How to Create the Perfect Audio Ads Using AI Voiceover Technology
“Listen to this short ad to get 30 minutes of uninterrupted listening.”
Sounds familiar? Spotify is one of the most popular audio streaming platforms that allows brands to expertly advertise directly to engaged listeners using. The method: audio ads. The channels: audio streaming services like Google Podcasts, YT Music, Soundcloud, and more.
Audio ads like these have revolutionized the ad industry in more ways than one. Let's see how.
Table of Contents
What is Audio Advertising?
Audio advertising can be defined as the automated, programmatic placement of relevant ads in audio streaming services, such as radio, podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and more.
More recently, there has been a significant rise in the popularity of audio streaming services and their consumption. Marketers have discovered such channels to be an avenue of high potential to reach an incredibly engaged audience pool through audio advertising.
Strategically inserting audio ads between plays enables marketers to reach wider audience without having to generate prior engagement. The best advantage of audio advertisements is that they are compatible with any electronic device that can install an audio streaming platform and allow the user to playback audio.
Businesses can build on their digital ad strategies and further insert targeted marketing content into the audio ads played on these streaming services. It helps improve outreach and get more conversions for each audio ad played.
Why Should Your Marketing Plan Include Audio Ads?
According to a report by Grand Review Research, the revenue from the global music streaming market alone (services like YT Music and Spotify) was $32.53 billion in 2022.
The audience using audio streaming platforms is already engaged and attentive in listening to the playback—a strategic audio ad in the interval has the potential to get your brand noticed among a lot of people.
Listed below are the four key benefits of digital audio advertising for your business growth.
Gain A Wider Outreach
An IFPI report highlights that 78% of people consume music through licensed audio streaming services. That is more than three-quarters of a potential audience that your business can target through digital audio ads.
A Suitable Substitute for Graphics
For people who are busy commuting or multitasking to spare any time for visual advertisements, audio ads can come in extremely handy. A lot of people are already tuned into their music streaming services as they work—your brand can reach an audience that is engaged aurally using online audio advertising.
Cost Efficiency
Digital audio ads are not as taxing on your budget as video or graphic ads. If you factor in the text to speech and voiceover software available today, audio ads free your business even from hiring voiceover artists. That is a big leap in cost efficiency compared to hiring a complete production unit for video ads.
High Engagement Rates
Linear audio advertisements cannot be skipped through and aren't demanding to sit through either. They are mere 30-second audio ad campaign clips that the listener patiently listens to before returning to their playlist. In fact, a report by Nielsen Media highlights that listeners can recall audio ads better by 24%.
Steps to Create the Perfect Audio Ads for Your Audio Advertising Strategy
You can create a high-quality voiceover for digital advertising by following the steps detailed below.
Writing a Convincing Script
The first step is to create a script that will sell. There are several elements you need to consider creating a compelling script for your audio ad:
- Decide whether your digital audio content will be a soft, medium, or hard-selling script.
- Determine a suitable length for your podcast ads. For example, Spotify allows advertisements to run for 30 seconds.
- Now, you need to set the right tone for your advertisement—something that resonates with your target audience.
Once the tone is set, you must insert a highly actionable and relevant call to action that will get your audience to respond.
Selecting the Right Voiceover
So, your script is ready. The next step is to select a suitable voice that can represent your brand in the best light. For example, for a gaming company, the voice of a young male that sounds exciting would be the ideal choice.
You can work with the following guide to select the best voiceover for your audio ad:
Think about the tone, the phrasing, and the choice between male or female voices.
Take inspiration from other audio ads for placing word emphasis and determine the speed of the speech, mood setting, and volume of the voice.
Delivering the Call to Action
Your script contains a highly encouraging call to action; however, if not spoken the right way, it can fail to incite the desired action from your listeners.
A good call to action includes the information your listeners need to get the action done, and it is spoken in a way that is easy to recall. Remember: this is an audio ad; therefore, the call to action must be quick and easy to remember.
How AI Voices Are Helping the Audio Advertising Industry
There are four major ways that AI voiceover technology benefits the advertising arm of a business:
Saves Time
Imagine the time your audio advertising department would need to hire a voice actor. Hiring, training, scrapped recordings, errors, script revisions, and more— everything takes time to create the perfect voiceover for your audio advertisement.
Using AI voiceover technology eliminates all the hiring and re-recording hassles. It allows you to revise scripts as often as you like without having to make the voiceover artist wait and bill your business for their hours. These are significant savings in terms of the time invested in creating a compelling audio ad.
Reduces Costs
The production of any kind of media, visual ads or audio ads, requires cost input from the business. With digital audio advertising, you need to consider the compensation towards voiceover artists, the clip editing crew, the software investment, wastages, etc. All these expenses have a severe impact on budgets for your advertising activities.
AI voiceover technology changes all that. You can save on artists' compensation with a wide selection of AI voices available at your disposal. You also get access to editing tools that reduce the burden on the editing teams.
Breaks Language Barriers
AI voiceover technology allows your business to translate the input text into a different language and output it as speech. It all sounds long-winded, but it is pretty handy.
You don't need to hire translators and record your audio ad in different languages anymore. The same script can be accurately translated by AI voiceover technologies in the languages of your choice, in the voices of your choice. It is that simple.
Consistency in Voiceover Quality
With AI voiceover technology, you can standardize a collection of AI voices for advertising specific products or services. You can create "cohorts" that remain consistent for all advertisements belonging to a niche, imbuing consistency in the brand voice.
This is a big step up from the uncertainty with human voiceover artists. For example, an artist may come down with the flu, altering his voice, and you are forced to locate a stand-in and compromise. Such situations can be completely eliminated with AI voices.
Why Murf is the Answer to Your Audio Ad Needs
What differentiates Murf from the crowd, then?
Murf is an industry-leading text to speech software that holds the G2 Leader of Fall 2022 award and is now the Momentum Leader for Winter 2023.
Our platform offers services like text to speech, voice cloning, voiceovers for video, voice changers, and text to voice API's. Murf has an extensive library of over 120 voices in 20 languages across the globe, allowing you to create audio any way you want.
You can produce audio advertisements seamlessly using the Studio that allows you to upload your creative media and add voiceovers to it in the AI voice of your choice.
Key Features of Murf
Murf has extensive features that enable you to enhance your audio output:
Speed
Murf provides you with speed control for your text-to-audio conversions. You can control the speed through 0, 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, and 2x.
Pauses
With the Pause feature, Murf allows you to insert strategic, natural pauses when the selected AI voice reads the input text.
Emphasis and Intonation
To ensure that you get natural-sounding audio output, you can also play with word emphasis using the Emphasis feature, where the AI voice underscores the selected text for better impact.
Voice Selection
A wide range of voice selections allows you to deliver the message in the best way possible. You can choose between male and female voices with different accents as well.
Industry-Specific Voices
Murf's voice library comes segregated into industry-specific voices that allow you to deliver your message in a more suitable, effective way using voices that reflect the industry's character.
In Closing
With technological advancements, it has become possible to market to your target audience with increased precision and better returns.
Audio advertisements are an excellent way to generate interest in your brand among an audience that's already listening and attentive. While saving you a significant amount of ad expenses, audio ads also help you generate warmer leads. Add to that Murf's capabilities, and your business can truly unleash the power of audio advertisements.
FAQs
How do I create an audio ad?
You can create an audio ad in three simple steps with Murf:
Create a convincing script for your audio advertisement, and upload it to Murf
Select your preferred voice, and apply all the customizations you want— emphasis, pitch, pause, speed, volume, and more.
Convert your text files into audio files and apply all the necessary music and effects in your studio—and done!
How do I record audio for ads?
Recording audio for your advertisement can be done in two ways:
You can hire voiceover actors to read the script you have prepared and record it manually.
You can use text to speech platforms like Murf to automatically convert your ad script into audio using advanced AI voices that sound human-like.
How is AI used in audio advertising?
AI engines synthesize voices according to the customizations you input into the text to speech converter tool. The text is then "read" by these AI voices, creating an audio that can be used in your advertising campaigns.