It’s been a busy first half of the year at Sounder, and we’re thrilled to share our progress as we continue to shape the future of the digital audio industry. We want to highlight four key areas where Sounder is leading the way: 1) advancing groundbreaking AI innovations, 2) striving for market ubiquity, 3) endorsing diverse voices for equitable monetization, and 4) shaping a broad partner ecosystem.
We are dedicated to fostering transparency and trust across the audio industry. Today, we're excited to share developments that enhance our brand safety, suitability, and contextual solutions and create significant opportunities for our agency, publisher, platform, and marketplace partners.
Embracing the AI Revolution
When we launched Sounder, we recognized the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in revolutionizing the podcasting industry. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in developing proprietary machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions focusing on brand safety, suitability, discovery, and contextual targeting. We’ve upgraded our AI-first platform, fueled by our commitment to meeting our customers’ needs at the rapidly evolving intersection of technology and audio.
Our team has been refining Sounder's capabilities and incorporating innovative technologies, including enhanced AI capabilities that combine our industry-leading machine learning and AI models with the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), that are both increasingly and widely becoming available. This combination allows us to unlock the true value of audio content, delivering valuable insights, sophisticated analytics, and new monetization capabilities to our agency, publisher, and marketplace partners. By combining LLMs with our unique data, we can rapidly develop solutions to enable new audio use cases and critical tasks.
New Interactive & Generative AI Enhancements:
- Streamline your workflow: We are integrating AI chatbots into our Audio Insights Dashboard, providing users with smoother and more intuitive navigation options. This allows for effortless exploration of podcast inventory at scale, extending beyond the realm of known, popular shows.
- Maximize content engagement and monetization: Our upcoming product launches enable the effortless transformation of each audio piece into a variety of captivating articles, summaries, and more. This facilitates marketing automation for publishers and partners alike, creating a compounding effect for every piece of audio content.
- Expand your reach globally: We're proud to introduce comprehensive multi-language solutions that tap into the global marketplace, allowing our stakeholders to connect with a broader consumer base. Benefit from automatic transcription translations using top-tier language engines, such as French, German, Spanish, and more.
Making Our Technology Ubiquitous Across Audio
Our strategy of “ubiquity” is starting to take shape, allowing us to expand our relationships with existing and new partners across the audio ecosystem. We're thrilled to further develop our relationships with partners such as Audacy, iHeartMedia, SpokenLayer, DAX, Audiohook, and BAM Strategy. We're just as excited to announce new partnerships that leverage Sounder’s technology to power various use cases across the audio landscape. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more about each of these partnerships as we help our customers achieve their goals by:
- Building high-quality, trusted podcast networks
- Revolutionizing the in-car listening experience through podcast discovery
- Reshaping data-driven decision-making and targeting for publishers and podcast monetization
- Enriching SSPs and DSPs with the world’s most precise brand safety, suitability, and contextual data at the show, episode, and segment level
These partnerships allow us to work even closer with our agency and brand partners. Together, we're facilitating more informed decisions on brand suitability and precise contextual targeting. Through identifying new inventory and scaling media buys with relevant content, we aim to take the guesswork out of media planning, giving agencies and brands the perfect context for their campaigns.
Amplifying Diverse Voices
At Sounder, we recognize the importance of listening to and amplifying diverse voices and promoting a fair monetization system for all creators. We’re investing in resources and partnerships to confront equity biases and ensure a level playing field.
In line with our commitment to inclusivity, Sounder is actively engaged in research projects to address these equity biases and promote diversity within the audio landscape. We are dedicated to building AI models that support underrepresented voices and amplify their stories. By collaborating with research partners, we aim to develop innovative solutions that challenge existing barriers and create a level playing field for all creators. Through these initiatives, we strive to foster a more inclusive and representative audio community where diverse voices are valued and heard. Stay tuned for updates on our research partnerships as we continue to drive positive change in the industry.
Powering Growth: The Partner Ecosystem Advantage
We recognize the importance of working hand in hand with companies that share our vision. Building a trusted partner ecosystem makes it easier for creators and advertisers to distribute and utilize Sounder's powerful signal. In our pursuit of comprehensive solutions, we've nurtured a growing network of partners that's as robust as it is diverse. Our collaborative journey has taken us into the company of great innovators, where we've joined forces to provide one-stop solutions for our audio-focused partners. You’ll also hear more about these partners in the coming weeks, as we're proud to collaborate with industry leaders who deliver capabilities in audience data, creative optimization, activation, attribution, and verification. Alongside our valued partners, we're providing crucial data-driven audio solutions to the industry.
Thank you for joining us on this journey, and be sure to stay tuned — you won’t want to miss what’s coming next. If you have any media inquiries, please reach out to kristin@ksquaredstrategies.com.
Sounder is more than an audio data platform. It brings together publishers, agencies, ad tech, and data partners to pioneer how audio content is discovered, monetized, and optimized. Our commitment is to deliver unparalleled value to our partners and customers. Together, we're shaping the future of the audio ecosystem.
Kal Amin
Kal Amin is Sounder’s Co-founder and CEO. He has spent 20+ years in the media and technology space and has held executive roles at some of the leading global technology platforms. Prior to Sounder, Kal previously served as the VP of Global Business Operations at Spotify, GM of Sponsored Listings at AOL, Director of Global Market Development at Google, and most recently as the COO of content curation platform Flipboard.
