The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Digital Audio Exchange Digital Audio Digital Radio

Global unites digital radio brands to launch Digital Audio Exchange advertising model

By Angela Haggerty, Reporter

June 20, 2014 | 3 min read

Global has launched the Digital Advertising Exchange (DAX), an advertising platform allowing media buyers access to brands across Global’s portfolio as well as brands from Bauer Media and services such as Spotify and Blinkbox.

Launch: Global has created the Digital Audio Exchange

The exchange will give advertisers a single buying point across digital audio brands and according to Global’s managing director of commercial, Mike Gordon, solve a fragmentation problem in the digital audio advertising space.

Brands from Bauer Media’s Absolute Radio Network will be available on the exchange, including Absolute 80s and Absolute Radio 90s, while Spotify, Blinkbox, Mixcloud and Audioboo are also on the exchange. Media buyers will have access to more than 30 digital music platforms.

Launch advertising partners include Vodafone, Lexus, Costa, eBay, Virgin Media, Asda, Heinz, Philips, Go Compare, EE, Nandos and 20th Century Fox.

According to Gordon, the US digital audio market has been monetised through a similar model into a billion dollar industry.

“We spent a lot of time in the US in Silicon Valley looking at the market over there,” he told The Drum. “The more we looked at this the more it felt odd that we weren’t using it. It’s a billion dollar business already in the US. The models and ecosystems are not that dissimilar. We’re actually probably more digitally advanced in the UK media market yet this model doesn’t exist.”

Gordon added that the concept was built around creating a mobile-first service to tap into the advertising market for people who stream various forms of digital radio while on the move.

Global has been working with digital planners, agencies and clients over the last 12 months to create the Digital Audio Exchange, and if the exchange gathers scale the next step will likely be introducing programmatic trading to the process.

“We’ve been having conversations about where programmatic fits,” Gordon said. “The view is that it needs to have size and scale, obviously we’ve only just launched it, but there is an obvious benefit for everybody. Under the right circumstances, a programmatic buy makes life easier for everybody.”

Giles Jespon, chief marketing officer at Heinz, added: “DAX brings an opportunity that no other media platform in the UK currently offers. We are committed to innovation and testing new ways of connecting with our customers, so I am pleased that we are a launch partner.”

Digital Audio Exchange Digital Audio Digital Radio

More from Digital Audio Exchange

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +