Digital audio is the missing channel in the agency media mix

Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own.

Smaller businesses have smaller marketing budgets, that is, if they have any marketing strategy at all. Often marketing at this scale involves things like organic SEO from internally created content, home-grown social feeds and the occasional ad, influencer campaign or guerrilla marketing promotion.

As digital tools have improved, though, more and more marketing channels have opened up for smaller enterprises and agencies to utilize in their marketing, including audio advertising. Let’s look at how digital audio complements the existing small business and agency media mix and how companies can integrate it into their strategies and budgets. 

The way companies promote themselves online is always changing. One thing is consistent, though. There are a lot more pieces in the modern media puzzle than there were in the past.

30 years ago, a marketing push might include some television ads, radio ads, direct mail or maybe a local billboard. There were options, just not a lot of them, and most of them were expensive. Now, digital media channels include a wide variety of online options:

• Paid search helps businesses target consumers who might be in their target audience by paying for ad placement for search-engine keyword queries.
• Paid social is similar to paid search, but the sponsored ads are placed across social platforms. Again, these target user feeds based on things like characteristics, behaviors and interests.
• The programmatic display category is another pay-for-placement approach to ads that places visual promotions across ad slots on websites, apps and various publishers.
• Connected TV is another option that has come in the wake of the rise of streaming television. It consists of ads delivered through internet-connected smart TVs and devices and is the closes to traditional cable television ads.
• Online video is like programmatic display, but it consists of video advertisements that are served across websites, social platforms and streaming environments that specialize in video content.
• SEO content is an organic approach to digital channels that uses high-quality, optimized content on owned domains to bring traffic to a brand’s website and connected assets.
• GEO content is similar to SEO and contains content optimized for AI-related search queries.

There are many other options, but no matter how many channels you define or how you list them, there is one thing missing from this list: audio. In the early years of digital advertising, the focus was on visuals, from plain text to colorful videos. 

Audible elements were involved at times, but pure audio advertising remained cubbyholed. Radio was still a package deal option for a long time, one that was hard to afford without a larger marketing budget. Podcasting starting to digitize the audio approach, but again, early podcasters worked in package deals, with advertisers sponsoring full episodes and seasons of a show.

Over time, technology has broken down those barriers. Now, there are platforms that have fractionalized the audio advertising process, the same way Google made paid search available for nearly any budget size. These tools are in place and easily available now, which has put the ball back in the court of small businesses and agencies.

In 2026, agency and business owners working with limited budgets can access modern tools to add digital audio to their media mix. This is one of the biggest shifts as digital audio has become more available. Radio and podcast packages used to only be as tailored as a show’s viewership. 

If a podcast was about home improvement, you might be able to list a home service company, but what if that company only operated out of Toledo, Ohio and a podcast had a national listener base? You might hit a few targeted audience members, but the vast majority would live outside of the brand’s service area.

New digital audio tools have made it much easier to target ads through audience segments that are specific to a brand’s ideal consumer. The digital ad platform AudioGo, for instance, gives ad buyers precision targeting options. These start with listening genres but go further by including zip codes, personal interests, the time of day when people listen, and even hundreds of behavioral preferences. It can also generate ads for free using AI and synthetic voice overs starting at $250.

Tools continue to get smarter and have gotten increasingly better at helping reduce wasted spend.

The way you create each campaign should be specific to each channel. An SEO campaign, for instance, should have content that is keyword optimized, includes links and matches technical SEO specifications on the back end. 

Similarly, an audio campaign should have a few key parts. The primary one is the ad itself. Fortunately, there are many tools that can help with this. AI tools can intake things like product spec sheets and then help you create scripts that match marketing campaign goals.

You can record ads yourself. If needed, hire professional actors through a contractor site. Many tools even let you create synthetic ads that are a strong alternative to real voice acting.

You also want to consider your budget (more in a minute) and your schedule. When do you want your campaign to start and end? Who are you targeting during that time? This is the daunting part for most companies. But again, the limited package prices of the past are no longer your only option. 

The one thing you don’t want to do is spend money without a budget. Decide what you can afford and then set that initial budget. But don’t stop there. Make sure to measure the results…If you spend money on any marketing initiative without clear metrics in place, it’s hard to know if it worked. When it comes to digital audio, track key marketing metrics, like impressions, unique reach (distinct listeners) and completion rate (who listens to the full ad?). 

You can also look at frequency rates to see how many people were exposed to an ad before someone fully listened. There are even factors like clicks on companion banner ads (a lot of audio now has visual components, like dedicated episode landing pages and ads in streaming platforms). 

Dialed-in numbers can help you decide if the money you spent on a campaign was worth the results. If it isn’t, you can retool, adjust audiences and improve your results over time.

Getting digital audio in your marketing mix

Digital audio has caught up with the times. It is fractionalized, targeted and content creation is low-lift at this point, at least as low-lift as any other marketing channel. Audio ads can fit nicely into a marketing strategy, but it needs to be a priority first. 

Marketing leaders who take the time to define audiences, set digital audio budgets and launch audio campaigns can start to measure the results and see how it compares to the other channels they’re using. Based on the number of people listening to audio (228 million Americans alone in 2025), chances are they’ll find success over time.