TechBytes with Stas Tushinskiy (Instreamatic) and Larry Leung (AirKast)

What is the draw of dialogue advertising to advertisers, publishers, and consumers? Can all three benefit?

Stas Tushinskiy: Not only should all three – advertisers, publishers, and consumers – benefit from the emergence of dialogue advertising, I think all three will need to in order for there to be widespread adoption. But I think that’s exactly what we’ll see. For advertisers, early campaigns run through the Instreamatic platform by brands like IKEA, HP, Mastercard, and Infiniti have seen significantly higher ad engagement rates than the industry norm. Even more importantly, brands are measuring how many people were not interested and why.

This is the first time in Marketing history when a brand can learn about consumers who are not interested because this provides a unique sales growth opportunity. For publishers, more ad engagement transparency and metrics will enable them to fill more inventory, and at higher rates now that audio ads are no longer passive. For consumers, this new type of ad is beneficial whether or not they are interested. If they aren’t, a quick verbal “no” gets them back to their content more quickly, and if the ad resonates, they can much more seamlessly get desired information (and, because of our platform’s continually evolving AI, do so in their conversational language).

What markets/customer types does AirKast focus most on serving?

Larry Leung: We work with all types of media companies including those in the Radio, Television, and Podcasting spaces. We also work with individual talent to create branded mobile apps.

Tell us more about the technical side of your integration. How are your Product and Marketing teams collaborating to best bring this partnership to end-users?

Larry Leung: With more than 800+ client apps released in the app stores, AirKast will open up Instreamatic’s platform to any client interested in requesting the feature.

What are the biggest challenges or impediments for media publishers and advertisers to fully leveraging Voice and AI-enabled conversation platforms? 

Stas Tushinskiy: I see two ways – and really, only two ways – that the industry could screw up the progression and adoption of dialogue advertising. One is adopting low-end technology that doesn’t deliver truly conversational interactivity. No one wants dialogue advertising to end up like IVR systems where you are saying a string of “yes” and “no” – that’s just not going to work for consumers.

The other potential impediment to adoption is ignoring how people actually interact with voice systems (and not using that contextual data intelligently). For example, human language can be confusing; for example, we say phrases like “No, I want it,” or “Yes, I’m not interested.” AI-fueled dialogue advertising needs to be smart enough to overcome these natural language challenges to preserve the ad experience. Being able to learn from people’s responses requires a true voice AI platform that can build a continuous dialogue experience with a customer, removing the need to serve the same annoying ads over and over again. It’s crucial to the success of dialogue advertising.

How do you empower marketers to overcome these challenges?

Stas Tushinskiy: We really hone in on the AI component of our platform. It’s the core of how we can be successful. What this means is ensuring we can fine-tune “intents” for specific campaigns to fit marketers’ needs, leveraging voice data to continually inform our AI system, and understanding and measuring the conditions when voice-activated ads are delivered (for example, we will not serve an ad to a listener who is in a noisy environment – where they wouldn’t be able to interact with the ad). The attention to detail, fueled by AI, is a variable we believe to be critically important to overcoming any adoption challenges – both now and in the long-term view.

An important component of this process is continuing to move the brand-consumer conversation forward, where AI builds an ongoing communication with consumers based on their previous interactions – instead of chasing them again and again with the same ads.

What AdTech conferences and events are you finding most interesting right now?

Stas Tushinskiy: We attend and speak at quite a few – both AdTech and those in the Voice/Radio industry. Particularly with an AdTech platform that’s so new to the industry, meeting brands and publishers face to face is an expedient way to get our value proposition across. DMEXCO is always a great one, we go to Adweek events, Progress Connect and CES, on the industry side we attend VOICE Summit, RAIN, the Hispanic Radio Conference and a host of others. We’re looking forward to branching out to new-to-us AdTech shows in 2020 as well, such as Programmatic I/O, AI in Marketing Summit, and a Digiday Summit.