Anyone who spent time at this year’s Programmatic I/O in New York heard far more about outcomes than impressions, and a lot about the AI agents that may soon decide which media gets a shot at delivering them. For two decades, adtech has been built to find and reach people. If agents start doing the buying, audio has a new buyer to win over, one with no gut instinct, no favorite sales rep, and no memory of last year’s pitch. It reads the data, runs the numbers, and moves on.
A buyer that runs on data alone only rewards what it can measure, and that plays to audio’s strengths. Judged purely on proof, audio has more to show than most marketers realize, and the biggest trends at this event showed exactly where.
Audio delivers more than its budget share suggests
Channels once sold on awareness are now judged on conversions. Tools like conversion APIs and closed-loop measurement are becoming table stakes. And as automation spreads, advertisers may start paying for actions instead of impressions.
For audio, the shift plays to a strength the industry still underrates. Audio may have started as an awareness play, but it’s been bought, measured, and optimized on performance for years. AdsWizz measurement and attribution tools such as AudioPixel connect ad exposure to site visits, app downloads, and purchases. Interactive formats like ShakeMe go a step further, turning a listener’s response into an immediate, measurable action.
Yet media budgets haven’t caught up. Consumers spend about 25% of their media time with audio, but marketers put only about 5% of their budgets there. Jeremy Randol, VP of Programmatic Sales Strategy at SiriusXM Media, highlighted the gap on the “Sound Decisions: Audio’s Role in the Modern Purchase Journey” panel by noting that creative executive Walter T. Geer III’s opening keynote, titled “Congratulations. You Reached Everyone. Nobody Cared,” hadn’t mentioned audio. It was a telling miss for a talk about winning attention.
Jeremy’s challenge to marketers in the room was simple: try audio and measure it. DSPs, he noted, have pushed audio to become as accountable as any other digital format, and SiriusXM Media now works with a partner to get log-level data to marketing mix modeling providers. So why hasn’t the money followed? It’s mostly like a perception issue, since plenty of plans still treat audio as a reach buy. An algorithm won’t carry that outdated view. It will judge audio on the data in front of it, and for marketers who move first, a quarter of consumers’ media time still drawing a fraction of the spend is a real advantage.
Agentic buying is coming, and audio is next
From tools that help buyers plan campaigns to systems that can optimize and execute buys, AI agents came up in nearly every session. WPP suggested the impact could be felt within the next year. Priya Bhasin, Group Product Manager at Microsoft AI, went further in her workshop, “Programmatic in the Agentic Web: Auctions and Measurement When Agents Browse and Buy.” She argued that agents may eventually handle media buying outright rather than just automating pieces of it. That raises a basic question. Which inventory does an agent even consider?
For audio, consideration is closer than it sounds. Jeremy put it plainly on the same panel: AI-driven buying showed up in CTV first, and audio is next. If agents are coming for those budgets next, audio needs to give those systems the data they need to choose it.
The work starts in planning, the stage audio needs to reach earlier, since it’s where budgets get set. AudioMatic‘s tools give buyers a read on available inventory, volume, and trends before a dollar is committed. AdsWizz has been early to audio’s biggest shifts before, including delivering the first dynamically inserted podcast ad back in 2012. As AI takes on more of the buying, AdsWizz will keep working alongside its partners to bring the latest innovations to audio buyers and sellers.
What makes audio agent-ready?
An agent is only as good as the data and inventory it can see. That’s where scale matters, and AdsWizz has it. Its technology connects buyers to 90% of global programmatic audio content, one of the widest views of the audio ecosystem anywhere. Audio was also long considered a channel with little data to target against, and AdsWizz has worked to change that by layering contextual, mood and first-party signals onto inventory that once had very few. Being agent-ready comes down to five foundations:
- Accessible inventory. AudioMatic gives buyers access to streaming and podcast supply however they prefer to buy, from open auction to private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals.
- Clear audience signals. AdsWizz contextual targeting reads time of day, device, listening environment and local weather, while our Mood Targeting matches ads to the emotional tone of the music someone is listening to. Together they paint a clear picture of the moment without leaning on personal identifiers.
- Interoperable identity. Audio audiences need to match up with the identity data, first-party data, and behavioral segments the rest of the plan already runs on. In AudioMatic, those signals sit alongside demographic, geo and device targeting in the same buy.
- Transparent supply paths. An agent optimizing for efficiency will favor paths it can understand and verify, which is exactly what the AdsWizz Marketplace was built to provide. Even amid all the AI talk, buyers still want plain answers. Which publishers ran? What did it cost? Was it verified? Did it perform?
- Measurable outcomes. Without results flowing back, the agent has nothing to learn from. AdsWizz closes that loop with its own attribution and also works with third-party partners to measure foot traffic and brand lift.
Audio owns the hours screens can’t reach
Moments came up in a Google Marketing Platform session, “To Win Hearts & Minds: Stop Buying Inventory and Start Buying Attention,” which looked at how audiences engage before, during, and after major cultural and sports events. A big event is now a stretch of days fueled by creators and fan conversation rather than a single broadcast. Audio is the thread that carries those moments into the parts of the day screens can’t reach, and more of that listening now happens on phones and through earbuds. Among 13- to 34-year-olds, mobile devices have even overtaken AM/FM radio for listening in the car.
That changes the quality of the impression. Earbud listening is personal, a voice speaking directly into someone’s ears instead of filling a room. As Jeremy noted on his panel, CTV might own an hour or two of someone’s day, often under a heavy ad load. Audio covers the hours around it, when people are running errands and deciding whether that pumpkin spice latte is worth the stop. AdsWizz’s Second Screen Retargeting extends the moment further. Someone who hears an ad on the commute home can see a follow-up from the same brand later that day, in display, video or CTV, on the same device or another screen in their household.
What this means for audio
If you’re planning 2027 media now, a few practical moves follow:
- Plan and measure audio alongside the rest of your omnichannel buy so it’s judged on the same terms.
- Hold it to the same measurement standard you’d use anywhere else, whether that’s attribution or incrementality testing.
- Ask your audio partners the same supply path questions you’d ask of any channel and expect the same clear answers.
As more decisions get delegated, the advantage goes to whoever controls the inputs. If algorithms are going to decide where the next media dollar goes, audio needs to give them enough reasons and evidence to choose it.
Want to see what that evidence looks like for your brand? Contact the AdsWizz team to learn more.
