Audion

Founded in France, Audion provides a contextual advertising solution to connect brands with audiences and content providers across European radio, music, and podcasts. It aims to enable advertisers to automate, customize, and measure audio advertising across all digital ad formats. The firm provides a dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform that uses proprietary technology that considers a user's location, date, and time as well as the type of podcast they are listening to, dynamically generating thousands of audio combinations to create more engaging advertising experiences. 

The firm also provides several solutions for podcasters and audio platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, and Soundcloud. It provides an ad server platform for content monetization, which includes Print Audio, a text-to-speech technology to convert, monetize, and distribute its content in audio. It also provides the Audion Network, which features independent podcasts to professional media covering a range of topics where content can be monetized live or programmatically.   

The firm claims its TrueListen product is the first solution that guarantees a minimum number of listens for podcast content by targeting active listeners as well as optimizing content delivery using performance-based logic.   

Key customers and partnerships

The firm claims to have an audience of 150 million unique listeners from across 12 countries. As of November 2022, more than 500 brands including Adidas, Mercedes Benz, Coca-Cola, and Audi, along with media agencies like the French big 6 media agencies—Havas Media, Dentsu Aegis Network, WPP, OMG, Heroics, and Publicis Groupe—use its solutions.  

The firm has also partnered with a number of demand-side ad platforms (DSPs) including TubeMogul, Tabmo, MediaMath , and Audiomatic to enable its users to discover and trade digital audio solutions in real time. In addition, the firm provides a data suite to segment and measure target audiences in partnership with Nielsen, Adsquare, and Adot.  

Funding and financials

In November 2022, the firm raised EUR 6 million (~USD 6.2 million) in a Series A round to expand its activities in Europe over the next three years, planning to open offices in three new countries. The firm also stated that it had experienced a 100% growth in turnover in 2021 and 2022.