Track 2: Dynamic Audio Ads – The New Era of Personalisation

More and more of the public are streaming audio, with the average British consumer listening to 93 minutes of audio a day in 2025 (up by 29% vs 2020)¹. With 40.1M digital audio listeners in the UK¹, the majority of audio consumption is taking place while people are engaged in activities where traditional visual media cannot reach them².

Audio aligns seamlessly with these activities, whether it is radio as our car companion on the morning commute or using on-demand music to change our mood. It is in these moments that audio can trigger emotional intensity and memory - driving engagement and representing a unique opportunity for brands to connect with consumers.

With brands scaling their campaigns across multiple touchpoints throughout the consumers day, advertisers are leaning on dynamic creative and consumers are craving more personalisation. With 23% of 16-34 year olds wanting to have messages specific to their shopping or browsing habits³, Audio advertising should be no stranger to dynamic personalisation and that is the case today. Audio creative doesn’t just interrupt content streams—it actively adapts to listeners in real time, delivering greater relevance, stronger campaign performance, and memorable experiences.

Why Dynamic Creative Matters in Audio

Audio ads with dynamic creative optimization are designed to respond to a listener’s context. Whether it’s their location, current time, mood, or even weather conditions, every play can feel tailor-made. With technology now powering decisions at scale, executions can seamlessly weave together contextual cues—like a rainy morning in Manchester or a sunny commute in London—with creative elements that match that moment.

But context is just the tip of the iceberg. Modern audio ads can personalise to a user's:

• Demographics – Targeting by age, gender, occupation, and more delivers messages that truly resonate.
• Music Tastes – Ads can reflect or reference genres or moods currently streaming for added relevance.
• Geolocation – Promoting local offers or events based on where a user is listening.
• Weather & Environment – Adjusting creative to match real-world conditions, boosting emotional connection.

This real-time tailoring: updating the script, swapping offers and even changing the voice, commands attention. Tailored audio stands out from static messaging, keeps listeners engaged longer, and encourages more active brand responses.

Personalisation That Resonates

Personalised ads that react to listeners’ current experiences have a profound effect on engagement and ad recall. When an audio message reflects what a user is feeling, doing, or anticipating, it’s naturally more memorable. Contextually personalised ads embody empathy: matching energy with the moment for higher impact.

The Democratisation of Dynamic Audio: AI Voices vs. Voice Actors

Traditionally, producing tailored audio meant working with voice actors and managing complex recording schedules—a costly and time-intensive process. Now, AI-synthetic voices are unlocking access for brands of all sizes. Brands can select from a growing roster of lifelike voices, tweak scripts, and deploy thousands of creative variants in far less time and at a fraction of the cost. This opens the doors for wider experimentation, local market relevance, and adaptation at speed.

However, it’s not just about scale. AI-synthetic voices enable rapid script decisioning and version control, giving brands agility. Voice actors still play a vital role in premium narratives and human storytelling, but for brands focused on efficiency, cost, and speed⁴, synthetics are a game-changer. As tech companies continue to invest in AI, synthetic voices are continuously improving to the point where it becomes harder to recognise an actor vs. AI and this investment will only continually drive down cost and improve efficiency for brands to leverage AI for audio production.

Driving Creative Personalisation at Scale

The rise of dynamic audio is turbocharged by platforms offering automated creative personalisation and data-driven script decisioning. These capabilities depend on robust data pipelines—using not only audio context but also publisher first-party data. With platform integration, marketers can automate the selection, assembly, and delivery of personalized audio messages across channels and devices, making scalable DCO a reality.

The Future: Interactive Audio and Conversational Formats

Looking ahead, smart speakers and voice assistants are reshaping how audiences interact with audio. Users are engaging in hands-free, voice-powered routines—opening new territory for interactive, conversational audio ads.

Brands can now craft dynamic formats that not only respond to listener input but guide a two-way dialogue, inviting participation or customizing offers in real time. Creative teams are building for this future, investing in advanced voice intent detection, interactivity frameworks, and creative automation that bring even more nuance to every interaction.

Final Thoughts

The era of static audio is rapidly fading. Dynamic creative is poised to dominate, and brands and listeners are benefitting from ads that are contextually aware, personally relevant, and designed for interaction. 

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Sources:

¹EMARKETER Forcecast 2024.

²IAB, Digital Audio Buyer’s Guide, Nielsen Research

³DMA, Customer Engagement Future Trends, 2024

⁴The Drum, Listen up: why advertisers need to switch on to personalized audio ads, 2024

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