Rami M. Zeidan,

Vice-president of partnerships at Anghami, says audio has always been powerful, and artificial intelligence on digital platforms is amplifying that strength

memory and has higher sound quality. Perhaps most importantly, music is now personalised through algorithms that can select the songs you love from a pool of 30,000,00. Hooray AI!

Anghami, founded in 2012, is an on-demand streaming service with a library of more than 30 million songs, covering Arabic, English, and international music from all over the world. This is curated into thousands of playlists by genre, moods and activities, allowing Anghami to create data based on time of day when a user is playing music, what genre are they playing, what mood they are in and what they are doing at the time.

They say audio is the new screen. Global research done by Neuroscience and Pandora found that 47 per cent of the new generation consumes content with their earbuds on for more than four hours a day. Doing homework, texting, eating, emailing, playing video games and swiping up and down their social feeds. So how can brands benefit from this opportunity to connect with their audience in a highly passionate environment, and communicate with that audience at the right time of day, in the right tone, to coincide with the appropriate moment or activity?

Various brands have done this since 2017. Various studies have been done to measure memorability, captivity, effectiveness on brand KPIs and acceptance from the marketing community.

Audio ads are 49 per cent more memorable than broadcast radio ads, 36 per cent more memorable than TV ads and 29 per cent more memorable than mobile video. 59 per cent of correspondents in the survey were more likely to remember the slogan of a campaign, with 10 per cent higher recall of advertising and brand awareness.

In a controlled group, audio’s ads on average double purchase intent, brand favourability and brand awareness, and this goes up to a multiplier of 6.1 for brands planning audio ad creatives for digital audio.

Digital audio today is an opportunity; it is memorable, emotional, captive, connecting, highly targeted and native by nature, not by placement. Rami M. Zeidan is vice-president of partnerships at Anghami