Audio ad-representation firm AdLarge continues a recent streak of news by announcing an exclusive national advertising sales-rep agreement with Hotspot.fm, an Internet radio app. Spokespeople for Hotspot.fm told RAIN News that the app is recently launched to the U.S. market. The AdLarge deal is an obvious help with monetization as the audience builds; Hotspot.fm is not disclosing audience figures at this time.
We spoke with Jay Green, VP of Digital Sales and Content Partnerships at AdLarge, and Pekka Lietoff, Founder and CEO of Hotspot.fm. For Jay Green, Hotspot’s unique user interface provides added value to advertisers. “There is a uniqueness for the user and marketer that we haven’t seen before. On the AdLarge side, it gives us new options to bring to marketers.”
Green referred to a “carousel” within the app which uniquely (in our experience) displays marketing messages that can be swiped to the forefront and background. For Pekka Lietoff, the product’s unusual interface potentially translates to better monetization. “It is more effective than a traditional banner,” Lietoff told us. “It enables us to charge higher revenue-per-unit rates.”
In our conference call, all the spokespeople emphasized Hotspot’s product differentiation compared to existing market leaders like Pandora and Spotify, and radio station streaming products. The belief which motivates this partnership is that Hotspot’s unique usability offers the advertiser a deeply integrated presentation that should be valued highly, while also adding value to the user.
It gives the brand marketer a feeling of exclusivity,” said Jay Green of AdLarge, which will represent audio spots and accompanying visuals.