More people than ever in the US are spending time with digital audio, leading to growing advertising opportunities. To properly communicate with audiences, advertisers should make sure the right creatives are used with the right audio formats. Otherwise, they run the risk of annoying or alienating their audiences.

Media and entertainment companies are increasing their digital ad spend at a greater rate than other verticals as revenues surge in the music and film industries and digital video and gaming platforms try to outcompete one another.

The podcasting industry continues to explode with potential for advertisers, and the numbers show it: Marketers spent $479 million on podcast ads in 2018, and podcast advertising revenues are projected to surpass $1 billion by 2021, according to figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC.

Podcasts still have a ways to go before catching up with traditional radio. As marketers try to reach the growing audience of digital audio listeners, podcasts stand out in a few key ways.

Netflix is still the king of streaming, but will its subscription-based model be able to sustain the business as cheaper, ad-supported platforms enter the streaming space?

Privacy laws and data scandals have thrust third-party data in the spotlight. In the meantime, most marketers continue to rely on data they obtain from other firms.

While adoption of multichannel attribution models is increasing, the growth rate has slowed. eMarketer lowered its 2018 multichannel attribution adoption estimates from 62.0% to 54.0%.

The podcast ad market is taking off as people increasingly tune in. But large brand advertisers still want better measurement and analytics before they really buy in.

The IAB Tech Lab will likely release its spec for ads.cert later this year. This tool—a complement to the previous IAB Tech Lab initiative ads.txt—will give marketers a deeper check against unauthorized ad selling. Confused already? Here’s a primer of what you need to know.

In a survey of 250 US B2B sales and marketing professionals, about four in 10 respondents said they are novices or beginners when it comes to integrating data into their CRM systems.

Jim Butler, co-chair of the IAB Tech Lab OpenRTB Working Group, spoke about how a new spec will bring more clarity to programmatic bidding.

Programmatic audio is growing, but it is hampered by a lack of scale, disagreement over ad specs and reluctance from ad buying platforms to build audio-specific features.