Jelli’s SpotPlan ad-buying platform gives broadcast buyers digital tools

Jelli has completed its transformation from a listening app to an ad platform with today’s announcement of SpotPlan, which Jelli claims is the first programmatic advertising platform for radio. Programmatic ad-buying is well-established on the Web at large, and is used for planning ad campaigns in streaming audio. Jelli’s announcement seeks to bring broadcast radio into the digital age for presenting ad inventory and building a media buy in a cloud-based system.

Programmatic buying allows a brand to plan its advertising on the basis of targeted characteristics such as demographics, rather than buying spots on individual stations. Insofar as radio is a local medium with local advertisers, Jelli’s platform might not have much impact. but the other side of the local advertising picture involves national campaigns expressed across many localities. Jelli has signed up 350 stations in 128 cities to the SpotPlan platform. That reach represents 44-million unique listeners per week. Jelli has acquired partnerships with radio groups Townsquare Media, Entercom, Sun Broadcast Group, and others.

From Jelli’s press release: “Our mission is to create the easiest and fastest way to buy and run radio spots. We bring the transparency, accountability and real-time delivery of the web to the offline medium of terrestrial radio. Our patented audio serving platform automates terrestrial radio advertising for advertisers and network operators, reaching millions of listeners weekly and serving billions of ad impressions annually.”