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~ Broadens its extensive suite of advertising technology offerings
~ Strategic partnership with AdsWizz and Omnicom Media Group enable brands to access Saavn’s 20 million listeners with real-time buying and selling of audio advertising
 MUMBAI, India and NEW YORK, New York, February 2, 2017 — Saavn today announced the launch of programmatic audio advertising in India, the newest addition to Saavn’s extensive suite of advertising technology offerings. This groundbreaking new platform, created in partnership with AdsWizz, automates the real-time buying, targeting, optimization, and reporting of audio ad inventory into a few simple steps. Major brands across India, including Saavn’s current base of over 250 advertisers, can now use relevant data to significantly simplify the process to access and communicate with Saavn’s 20 million unique listeners.
Audio, especially on mobile devices, is a highly personal experience and is a form of personal expression and mood. With the increase of demanding lifestyles, audio is becoming an intrinsic part of this generation’s media consumption. Earlier while television and other visual mediums were the trigger points for consumers, we are now seeing a shift towards passive entertainment consumption. Audio is the only true companion medium that can traverse our entire day; unlike visual mediums in the online and offline world, audio does not require peoples’ fully focused attention to make a lasting impact. Digital audio is considered a premium because of the passion-centric brand safe environment it’s delivered in as well as the enormous amounts of data its consumption produces. Each stream is associated with a time-of-day, location, device brand/model, mobile operator, genre, age, gender, and several other factors. Audio is fundamentally a medium about “top of the funnel” branding instead of clicks and conversions reserved for demand fulfillment media like Google search ads.
“Digital audio advertising represents one of the largest untapped opportunities for brands to generate new demand and grow their businesses,” said Gaurav Kaushik, VP Advertising Platform at Saavn. “We had over 1.8 billion real ad impressions in Q4 and each one of them is unmatched in terms of sophisticated targeting capabilities and helping deliver insights for brands. Our programmatic solution can simplify the otherwise complex process of planning, executing and reporting dynamic digital audio campaign on mobile devices.”
Global digital audio solutions provider AdsWizz, Omnicom Media Group, and Saavn created the first private marketplace for major brands. Hewlett-Packard (HP) was the first brand advertiser in India to run digital audio buys programmatically on Saavn.
Targeting parameters such as gender, age, geography, device, mobile operator, time-of-day, and other custom cohorts are available to select in a simple console accessible to media buyers on their laptops and desktops. HP was able to engage its broadly identified target customers and create more awareness for its PCs among them. Overall, the time taken to launch this digital audio brand campaign was drastically reduced. Creative assets were uploaded with just a few mouse clicks and sophisticated reporting on campaign results were available in real-time, allowing stakeholders to control where and how their message appeared. Beyond specifying targeting parameters, major brands like HP gain invaluable data insights on listener engagement across the country. Eventually, brands will also run hundreds of audio advertising messages simultaneously, using sophisticated data-driven cohorts for the right audio message to reach the right listener.
“The future of media buying is programmatic because it helps us focus our time, energy and resources on creativity and messaging for people who will find our products most useful. Audio ads literally allow us to speak with our target customers in a high engagement environment on Saavn,” said Amit Singla, Head of Digital Marketing at HP India. “The reduction in time to set up campaigns and get real-time reports is an added benefit, especially in an increasingly media fragmented world.”
Omnicom Media Group and their renowned clients plan to access Saavn’s digital audio advertising inventory. In order to streamline operations, Omnicom’s clients are able to purchase audio inventory without wasting time in a lengthy direct sales process, protracted negotiation, and tedious campaign setup.
“We are pleased to be the first agency to bring programmatic audio to India, and the prospect of quickly scaling a mobile medium with 100% share-of-voice for brands is beyond exciting,” said Anil Pandit, Associate Vice President at Omnicom Media Group. “While digital audio advertising is a compelling way to change consumer mindsets, its delivery in a closed system also eliminates nagging issues like fraud, viewability and ad blocking in digital advertising.”
The Omnicom Media Group, AdsWizz, and Saavn collaboration reflects a focus on world-class technology and data driven solutions for advertisers to reach mobile consumers in an emotionally engaging environment. 2016 marked the first time that music audio streams exceeded music video streams in the US. BuzzAngle’s full year US digital music industry report indicated music audio streams increased 83% to 251 billion streams in 2016 vs. 2015. The report further stated there were 181 billion music video streams in 2016, only a 7.5% increase from 2015. Overall, more people are streaming more music than any year prior.
“We are excited to partner with Saavn as the industry leader in music entertainment to launch programmatic audio in India for the first time. We’ve worked hard to build a world-class platform exclusively focused on audio that brings buyers and sellers together and creates a fluid market,” said Alexis van de Wyer, CEO at AdsWizz. “Given the complexity of programmatic advertising, it was important to work with a technology-focused company like Saavn to bring this offering to the India market.”
Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Google are names and trademarks owned by each respective company.
About Saavn
Saavn is India’s leading digital music service, transforming how people around the world access and experience music on a daily basis. In 2016, Saavn expanded its content offering into Saavn Original Programming, a slate of original, non-music audio programs that range from comedy and storytelling to mythology and cricket.
Saavn is currently accessed in 196 countries and offers 30 Million tracks in 13 languages: Hindi, English (India only), Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani and Urdu. The company has 900+ label partnerships and growing, including T-Series, Tips, YRF, Saregama, Eros, Universal, Sony, and Warner Music. Saavn’s investors include Tiger Global Management, Liberty Media, Bertelsmann, Steadview Capital, Ward Ferry Management, Tree Line Investment Management, Quilvest, Mousse Partners, Wellington Capital Management, and a number of strategic individuals, including former Vodafone CEO, Arun Sarin, and, Guy Oseary, Chairman of Maverick and manager of global artists including Madonna and U2. The Saavn team has previously presented at Strata + Hadoop World in Singapore, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), MusicMatters, and at Cannes Entertainment Lions.
Saavn was founded in 2007, and has offices in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, New York, and California. For more information, visit www.saavn.com or corporate.saavn.com.
About Omnicom Media Group
Omnicom Media Group (OMG) is the media services division of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), the leading global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company, providing services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries. Omnicom Media Group includes the full service networks OMD, PHD and Hearts & Science; the Annalect global data and analytics platform; the Accuen global programmatic buying platform; global performance marketing agency Resolution Media; as well as a number of specialty media communications companies.
About AdsWizz, Inc.
AdsWizz is the leading technology provider of advertising solutions for the digital audio industry. The company seamlessly connects the digital audio advertising ecosystem with its suite of platforms and software solutions. AdsWizz provides leading audio publishers with advanced server-side and client-side insertion software, and with audio-centric ad serving and supply-side platforms. AdsWizz also operates the largest premium audio ad marketplace and provides ad networks and programmatic trading desks with solutions to effectively trade online audio inventory.
AdsWizz powers the world’s leading audio publishers, agencies, advertisers, and digital ad-sale teams. The company is based in San Mateo, California with teams in Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.adswizz.com.
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