Audio Advertising Wants to Be More Than Awareness. Can It Finally Prove ROI?

Audio advertising has long occupied a unique place in marketing. 

Advertisers trust it to build awareness, tell stories, and create memorable brand experiences. Radio, podcasts, and music streaming platforms have demonstrated for decades that sound can capture attention and influence consumer perception in ways many visual formats struggle to replicate. 

Yet despite those strengths, audio has often remained outside the performance marketing conversation. While marketers can easily measure clicks, conversions, and return on ad spend across social media, search, and display advertising, audio has historically struggled to offer the same level of accountability. 

As brands face increasing pressure to justify every marketing dollar, the expectations surrounding audio are changing. The industry is now being asked to do more than simply generate awareness. It is being asked to prove outcomes. 

Mark Lavin, Founder and CEO of Consumable, believes the challenge is more than creativity. It is an infrastructure. 

In this conversation with Ad Pulse, Lavin discusses why audio has historically struggled with attribution. How mobile apps are creating entirely new inventory opportunities, and why he believes the next era of audio advertising will be defined by infrastructure rather than format.

Why has audio advertising traditionally struggled with attribution and performance measurement?

Traditional audio has been stuck between two structural problems. 

Radio reaches massive audiences, but advertisers have very little visibility into who they reach, how often they reach them, or what happens after exposure. Brands could buy reach, but couldn’t reliably connect it to business outcomes. 

Digital audio improved some of those limitations but introduced new constraints.

“Radio reaches massive audiences, but advertisers have almost no visibility into who they reached, how often, or what happened afterward,” says Lavin. “Digital audio solved some of that, but the majority of programmatic audio supply sits inside walled gardens like Spotify and Pandora, where inventory is inherently constrained.” 

According to Lavin, advertisers often run into frequency limits within those ecosystems while still struggling to achieve a broader scale. As a result, large portions of budgets can remain unspent because there simply isn’t enough inventory available. 

“We looked at that and saw a supply problem and a new opportunity for the evolution of audio,” he says. 

The result is that audio has been perceived for years as a strong awareness medium but a weak performance channel. Marketers understood its ability to capture attention but lacked the infrastructure required to connect exposure to outcomes. 

Why do many brands still treat audio primarily as an upper-funnel awareness channel?

According to Lavin, the perception comes from history. 

For decades, audio value was measured through audience size, recall studies, and brand awareness metrics. Marketers grew accustomed to thinking of audio as a medium that influenced perception rather than one that could directly drive action. 

That mindset persists today. 

“Most marketers think of audio as a top-of-funnel awareness channel confined to music streaming and podcasts,” says Lavin. “That perception is outdated on both counts.” 

He argues that marketers are still planning around what audio used to be rather than what it is becoming. 

The first misconception is that audio inventory exists primarily within streaming services and podcasts. The second is that audio cannot function as a measurable performance channel. 

“The metric isn’t wrong; the infrastructure hasn’t been there,” he says. “Audio has always been strong at driving attention and recall. Now, with the right infrastructure, advertisers can measure whether that attention actually drove someone to convert, purchase, or take a specific action.” 

For Lavin, the industry’s challenge is not convincing marketers that audio captures attention. The challenge is proving that attention can now be measured against business outcomes. 

Why mobile apps have become the next big growth opportunity for audio

Lavin says that the answer lies in both scale and technology. 

“There are hundreds of thousands of mobile apps where people are actively engaged, where the digital infrastructure for addressability and attribution already exists.” 

Rather than limiting audio to music streaming and podcast platforms, Consumable focuses on environments such as gaming, fitness, sports, retail, utilities, and dating. 

These environments already support the targeting, measurement, and attribution systems marketers use elsewhere in digital advertising.

“We saw the opportunity to bring audio into them,” Lavin explains. 

He estimates that Consumable’s network spans thousands of curated apps, reaches more than 220 million users in the United States, and serves more than 5,000 advertisers. 

More importantly, he sees this inventory as an additive rather than competitive. 

“We estimate the platform has expanded the total audio advertising market by billions,” he says. “That’s net-new supply and net-new reach that didn’t exist in audio before, not budget shifting from one channel to another.” 

For marketers seeking scale, that distinction matters. Rather than competing for the same inventory inside established audio platforms, in-app audio introduces entirely new environments where brands can connect with audiences. 

What counts as attention in audio advertising today?

Attention has become one of the industry’s most discussed metrics, but Lavin believes not all attention looks the same. 

Podcast listeners, for example, actively choose content they care about. They select a show, commit to listening, and often build trust with hosts over time. 

“That self-selection is a powerful attention signal even when someone is folding laundry or commuting,” he says. 

Radio and streaming environments operate differently. Listeners may choose a station or playlist, but engagement levels can fluctuate as people move in and out of listening sessions. 

In-app audio introduces another model entirely. 

“The user is actively engaged with an app, leaned in, and their own behavior within the app triggers the audio experience,” says Lavin. 

This distinction is important because attention is increasingly tied to measurable engagement signals. Completion rates, listen-through rates, view-through rates, and duration metrics all provide indicators of how users interact with advertising. 

Consumable’s Visual Audio format, according to Lavin, generates completion rates of approximately 92 percent because advertisements are delivered during moments when users are already actively engaged with an application. 

“Audio as a medium commands real attention,” he says. “The question has always been whether you could measure it with the same rigor as digital and video.” 

One of the most interesting ideas you discuss is Visual Audio. What exactly does that mean?

Lavin believes many people misunderstand how consumers engage with audio on their phones. 

“We think the term ambient audio understates what’s happening in these environments,” he says. 

Someone checking weather updates is in a very different mindset than someone playing a competitive game, completing a workout, or browsing a retail app. These are active, screen-in-hand experiences rather than passive listening environments. 

Visual Audio combines audio messaging with immersive visual creative elements that appear on screen during those moments. 

“The user is engaged with the app, the screen is right there, and the ad shows up at a natural transition point,” Lavin explains. 

Research from organizations such as System1 and Radiocentre has highlighted the role storytelling plays in creating emotional engagement and memory formation. Lavin believes combining audio storytelling with visual reinforcement strengthens those effects. 

“The combination of sight, sound, and active participation drives stronger emotional response and recall than lean-back audio or static display,” he says. 

As privacy concerns continue to grow, how does Consumable ensure audio advertising feels immersive rather than invasive?

The answer comes down to relevance, timing, and transparency. 

“Whether an ad feels immersive or invasive comes down to relevance, timing, and transparency,” Lavin says. 

Advertisements are delivered within specific app categories where contextual relevance already exists. A fitness-related product appearing within a workout application, or a sports betting brand within a sports environment, feels more natural than random placement.

Timing also matters. 

Ads are delivered during natural transitions such as between game levels, after completing tasks, or during content-loading moments rather than interrupting users during key activities. 

On privacy, Lavin believes the industry is moving toward identity and measurement systems that rely less on third-party cookies and deprecated identifiers. 

“Advertisers get the targeting and measurement they need while the user experience stays clean,” he says. 

What metrics should marketers focus on beyond impressions?

According to Lavin, impressions are only the starting point. 

“The metrics that matter start with engagement quality,” he says. 

Completion rates, listen-through rates, view-through duration, and unduplicated reach all provide stronger indicators of advertising effectiveness. 

However, he argues that true performance measurement goes much further. 

“What makes audio a true performance channel is the ability to connect that engagement to business outcomes.” 

That includes metrics such as conversions, customer acquisition costs, incremental lift, and return on ad spend. 

For years, audio advertising excelled at creating attention but struggled to connect attention to action. Lavin believes that the gap is beginning to close. 

What will define successful audio advertising over the next few years?

While much of the marketing industry remains focused on artificial intelligence and creative innovation, Lavin believes infrastructure will ultimately define the next chapter of audio advertising.

“You can’t measure what you can’t reach, and you can’t understand listener behavior in environments that don’t have the pipes to capture it,” he says.

As audio expands into applications, connected television, retail environments, and other digital experiences, he expects new advertising formats and measurement capabilities to emerge alongside it.

“The companies that will define the next era of audio are the ones building infrastructure that enables audio to work in new places across the internet.”

For marketers, that may be the most important takeaway. 

Audio advertising has spent decades proving that people listen. The industry’s next challenge is proving what happens after they do.