Octave, News UK’s audio-visual advertising platform, has signed a portfolio of agreements to access four premium, broadcast-quality streaming audio providers in the UK. The new publishers will further extend Octave’s audio advertising audience, giving it a monthly reach of 15.5 million connected listeners.
The new publishers include: Audiomack, an artist-first, diverse music streaming platform; smart speaker maker Sonos; the Boom Radio family of stations; CountryLine Radio, the UK’s dedicated country music station.
The deals are part of Octave’s strategic programme to build a targeted network of high-quality third-party audio inventory partners alongside its owned and operated channels. Octave’s core portfolio derives from News UK’s media properties across brands including talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK, Times Radio and The Times & Sunday Times podcast roster, and Octave is building a wider partnership network to enhance this core audience.
The new audio partners will sit alongside Octave’s broad-ranging video inventory, including access to sell YouTube inventory directly across News UK’s own video output from brands such as talkSPORT, alongside carefully selected partners such as SoundCloud. With a combined monthly audio-visual reach of 27 million, Octave offers brands premium AV audiences at scale, underpinned with powerful first party data.
The new deals follow the announcement of Octaveai, the business’ innovative automated audio advertising creation and optimisation platform, giving brands of all sizes the ability to easily and efficiently create and optimise audio creative across Octave’s inventory portfolio.
Russell Pedrick, Managing Director, Octave, said: “This is an important step in the realisation of our long-term strategic audio goals. We’ve got a valuable core of our own audio brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio and Times Radio, and these partnerships help us to build on that with additional reach into valuable and engaged audiences. These deals will enable us to layer our rich, first-party data across a wider listener portfolio, helping our advertiser partners to reach larger and more diverse audiences.
“Sitting alongside our video inventory and the wider News UK portfolio, with these deals we can offer brands a unique combination of digital audio, CTV, video and display at scale, all underpinned with trusted, first party data.”
Paul Brown, VP, European Business and Operations, AdsWizz, said: “We are excited to announce this new agreement for Octave to represent ad sales across our streaming music inventory for Audiomack and Sonos in the UK. These deals will give brands a powerful way to reach engaged, diverse audiences across the UK, driven by Octave’s commercial expertise in this growing market.”
News UK is a client of Bluestripe Group, the publisher of New Digital Age.
