In an Australian first, Artificial Intelligence (Ai) will transform content from Australia’s leading news website, news.com.au, into content marketing placements for inclusion in the Acast content catalogue.
Acast, the world’s leading independent podcast company, hosts and distributes some of Australia’s most popular podcasts across categories including Sport, Business, Lifestyle.
Listeners to the Acast network will receive real-time news headlines advertising news.com.au.
Aaron Matthews, head of creative at Creative Fix, said the technology will not only deliver news content to listeners in real time, but that news categories can be paired with relevant podcast genres.
“This is the next step towards a truly integrated and tailored content experience where listeners receive relevant news updates, in real time, about topics of most interest to them,” said Matthews.
“It also overcomes the traditional barriers faced by audio producers, with most audio ad production being time-consuming, making this ideal for productions with tight timelines”.
Gina McGrath, head of marketing for news.com.au, said the relationship allows news.com.au readers to be on top of the latest news, wherever they are. “This activity embodies our brand promise to ‘be on it’, delivering the news that matters to our audience in the way they want to consume it”.
The initiative is a collaboration between Acast, news.com.au, Creative Fix, and Audiostack, and will use Audiostack’s scalable AI audio production to convert news articles into audio while also augmenting the voiceover with music and sound design.
“We’re really excited about the massive innovation Creative Fix has brought to the audio advertising sector. Using news headlines is exactly the type of use case we built AudioStack for: creating audio fast and at scale,” said Dr Timo P Kunz, co-founder and CEO of AudioStack.ai.
The news audio ads will be delivered as 30-second news bulletins across Acast’s full network which started on 13 November, 2024.
