Announcements about AI being used in radio and audio applications continue to roll in.
Price Brothers, a sibling company to ad agency Oink Ink Radio, recently launched a Contextual Advertising service for podcast “host-read” ads. It uses dynamic targeting combined with voice cloning technology.
Partner Dan Price said in the announcement that podcast ads read by hosts do well and that context such as localization increases effectiveness.
“The hurdle has been scalability. And so we began experimenting with cloning.”
Their new service lets advertisers serve dynamically “stitched together” creative content relevant to a listener’s context and environment while adding scale from synthesized voices.
“It would be impractical for every podcast host engaged by a brand like Staples, for example, to record 1,400 location addresses,” said Jim Price in the announcement. “So we thought, ‘Why not clone the hosts’ voices, with their permission, and cobble together the new audio to efficiently create versions relevant to the listener.’”
The Prices said consumers have been skeptical of the quality of cloned audio because it often sounds fake and inconsistent but that their company has experimented to get the best results.
They also highlighted the benefits of context awareness based on elements like a listener’s location, the name or type of app they’re using, and activity they’re engaging in.
They think podcast publishers and producers will also apply the tool to changing, updating or fixing audio previously recorded by hosts, such as updating URLs or incorrect promo codes, without having to wait for the host to get back to the studio or run a make-good.
They posted a demo presentation about their Contextual Advertising service.
