iHeartMedia’s SmartAudio COVID Recovery Program Introduces Three New Products To Help Advertisers Leverage iHeart’s Broadcast Radio Stations and Digital Platforms To Reach Their Consumers in a Post-COVID World 

New York (May 6, 2020) – iHeartMedia, the leading audio company in the U.S. and No. 1 commercial podcast publisher globally, today announced the “SmartAudio COVID Recovery Program,” a suite of three new innovative SmartAudio products that enable businesses to utilize iHeartMedia’s unparalleled data and scale to re-engage with their loyal customers, and find new ones, as the nation’s economy begins to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses will also be able to use the new products to deliver tailored advertising messages based on local market data to ensure businesses are reaching their customers with messaging that fits their circumstances.

“The massive disruption created by the pandemic has caused brand loyalties to shift as consumers adapted to limited supplies and financial constraints – making them rethink what is essential,” Brian Kaminsky, President of Revenue and Data Operations for iHeartMedia. “The SmartAudio data platform uses iHeartMedia’s best-in-class audience data and real-time inputs to give brands the power to reconnect with their loyal customers and find switchers as they enter the market in a post COVID-19 world.”

The SmartAudio COVID Recovery Program is the newest addition to iHeart’s SmartAudio programmatic platform and builds on the company’s ongoing efforts to assist brands and marketers in targeting consumers across its quarter of a billion monthly broadcast listeners.

The new suite of products includes:

SmartAudio COVID Community Recovery Index – Creative optimization for COVID conditions

With different communities recovering at different times and at different paces, it’s important for brands to be able to adjust their messaging based on whether their community is still under a stay-at-home order, beginning to reopen local businesses or have already established their new way of conducting business post COVID-19. 

The SmartAudio COVID Community Recovery Index dynamically optimizes a brand’s creative to deliver the right message at the right time to the right community by using location-based mobility data to gauge the number of people out of home for recreation, shopping or headed to work. In addition, to help reach the right audience, iHeartMedia will be able to leverage SmartAudio’s data-matching capability to identify a business’s most loyal customers and re-engage with them.

The SmartAudio COVID Community Recovery Index utilizes iHeartMedia’s SmartAudio Dynamic Creative Optimization tool and is powered by location-based marketing intelligence company PlaceIQ.

SmartAudio Brand Loyalists – Reconnect with your customers in a post-COVID-19 world

As many U.S. residents have adapted to limited supplies and choices, they’ve been forced to rethink what products are essential to their way of life and may begin cutting back and adjusting their preferences even after the nation begins to return to normal.

The SmartAudio Brand Loyalist Audience product targets a business’ customers who listen to broadcast radio, using first- and third-party data and sophisticated data science to map those customers onto iHeartMedia’s more than 850 radio stations by day and daypart. 

SmartAudio Unlimited – A data-driven Broadcast-to-Digital extension

SmartAudio Unlimited will allow brands to apply the same audience data used to create their SmartAudio broadcast radio campaigns to inform their digital marketing efforts by letting businesses target audiences on mobile devices, the Internet and smart speakers via iHeartRadio, the all-in-one digital music, podcast and live streaming radio service.

In addition, iHeartMedia’s ad tech platform will enable brands to apply the same targeting developed for broadcast radio and iHeartRadio to the biggest digital platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The SmartAudio Unlimited product is ideal for brands focused on retargeting customers and multi-touch and sequential messages that allow them to personalize and tell their story.

The SmartAudio COVID Recovery program is the latest addition to iHeartMedia’s SmartAudio solutions and will be available to advertisers and partners beginning today.