The measurable future of audio is already here in Brazil
Recently, IAB US (Interactive Advertising Bureau) published the study Unlocking the Power of Data-Driven Audio. The document stems from a simple observation: for a long time, audio’s ability to drive results advanced faster than the tools the market used to demonstrate them.
This mismatch consolidated a perception that still influences media plans: that audio is important for reach and branding, but hard to measure. That may have made sense in the past. Today, that reality has changed.
When the IAB speaks about audio, it is not talking only about podcasts. The study considers radio, streaming, podcasts, online radio, audio in games, and connected devices. This is an important definition for Brazil, where digital radio stations and web radios offer live environments, contextualized programming, and regional or national reach.
The main contribution of the document is not showing that audio has scale. That has already been proven. In the United States, digital audio reaches 220 million people per week, or 76% of the population aged 12 and older.
The truly important advancement lies in the ability to connect this audience to the planning, activation, and measurement systems already used by brands across other channels.
Audio has become observable.
Exposure logs, first-party data, conversion pixels, identity resolution, contextual signals, and marketing mix models make it possible to link an audio impression to site visits, app installs, sales, brand lift, ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend), and incrementality. More than knowing whether a campaign generated results, it is now possible to estimate how much of that result would not have happened without audio.
The cases presented by the IAB capture the scale of this transformation. In a campaign analyzed by The Trade Desk, audio added 25% incremental reach to a strategy that was already using CTV and out-of-home media. In another study, the audience overlap between audio streaming and TV streaming was just 1.2%. Audio delivered 75% incremental reach compared to TV streaming.
This is a particularly relevant point for Brazil. In a market where a large portion of digital investment is concentrated in the same platforms, reaching the same people again is not necessarily expanding reach. Many times, it is simply increasing frequency on an already saturated audience.
The new Podscribe Performance Benchmark Report reinforces this evolution. The study analyzes over 34 billion impressions, 98 thousand campaigns, and 700 advertisers. Although its general benchmarks primarily reflect United States campaigns, the methodologies described can already be applied internationally.
Podcast-only campaigns showed a median purchase incrementality of 23%, above the 14% observed in streaming-audio-only campaigns. According to Podscribe, podcasts continue to reach audiences that are less saturated by other digital channels.
The report also explains why promo codes and customized URLs only show part of the result. Pixel attribution captured 4.3 times more conversions than these methods. A consumer might hear an ad on their phone and buy days later on another device. Without connecting this journey, the result ends up attributed to the channel that only participated at the very end of the process.
In the retargeting tests presented by Podscribe, people who visited an advertiser’s website and later received an audio ad showed an attributed purchase rate 5.5 times higher than that observed in conventional podcast campaigns. The report itself notes that not all of this result is necessarily incremental. Even so, it shows that audio can also participate in consideration and conversion strategies.
The provocation is that we do not need to wait for this infrastructure to arrive in Brazil. It is already available.
A campaign can combine podcasts, digital radio stations, web radios, and other streaming environments. It can use dynamic insertion, targeting by context, region, time of day, or audience, frequency control, creative swapping, and exposure reports. Pixels allow tracking of visits, sign-ups, installs, and sales. Tests with exposed and unexposed control groups help calculate lift and incrementality.
Wise.com has been advertising on podcasts in Brazil for over a year, measuring results, and using the data to optimize its campaigns. It is an example of the value of an always-on strategy. Instead of evaluating audio from an isolated flight, the brand accumulates data, identifies patterns, and continuously improves how it invests.
Shell is beginning to test the impact of audio on conversions within its application. The goal is not just to launch a campaign, but to understand the channel’s contribution to a concrete business journey.
These cases represent a mindset shift. The question is no longer “does audio work?” but rather “how can we make it work better?”.
A large portion of campaigns still treats podcasts and digital radio as one-off activations. A show or station is selected, a short period is bought, and the project ends before there is time to build frequency, compare results, and learn.
This model can limit what is most valuable about audio: recurrence, context, connection, and continuity. Brands are not built on isolated flights. They are built through consistent presence.
With dynamic ads, a brand can remain always-on across a network of podcasts, digital radios, and web radios. It can update its message, test creatives, compare contexts, and optimize the campaign while it is live. Every impression generates reach, but also insights.
Making audio measurable does not mean reducing it to the last click. The role of data is not to turn every brand campaign into direct performance. It is to reveal how brand and performance connect.
In the short term, we measure conversions and efficiency. In the medium and long term, incremental reach, frequency, recall, and consideration. Instead of shutting down a campaign before it accumulates learnings, the brand builds an ongoing foundation of evidence.
The Brazilian market has the audience, inventory, technology, and conversion tools. It also has an audio environment that is still uncrowded by advertising, where brands can claim space with far more clarity than in saturated feeds and screens.
What is lacking is not technical capacity. It is turning possibility into strategy.
The discussion should no longer be whether audio can be measured. It should be why so many brands still do not maintain a continuous presence in a channel that offers attention, incremental reach, brand building, and attribution.
The IAB showed that the future of audio is data-driven. Wise.com and Shell are starting to show that, in Brazil, that future is already live on air.
By Rodrigo Tigre, co-founder and president of Ozen.fm