The private marketplace will be the company’s own inventory on iHeartRadio. Advertisers will be able to programmatically target iHeartRadio’s audience using a combination of first- and third-party data segments. In addition to custom stations, iHeart’s 858 radio stations are streamed for free to listeners on the iHeartRadio app. iHeartMedia’s private marketplace will be powered by AdsWizz.
President of Programming and Data Operations for iHeart Brian Kaminsky said, “Audio has a significant and growing role in the lives of today’s consumers and iHeartMedia is committed to evolving the ways marketers can reach and influence their target audience through our audio channels. Offering a programmatic approach to buying iHeartRadio’s digital listening audiences is a natural extension of our direct sales and broadcast programmatic initiatives and further enables us to capture even more of the $20 billion in ad spending that is projected for 2016.”
“We’re thrilled to work with iHeartMedia to further advance the rise of programmatic in the digital audio space,” says Alexis van de Wyer, CEO at AdsWizz. “iHeart‘s unique audience reach, its brand relationships, and its appetite for innovation makes it a perfect fit to be the first digital radio private marketplace. Their decision to launch a private marketplace is also perfectly timed as a growing number of agencies have been eager to start buying digital audio programmatically.”
