Radio 2.0 (Fr & En)

While no medium is totally efficient, digital radio advertising can be particularly wasteful. For example, someone in New York may listen to a Los Angeles sports radio station’s online stream to keep up on the Southern California sports scene, but that person isn’t going to care about some local LA car dealership’s upcoming sale or a new bar that the radio host claims is the best spot in SoCal to watch the Lakers play.

That sort of problem is easily solved in the word of display advertising, where contextual targeting has in many cases given way to real-time bidding, or the ability to buy ads on the fly that are targeted to a specific type of user. Now RTB is coming to digital radio courtesy of WPP-owned agency trading desk Xaxis.

Through a partnership with Triton Digital—which provides digital services and applications to radio companies, handling more than 2 billion online and mobile audio impressions per month—Xaxis Radio advertisers will be able to target the New Yorker listening to LA sports radio online with ads for the best Big Apple bar to catch a Lakers game. Triton Digital has access to digital audio inventory from companies like Cox Communications, NPR, and Slacker Radio, though not all publishers are yet on board for RTB advertising.