Instreamatic Announces Agreement with Pandora to Test AI-Powered Interactive Voice Ads

When deployed, Pandora and Instreamatic.ai will enable fully-measurable voice-enabled mobile audio advertising at scale


SAN FRANCISCO, April 01, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Instreamatic.ai, the platform for voice-enabled ads that allows media companies and advertisers to measure, manage, and monetize audio content by utilizing interactive voice AI technology, today announces an agreement to test interactive voice advertising with Pandora, the largest streaming service in the U.S.

“Voice interactivity has already changed the way consumers interact with brands on smart speakers, and we believe voice will change the very nature of the way consumers interact with brands on Pandora,” said Eric Picard, VP Product Management, Pandora. “We intend to foster an ecosystem of demand-side technology parties to scale voice ads and working with Instreamatic to support this capability has been a true joy.”

Audio advertising faces a pervasive “click challenge” when it comes to measuring and attributing the impact of ad campaigns. Unlike visual digital advertising published across web, mobile, and video interfaces, audio itself cannot be clicked. Instreamatic’s platform solves this challenge by allowing advertisers to utilize interactive voice ads that prompt consumers to naturally and verbally respond to offers. For example, a listener is delivered an ad with a verbal call-to-action to learn about new features of a new smartphone. The listener can respond to that ad simply by speaking aloud – either affirmatively to get more information or negatively to skip the ad.

One of Instreamatic’s capabilities is voice AI that harnesses natural language understanding (NLU), enabling customer conversations to go far beyond “yes or no” interactions. Instreamatic’s AI functionality is also designed to study, interpret, and understand user intent, and continuously refines this understanding through deep learning mechanisms. In this way, the platform continues to learn and increase its vocabulary and predictive power. By anticipating intent – sometimes even before the user speaks – the platform is built to iteratively improve both consumers’ ad experiences and the performance of ad campaigns.

At the same time, Instreamatic’s technology enables each interaction to be carefully measured in order to deliver meaningful ad metrics that inform campaign strategy and drive ad spend decisions. Preliminary performance results for Instreamatic’s platform offer evidence that allowing consumers to have a dialogue with ads yields richer engagement and more powerful commitments to ad creative.

Voice-driven engagement provides a natural utility to Pandora’s listeners, who are often consuming mobile audio content during hands-free moments such as cooking or working out, and advertisers will have the opportunity to engage audiences during moments where they were previously unable to respond. Pandora looks forward to offering test opportunities to advertisers later this year.

“The age of voice has arrived, yet there’s remained a stark need for meaningful consumer engagement – and measurable metrics – in the audio ad space,” said Stas Tushinskiy, CEO, Instreamatic.ai. “We believe Instreamatic provides the ideal ad platform to serve this marketplace. We’re excited to be engaged with Pandora to bring this AI-enabled technology to its listeners and advertisers, and prepared to scale these new experiences very quickly once deployed.”

About Instreamatic.ai
Instreamatic.ai is a voice-enabled ad platform utilizing voice AI technology. The company provides an end-to-end solution for managing, measuring and monetizing voice-enabled advertising including a programmatic Ad Exchange for assisting clients with advertising sales. Founded in 2014 with services focused on digital audio and ad sales, the company shifted its focus to establishing the first voice-enabled end-to-end solution for digital audio publishers and marketers. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

Instreamatic Press Contact
Kyle Peterson
kyle@clementpeterson.com