Enhance Your Audio Advertising Campaign With Rich Media

One of the biggest draws of audio content is its audience engagement. Listeners are just more in tune with the audio-first creators they follow than other media. It’s why audio ads receive more active audio attention compared to video, TV, social, and display. 

So what if you could combine that deep emotional engagement with tangible physical engagement? You can—by adding rich media to your audio advertising campaign. The results are compelling, with measurable lifts in brand familiarity, online ad awareness, and consideration intent.

What Is Rich Media?

Rich media is a broad category that includes any digital ad that encourages engagement beyond a static image or text and often features interactive elements and dynamic design features.

These dynamic components create an immersive brand experience by adding visual and interactive touchpoints to your campaign. Interactive and multi-sensory experiences tell a more memorable story because they require the user to play a small part in it.

What Are the Benefits of Rich Media?

Enhanced Engagement and Recall

Rich media ads transform passive listeners into active participants. Whether through interactive carousels, animated interstitials, or responsive display elements, these engaging formats create meaningful connections during listening sessions, driving higher interaction rates and better brand perception.

Adding rich media to your audio advertising campaign creates a multi-sensory experience that reinforces your message and drives even deeper attention. In one recent study, audio ads received 50% more audience attention than benchmarks across video, TV, social, and display. And when you combine them with engaging media that appears at moments of interaction, it’s even more powerful.

Memorable User Experience

Rich media creates an immersive brand experience by adding visual and interactive elements to your campaign. When listeners interact with your rich media ads, they become active participants in your brand story, leading to stronger brand connections and better recall.

Call-to-Action Support

With rich media ads, you give your audiences an easy way to take the next step. You can create interactive elements that encourage action, whether that's visiting a landing page, using a coupon code, or going to an online store.

Our advertisers can even insert shoppable rich media ads into their digital audio advertising campaigns. One second, listeners are bopping to their favorite tune, and the next, they can check out on your e-commerce platform.

Is Rich Media Right for Me and My Campaign?

Rich media advertising maximizes the impact of an audio advertising campaign. Imagine your audio ad begins playing through a pair of headphones. The listener pulls out their phone, and they are met with your rich media placement. Now, they’re having a multi-sensory experience that reinforces your brand’s audio message—all while they’re actively engaging with their device.

Adding display and video ads to audio campaigns drives measurable results:

Brand Awareness

• +7.7% for financial services brands

• +5% for retail brands

Purchase Intent

• +3.3% for financial services brands

• +2.1% for retail brands

• +6.1% for travel and entertainment brands

The Best Practices for Implementing Rich Media

Know the User Experience

Before you can expect your audience to interact with an ad, you should understand the digital and the physical environment in which they interact.

Listeners engage with streaming audio across all screen shapes and sizes, and they aren’t all listening in sterile, undistracted environments. Listeners specifically turn to streaming audio because they can take it with them throughout their day, doing chores, running errands, working, exercising, cooking, and even hosting.

SoundCloud users listen while exercising (66%), working (74%), and gaming (75%). SiriusXM users listen while running errands (55%) and in the car (86%). Users even listen to start their day, with 82% of Pandora users reporting listening while getting ready.

Understand the Technical Requirements

Rich media-enhanced campaigns don’t have to be difficult to create, especially if you have the right advertising partner. But because these ads deal in multiple media across a number of platforms, you have to pay close attention to the technical specifications. Images must be optimized to the pixel, and videos must be optimized to the millisecond.

Target the Right URL

Every rich media placement requires a secure, trackable URL, whether for direct response or retargeting purposes. Our team helps advertisers optimize their landing pages and implement tracking for maximum campaign effectiveness.

SiriusXM Media's Rich Media Solutions

Carousel

As simple as they seem, carousel ads require interaction—and interaction creates lasting memories. These visual panels allow listeners to swipe through multiple images and design elements, creating a deeper connection with your brand, especially when timed with your audio ad.

Interstitials and Animated Interstitials 

Make your audio campaign the only thing your audience sees with full-screen interstitial ads that appear when listeners launch their preferred digital audio apps. While your audio message plays through their headphones, your visual message commands their full attention.

And interstitial ads aren’t as intrusive. Listeners can easily return to their content with a simple tap, maintaining a positive user experience while ensuring your message is seen and heard.

Shoppable Ads

Inspire an entire shopping trip in your ad with shoppable rich media ads. These interactive display formats allow listeners to discover products and make purchases directly through the ad experience, creating a seamless path from audio engagement to conversion.

Reward Ads

Reward-based interactive ads give listeners access to premium features in exchange for engaging with your brand. We offer several rewarded ad formats:

• Sponsored Listening: Listeners can earn hours of uninterrupted listening by interacting with your video ads, with your brand messaging integrated throughout the reward experience.

• Video Plus: Reward listeners with access to premium features and on-demand listening when they spend time watching your video content.

• Happy Hour: Celebrate a specific time of the week by offering listeners uninterrupted listening while creating a 100% share-of-voice moment for your brand.

How an Auto Brand Leveraged Rich Media to Drive KPIs

One auto brand went all in on rich media ads in their streaming audio campaign and saw lifts across KPIs, including brand awareness, brand familiarity, favorability, and consideration intent. 

The campaign targeted parents to increase or maintain brand awareness as they considered their mid- to lower-funnel part of the purchase consideration process. 

The brand leveraged a combined audio and digital approach across all of SiriusXM Media’s relevant platforms using Streaming Everywhere, mobile video, and sponsored listening.

The results were as hoped with the following with 7+ point lifts across multiple KPIs, including:

• 6.7pts lift in brand familiarity

• 13.1pts lift in online ad awareness

• 7.3pts lift in brand favorability

• 7pts lift in consideration intent

Rich media elevates campaigns. And SiriusXM Media is the place to be for rich media solutions. Are you ready to create multi-sensory, rich media experiences for your audience? Let’s talk.

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