triton Digital’s audio technology suite.
