Kieron Donoghue, the guy behind ShareMyPlaylists, appears to be riding the Spotify wave again.
Today he launches BigAudioAds.com, a service designed to make it easier to produce a professional sounding audio ad ready for ‘broadcast’ on ad-supported music streaming services such as Spotify and the UK’s We7. Although, of course, the resulting ads can be placed anywhere. Right now Spotify is available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands, with a US launch “planned”.
In particular, the service is targeting small to medium-sized businesses who might otherwise struggle to get a high quality audio ad produced because the high costs can be prohibitive or they simply don’t know where to start. On that note, BigAudioAds’ prices start from £395 for a 20 second voice only ad, to £475 for a 50 second ad, with additional charges for things like help with the script (£45) or music (£30).
To get started, users can “audition” the voice over artists that BigAudioAds has signed up, as well browse the site’s portfolio. They then choose who they want to voice the ad and how long they want the ad to be, and then submit an order. BigAudioAds will then get back to them to work out the details, although it’s here where the business doesn’t appear to naturally scale. Sure, the service has removed quite a lot of the friction to producing an audio ad, but perhaps it could still be more automated, such as self signup or for those that know what they want, the ability to upload a script there and then.
That said, there is a control panel of sorts to help manage the process and BigAudioAds promises a turn-around of 5-7 days.