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Digital Audio Ad Revenues Shot Up 39% In 2017

Digital audio ad revenue scaled new heights in 2017, surging 39% to $1.6 billion from $1.1 billion in 2016, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. While it accounts for only a small fraction of digital ad dollars, that eye-popping growth makes audio the fastest growing ad unit in the digital universe.

Digital audio grew its share of the total online ad pie to 1.8% in 2017, up from 1.6% in 2016. While that may seem like only a drop in the overflowing digital ad bucket, keep in mind that the IAB only recently began to report ad spend for online audio because it was previously too small.

“With increases in connectivity and speaker devices in many homes, we’re seeing audio growing at a very fast rate,” said David Silverman, partner at PwC, which prepared the 2017 report for the IAB. “With many of those some trends continuing, such as the proliferation of speaker devices, we would expect it to be a growth category in the near future as well.”


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