Price Brothers Announces Cloned Podcast Host-Read Ad Service

Price Brothers, creators of digital audio advertising content using emerging technologies, today announced the launch of its Contextual Advertising service for podcast host-read ads.

This new offering improves podcast ads by leveraging dynamic targeting combined with voice cloning technology. The result are ads made more effective by adding context and relevance to heighten engagement.

“Research has shown that host-read ads in podcasts perform well,” said Dan Price, Partner, Price Brothers and sister company Oink Ink Radio. “Meanwhile, research has also shown that adding context to audio ads, such as localization, increases effectiveness. The hurdle has been scalability. And so we began experimenting with cloning.”

Price Brothers’ Contextual Ad Service provides advertisers the ability to serve dynamically ‘stitched together’ creative content, relevant to a listener’s specific context and environment, while adding scale achieved by utilizing synthesized voice. “It would be impractical for every podcast host engaged by a brand like Staples, for example, to record 1,400 location addresses,” said Jim Price. “So we thought, ‘Why not clone the hosts’ voices (with their permission) and cobble together the new audio to efficiently create versions relevant to the listener.’ ”

While many AI platforms may be created somewhat equally, the implementation of them has not. Says Dan Price, “The secret sauce for us was in perfecting what goes into the platform and how you input the data in order to achieve authentic results. People have been skeptical of the quality of cloned audio, and for good reason. Most sound fake and inconsistent. For months we experimented with the assets being loaded into the platforms we use. The specific sample reference audio and especially the technique of entering the text being processed by the platform is absolutely critical.” The results Price Brothers achieved have been startling.

The whole concept behind Price Brothers was as a creative user of emerging technologies. “We’re not a tech firm,” says Dan Price. “We set out years ago to identify the most promising digital tools at their inception, and then work with the developers as end-users of them. We’d experiment and push the envelope and request upgrades to the programs; we positioned ourselves as already doing creative work with those tools by the time they were being introduced to the industry.” As a result, Price Brothers produced some of the earliest dynamic work in the U.S. (for client Staples) and worked with Instreamatic fully 4 years ago on Interactive Audio executions.

While the results they’ve gotten cloning podcast hosts’ voices is being noticed, it’s the contextual component that is sure to catch the attention of advertisers. A listener’s location, the name or type of app they’re using, the activity they’re engaging in, are all available data points that can drive relevant messaging.

But a second, more practical use of Price Brothers’ service could be that podcast publishers and producers will look to apply the capability to changing, updating, or fixing audio already recorded by hosts.

Despite there being significant, wide-spread concern over Artificial Intelligence and the governing of its boundaries, Price Brothers’ Contextual service for podcasts is a solution that not only benefits advertisers, but also provides a more engaging listening experience for audiences. And that is good for hosts and publishers. “We view it as using AI for good, not evil,” says Jim Price.

About Price Brothers

Price Brothers is a digital audio creative firm and sister company to perennial award-winning radio boutique Oink Ink. Price Brothers’ mission is to raise the bar of creative uses of emerging audio technologies in the ad space. For over 30 years partners Dan and Jim Price have earned a reputation as the leaders in audio advertising and have won hundreds of awards along the way: Cannes, One Show, Radio Mercuries, Clios and many more. Their client list includes hundreds of brands and agencies, most notably: Google, Microsoft, Chevrolet, Anheuser Busch, AT&T, Staples, and McDonald’s. The company is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.