In a far-reaching agreement, iHeartMedia and its subsidiary Katz Media Group have partnered with Jelli, the automated radio advertising platform, for programmatic ad-buying of broadcast radio inventory. Jelli Founder and CEO Mike Dougherty told RAIN News, “Radio is saying, ‘We’ve got a seat at the table for programmatic’.”
Programmatic advertising, which can be described as automated buying and selling of smart impressions based on audience intelligence and segmenting, is entrenched in the display-ad market, and well established in video. Audio has been slower to participate in the programmatic market. On the buy side, advertisers and agencies increasingly demand audience targeting of impression-based campaigns, in all their marketing channels.
The Jelli programmatic platform will be installed in all of iHeartMedia’s 850 radio stations. The result will be a private programmatic exchange for iHeart’s owned-and-operated over-the-air radio ad inventory.
Katz Media Group, the largest media representation company in the U.S., will extend the agreement with the creation of Expressway from Katz — an industry-wide ad exchange for buying radio inventory that will be rolled out to other radio groups. Expressway from Katz will also be powered by Jelli.
“For Jelli it’s a huge partnership,” said Mike Dougherty. “You can’t get any bigger in broadcast radio than iHeartMedia.”
Dougherty also emphasized the importance of the agreement to the radio industry. “We’re excited for us, but we’re also excited for the industry overall. For the first time, at scale, radio has a seat at the table for programmatic advertising. Programmatic buyers will be able to add radio to their media mixes with other media types. This is an exciting day for the radio medium. When fully launched, these exchanges will have greater reach than Google or Facebook.”