Traditional audio marketing often focuses on reach and frequency however, brands like Spotify and Pandora are shaking up engagement with interactive, or dialogue ads.

An interactive voice ad, is a voice-enabled ad that prompts the consumer to engage directly with the advertisement using their own voice.

Interactive voice ads allow the consumer to offer affirmative, or negative responses, which the ad has the capacity to recognise and respond to – a little like a real-life conversation.

For example, a local cafe might run an audio ad that asks if you are interested in jumping the queue to beat the rush tomorrow morning? The ad then turns on your device microphone to listen for your response. If you say, “no, I don’t like coffee,” the ad thanks you and returns to the content. Genius or creepy? We’ll let you decide.

Another benefit of interactive voice ads is the fact that people’s responses allow for brand feedback. Unlike traditional radio spots, interactive voice ads allow brands to track engagement i.e. positive responses, or negative responses.

Conversational marketing is also emerging in video, delivering a similar user experience and the data is rapidly evolving to more accurately measure things like age, gender, and even consumer mood.

So will we see the end of ads that talk at people, and instead talk to people?