Instreamatic, the San Francisco-based tech company that enables voice-activated audio ads, has raised $6.1 million in Series A funding. Progress Ventures led the round, joined by Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments. Instreamtic’s voice AI platform allows listeners to use the microphone built into their mobile device to interact with the commercial. Listeners receive verbal calls-to-action in streaming audio ads, such as a prompt that offers additional information on a product. They can interact with the ads by responding aloud with an affirmative response to accept the offer. A negative response will skip the ad and resume the audio content.
The company says the new funding will be used to hire additional technical and business staff; expand the capabilities of its AI voice infrastructure; and pursue more global partnerships with brands, audio and video content publishers, advertising platforms, and application developers.
Salem Media Group became one of the first radio groups to use the technology. The Christian and conservative media company has made the technology available to advertisers across its apps for live streams and on demand audio content. Other sell-side platforms that have integrated with Instreamatic include Federated Media, Pandora, app developers Jacapps and Airkast and audio companies in India, Germany, France and Japan. It has been used by brands such as IKEA, Infiniti, and HP.
“The future of advertising on audio and video platforms is in two-way brand-consumer engagement,” Instreamatic CEO Stas Tushinskiy said in a press release. “Brands are under ever-increasing pressure to make those moments meaningful while supporting strong ROI demands.
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