Booking audio ad campaigns

How advertising works

iono.fm is a digital audio platform. We provide digital ad insertion (DAI) technology to deliver audio ads into podcasts or live stream audio of our publishers. See our How our advertising works article for technical details of how we deliver audio ads, what ad slots are available and how targeting options work.

Who can book ads?

Various parties can run audio ad campaigns on our platform:

• Advertisers: our partner ad agencies may book campaigns on all publishers that have opted-in to have their content monetised by third-party agencies.
• Publishers: publishers can run ad campaigns on their own content for a CPM percentage or a minimum flat fee.
• Anyone: any business interested in running ad campaigns on our audio content can contact us at ads@iono.fm.

How are ad campaigns priced?

We run campaigns based on a set number of deliveries booked at an agreed rate per thousand deliveries. (CPM)

Example: book an ad campaign on business content at a CPM of R550 with a budget of 16,500, which provides 30,000 impressions.

Rates vary based on audience demographics, type of inventory and availability. Audio advertisment CPM averages around R400 ($24) with a range from R250 CPM ($15) up to R1000 CPM ($60).

Our floor price is a R200 CPM ($12). A minimum campaign budget of R5000 ($300) applies per publisher included in the campaign.

Ad campaigns can deliver at different CPM's per podcast channel or stream. Ad campaigns can combine podcast and radio stream impressions.

Example: book a campaign at R550 CPM on a business podcast, R450 on a technology podcast and R350 on a radio stream pre-roll.

How much does iono.fm charge?

Our platform fee is a minimum of 18% of the ad sales price.

Our ad sales partner percentage is normally 25% and the content publisher receive the remaining 57%.

Content publishers selling their own inventory specify at which rate the ads were sold (one of the factors determining ad delivery priority) and pay only the 18% platform fee. House ads run at a cost of R36 CPM ($2.15) - derived from the base platform fee percentage (18%) of the floor price (R200/$12 CPM).

How long should audio ads be?

Ads can be anywhere between 5 to 60 second in length. The ideal duration is based on campaign goals and audience. This article has a good overview.

Interactive features

When an ad runs inside our web player or mobile app we support an optional companion image banner with an associated click-through link during the ad play. This is normally available for a ±10% increase in overall CPM.

Campaigns are delivered using both "player ads" with interactive support and "stitched ads" without interactive support. The ratio between these two is entirely dependent on how the targeted audience consumes the content.

Campaigns cannot target only "player" on "stitched" ads.

How are ads booked ?

We currently book programmatic guaranteed ad campaigns (direct bookings) via insertion order.

This entails a commitment to:

• taking a specified amount of available inventory (budget),
• to run on specific content (podcast channels or live streams),
• at agreed CPM rates,
• over a set date range.

These campaigns focus on delivering the agreed amount of ad impressions within the campaign duration.

Example: book a campaign at R550 CPM on a business podcast, R450 on a technology podcast and R350 on a radio stream pre-roll for a total budget of R75,000 to run for a duration of two months from 1 May to 31 June.

During campaign setup the above selection of content, CPM and running time is finalised.

In addition, advertisers can specify the relevant targeting options to go along with the campaign:

• Countries to limit the campaign delivery to,
• Regions (provinces) to limit the campaign delivery to,
• Dayparts to limit the campaign delivery to.

See the ad targeting section of our "How adverising works" article.

What information is available from campaigns?

We provide rich analytics for campaigns running on our platform. These analytics reports are available while the campaign is running and afterwards as a close-out report.

I'm a publisher and want to book a campaign on my own podcast or stream content

1. Before commencing, it is important to understand how much inventory you have available in the countries or regions you wish to sell your ads. Use your account analytics reports to establish the average number of impressions available to monetise.
2. When you aim to sell more than one campaign, also keep in mind to subtract any existing campaigns that are already booked against your content for the same date range.
3. Decide at what price (CPM) you want to sell your impressions. See the earlier section on campaign pricing for guidelines.
4. Once you’ve sold the campaign, instruct our ad team to set it up using this form.
5. Campaigns can only run once at least one valid audio ad creative has been received.
6. You will get an invitation to access the campaign report. This report will be updated live while the campaign is running so you can monitor progress.
7. At the end of every calendar month, we invoice the 18% platform portion of the impressions delivered in the preceding month.

Please contact ads@iono.fm if you require assistance with any of these steps from our ad team.

I'm an advertiser or business that wants to book a campaign on iono.fm

Please contact ads@iono.fm for our ad team to assist you. To expedite the process, please provide us with estimates of the following information:

• The name of the brand and campaign goals,
• Target audience demographics (gender, age, affluence and ideal interest categories),
• Campaign budget and ideal CPM costs,
• Start and end dates,
• Countries or regions to target,
• Dayparts to target (optional).

Based upon this information we can assist in finding relevant inventory and building a campaign delivery plan.