Programmatic audio is here to stay. It has picked up steam in the last year, and now may be a great time to try out your programmatic audio buys if you have not already done so. Spotify seemed to be the first large programmatic offering to try to expand their offering within the RTB market. They collaborated with The Trade Desk, AppNexus and Rubicon Project to make their inventory available via PMP deals within the market. Spotify is not the only one increasingly going programmatic with its inventory. Pandora has announced that they are looking to launch their offering for in-stream programmatic audio/video some time in 2017. Pandora really showed up late to the game for this offering, considering how large their inventory is. SoundCloud also recently announced that they will be working with Rubicon Project to expand their RTB audio and video offerings. They will be offering contextual and first-party data layers to be added to their programmatic buys.

With so many players coming into the space, this may be the best time for media traders, buyers and planners to consider adding this tactic into their plans – at least to learn how well it could work for current and future clients. With the ability to add layers of data to our programmatic audio buys, we can reach the correct audience when they are most likely to be listening.