iHeartMedia partners with Sounder to provide intelligence for creators, audiences and brands

Audio media company iHeartMedia announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with audio intelligence platform Sounder, that will provide access to insights that help podcasts and audiences find each other while improving brands’ targeting capabilities.

The key to this partnership is Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud, which uses AI and machine learning tools to enable podcast creators to gain real-time insights to help grow their audience and monetize content. More than 750 of iHeartMedia’s “iHeartRadio Original” podcasts are now leveraging this technology, according to a company statement.

Advertisers will also be able to use the Sounder Audio Data Cloud’s brand safety solution to confidently place their ads throughout the iHeartPodcast Network.

Read more: iHeart creates ad network

“It’s critical that we learn from the challenges advertisers have had with video and social media to deliver safety tools and controls that allow brands to customize their campaigns and ensure that their ads will be delivered at scale in a brand safe environment,” said iHeartMedia’s Chief Data Officer Brian Kaminsky in a recent release.

Why we care. With the recent media fallout from The Joe Rogan Experience, a top podcast on Spotify, the audio space is going through growing pains that are on the roadmap for any advertising channel once it reaches a certain level of maturity, and especially during a politically polarized time where certain tenets of expression for one audience will likely offend huge swaths of another.

In this climate, platforms are electing to put creators and brands in the driver’s seat with technology to allow them to connect with the right audiences. The volume of listeners, especially younger ones listening to podcasts while hitting the gym, is extremely attractive for advertisers. Tech solutions that increase precision will also increase brand confidence and boost revenue for publishers and creators.

About The Author

Chris Wood

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country's first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on "innovation theater" at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.