Kamel El Hadef, co-founder and co-CEO at Audion discusses the changing digital advertising trends impacting ad ROI in an AI era in this MarTech Series interview:
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Hi Kamel, tell us about Audion’s recent enhancements and your recent funding: what’s in store for end users?
We just closed a $15M Series B funding round, which will underpin the scaling of Audion’s core belief: audio should be a full-funnel performance channel, not solely a branding line item. For listeners, that means fewer interruptions and more relevance. For advertisers, audio finally answers the question they’ve been asking for a decade: ‘Did the campaign work?’.
How does your AI-powered offering create sustainable differentiation?
AI can be used by almost anyone today to buy advertising, especially on social media. Our differentiation isn’t the AI itself, but the way we use it and, above all, the exclusive data we feed it. Audion’s eight years of direct integrations with creators and audio publishers across five markets give us something no generalist platform can buy or scrape: billions of real listening events tied to context – which show, which moment, which device, which audience mindset. Our AI doesn’t guess what works in audio. It learns from the only dataset that actually knows. The model is the multiplier. The signal underneath is the edge.
Which part of your value chain changes most when AI agents start owning audio campaign outcomes, not just tasks?
Media planning is the key beneficiary. The planner stops asking ‘Where do I buy?’ in favour of the question, ‘What outcome am I optimising for?’. Campaign brief-to-activation time reduces from weeks to hours. And with the tactical layer becoming machine-native, we see the human element move upstream, freed up to focus on strategy and creative judgment.
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Given the deprecation of traditional cookies, how are AI-powered advertising tools redefining trends?
Audio has always been less reliant on cookies than other channels. Most listening happens in apps, so our primary signal is mobile device IDs, a more stable, consent-based foundation than browser cookies ever were. Web and desktop listening still exist, of course, but they’re the minority. On top of that, AI now lets us read the listening context with a precision that didn’t exist before: the content of the show, the moment of the day, the listening environment. Identity matters less. Relevance matters more. That’s where the industry is heading – and audio is already there.
How are you leveraging data clean rooms or AI-based contextual targeting to ensure high-performance audio / ad placement while navigating stricter 2026 privacy regulations?
Our focus is contextual advertising, powered by AI. We analyse to that signal in real time. No personal identifier is required. The precision keeps improving as the models learn from billions of listening events across our five markets. Privacy regulation hasn’t constrained performance in audio, rather it pushed us to build something better than identity-based targeting.
Top aspects around AI-powered advertising that needs to be busted in this chat?
We hear a lot that AI is replacing creativity. This is not the case; AI replaces the parts of the workflow that were never creative. The second myth is that adopting AI is an automatic route to doing better work. It isn’t. Deployed badly, it scales mediocrity. Deployed well, it raises the bar. The industry must choose with insight and intention.
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Founded in 2018 by Arthur Larrey and Kamel El Hadef, Audion has established itself as the go-to partner for digital audio solutions for brands and their media agencies. With a technology-driven and AI-powered approach, Audion transforms audio into a high-performing, controllable, and measurable media lever across the entire marketing funnel.
Leveraging proprietary technologies integrated with artificial intelligence, Audion designs, activates, and optimizes results-oriented audio campaigns capable of delivering tangible outcomes—from brand awareness to business performance.
About Kamel
Kamel El Hadef, is co-founder and co-CEO at Audion
