Nova executive launches AI audio advertising company
Nova’s chief growth officer Adam Johnson has teamed with Creative Fix founder Aaron Matthews to launch Original Audio, an audio creative agency that uses AI to increase the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Johnson and Matthews met at a conference in Perth two years ago and quickly bonded over what Johnson calls “a sense of shared frustration” about the state of audio advertising in Australia.
“A lot of the brands and agencies and publishers here weren’t using some of the amazing kind of technology that’s available now,” Johnson tells Mumbrella.
“Now so much media spend is going into digital audio, yet they’re not using some of the ad tech that allows you to use the data signals that you get from a listener who’s listening to a podcast or to a streaming service.”
From there, Original Audio was born “as a way to address the opportunity and potentially carve a space in the market for us.”
Original Audio have signed an exclusive representation deal with AudioStack that will give them access to the company’s AI-powered toolset and learnings, and has teamed with Frequency for delivery and scaling of campaigns.
They have already locked in Mastercard, BetterHelp, Aldi, and Salesforce as clients.
The core tenet of the company is that AI can enhance, not replace, creativity. The pair are keen to assure Mumbrella they won’t be flooding the market with robotic voices shilling protein shakes.
“We’re not getting rid of any human voice-overs anytime soon,” Matthews says. “And we think that brands want to continue using humans for authenticity. But I think when we’re talking about doing campaigns that have lots of different data points and infinite versions, then using AI is a really good tool to support that.
“So we’re not saying that AI is going to replace it. We’re going to use AI as an add-on, which will help us deliver ultimately those dynamic campaigns.”
Aside from legal concerns, this is the major issue they see in the market.
“It’s just being used as a way to replace human voices in a way that is not yet kind of believable,” Johnson says. “It doesn’t bring the brand to life in a way that a human voice can.”
Johnson believes “the heart of any creative starts with a human voice”, but AI tools can manipulate this in a positive way “in terms of choosing the right word or phrase at any given point based on the data signals that we’re getting from that listener”, which he sees as an opportunity.
It’s all about using any AI additions “really respectfully, in terms of where they appear in the creative.”
He acknowledges that brands have been scared to use these tools “because they immediately jump to an AI voice that sounds like a robot.” But, as he stresses, “the creative has to stand up on its own.”
Matthews notes “people jumping straight to AI and ultimately making ads that sound terrible” which shouldn’t be the way the technology is used.
“We’re talking about ads that sound creatively great and work in their own context, but adding in all of that tech to enhance them.”
The timing is right, too, with the Guideline SMI results for February showing radio advertising is up 3.1% year-on-year, while The Australian Internet Advertising Revenue Report, compiled by PwC, recently showed podcast ad spend is rising by 26.5% each year.
“It’s just a really exciting time to get into a space,” Johnson enthuses. “Audio has always been under-monetised, versus the audience that it generates.
“And one of those barriers has been creative, ultimately. And I think that we can help educate and bridge that gap between where the audience lies, and helping brands and agencies build creative that makes the best use of that media, and addresses the huge audiences that audio continues to enjoy.”
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