The ad tech platform Aireal has set itself the goal of fully automating advertising technology for audio and also making linear radio bookable in real time. The head of the start-up explains exactly what this will look like.

A few years ago, audio publishers and marketers set themselves an important goal. They wanted to make online audio and linear radio bookable in real time, fully automated and enriched with additional data, in order to catch up with other digital advertising media. While the programmatic booking of online-based audio inventory was successful years ago, the industry is still struggling with this in linear radio and has not yet progressed beyond trials.

The ad tech service provider Audio CC undertook the first of these in November 2017 together with the agency Mediaplus and the client Apollo (Horizont 47/2017). Two further tests followed in the summer of this year. Studio Gong realized one in cooperation with the ad tech specialist Amy, the agency GroupM, Radio Gong 96.3, the tech company Raudio.biz and other partners. Raudio.biz implemented the other test case with Energy, Mediaplus and Amy, among others.

Now another ad tech specialist is warming up to the topic. This is the Hamburg-based company Aireal, which was only founded in May and in which the Oschmann subsidiary Media Flow holds a majority stake. The start-up is headed by Markus Adomeit, who wants to solve a central problem that is primarily hampering the programmatic playout of audio campaigns on FM and DAB+ radio. "The advertising technology for audio is not yet fully automated." Adomeit is therefore convinced that neither agencies nor publishers can exploit the advertising potential for themselves.

Aireal wants to change this by using its Audio Ad Router system to automate the entire advertising chain from publishers to agencies to marketers for linear and non-linear audio offers. The aim is to create the basis on which the players involved can implement convergent programmatic audio campaigns in real time in the future without the need for any manual intervention. "Our aim was to be able to control FM and DAB+ automatically just as quickly as is possible in online audio," explains Adomeit. "The existing systems are not originally set up for this." However, full automation of the booking and delivery chain is the prerequisite for programmatic bookings in real time. If it succeeds, advertising messages can be linked to current events, audio campaigns can be made more relevant and more extensive target groups can be addressed, which promises more sales.

Aireal sees the USP of its platform in the automated transmission, provision and reporting of inventory and target group information, pricing and advertising material. "We enable this in a holistic technology chain, for example from a DSP at the agency to the publisher's program," says Adomeit. The actual process of advertising playout should be "very simple and fast" via Audio Ad Router. According to Adomeit, it takes less than a second to deliver a spot from the marketer to the broadcaster.

Unlike its competitor Raudio.biz (page 45), Aireal does not want to become active in advertising marketing. Instead, the company sees itself as an enabler. This means that it merely creates the opportunity to play out audio campaigns automatically. "Which path the market participants take with this depends on their contracts with each other," says Adomeit. According to him, there are several factors that have so far prevented the use of programmatic, especially in linear radio. Firstly, the traditional booking chains still require a lot of manual work, and secondly, some of them cannot be connected to interfaces.

In addition, the booking systems currently in use in radio are not designed for automatic booking chains or for the speed requirements of programmatic playout. However, Aireal wants to connect these existing systems to its Audio Ad Router and thus create a seamless booking chain for programmatic audio campaigns. Thanks to the possibilities offered by the interfaces, the Audio Ad Router could also be used for other booking channels such as the online booking platform AudioXchange (page 48), which is due to go live in November. This will offer connected publishers a considerable speed advantage for IO bookings as well, says Adomeit: "The connection to AudioXchange has already been successful," he reports.

Aireal charges a commission fee for its service, which is based on the service components and aligned with the models of existing SSPs. Three things are important to Adomeit when it comes to automation via Audio Ad Router. Firstly, all audio channels must be bookable for buyers in the same way as online media already allow. Secondly, audio publishers should always retain control over their inventories with this solution and thirdly, he does not want to create a walled garden, but rather offer "a high degree of system compatibility" with his platform.

In the meantime, Aireal has been able to win audio marketing leader RMS for a test. The partners implemented a real-time programmatic radio campaign for the Big FM National combination for the advertising client Decathlon, which ran from 16 to 21 October on pre-negotiated terms (Programmatic Guaranteed). The agency Pilot and Virtual Minds were also involved. Pilot operated the booking DSP Active Agent for its client Decathlon, while the SSP Media Manager and the real-time connection of the Big FM programs were handled by Aireal. In the test case, the entire route, including spot retrieval, was digitized and delivered in real time.

Bookings were made according to a target group-oriented logic and not according to fixed time slots. The SSP looked for free advertising placements that suited the target group of 14- to 49-year-olds, and the DSP then received a delivery receipt in real time. The programmatic spot ran as an additional position following the linear advertising block. However, as Matthias Schenk, Head of Partner Management at RMS, reports, a spot was only delivered in the free advertising slot if the desired target group CPM could be realized there. Other advertising slots with low target group exploitation were not considered because they were too expensive. In total, this programmatic FM case generated around 4 million contacts among 14- to 49-year-olds over the course of a week.

Schenk is satisfied with the result: "A year ago, when we started working on the project, we received feedback from industry experts and many radio broadcasters that radio could not be planned in real time across the board," he recalls. "With this case, we are demonstrating the technical feasibility of real-time implementation." RMS is now working on expanding the test and wants to offer the market a scalable product soon. Adomeit describes the test as a milestone: "While FM was not considered programmatically feasible until recently, we were able to request, book and report the campaign after playout with latencies of seconds." The Aireal boss now wants to win further partners for his Audio Ad Router system.

Adomeit is also upgrading its personnel. In the summer, he recruited Aleksandar Rustemovski as Director Business Development from Radio-Kombi Südwest. Rustemovski is responsible for the further development of the platform and helps publishers to implement the solution. Next year, Jan Poelmann, previously head of AudioXchange, will join Aireal and, according to Adomeit, will be responsible for and develop demand-side solutions in Germany and other markets.