Bauer’s Simon Kilby: ‘Radio is the original influencer’

The Future of Audio and Entertainment 2025

AudioXi, Bauer Media’s new UK digital audio marketplace, will drive the future of the company’s data-led commercial offering, Bauer Media Advertising managing director Simon Kilby told an audience on Tuesday.

“AudioXi is our digital audio advertising product with humans at its centre,” Kilby stated. “Using first-party data from across our platforms, it brings together Bauer’s 150 years of experience with high-quality data for radio and podcast listeners, magazine readers, online users and, in the near future, OOH users too.”

He explained that innovation is “built into the DNA of AudioXi” and teased a number of “advancements that might transform the audio industry over the next decade”.

These include using AudioXi to capitalise on growing smart speaker audiences via new voice technology that will allow consumers to “take action on ads they’re hearing” and “connect in different ways to stations, to shows and to presenters”, according to Kilby.

AudioXi, which launched in the UK in March following Bauer’s sale of its stake in Octave to News UK, plays host to data from over 100 of Bauer’s media brands, accounting for a combined audience of 15m digital users.

“The vision is an end-to-end sales platform, easy to access and use,” said Kilby. “It will make our sales teams more effective and open audio advertising to a new category of marketers — along with allowing larger brands to be more creative with both their planning and their creative.”

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Kilby was speaking at The Future of Audio and Entertainment in London this week. During his presentation, he walked a fine line between outlining data and AI-led innovations that he believes will substantially boost Bauer’s business while reaffirming the importance of the human element.

Or, as he put it, “things that are going to change” and “things that shouldn’t change”.

Kilby warned that “the industries and businesses that bury their heads in the sand and remain steadfast about their offering will continue to face the consequences of an unrelenting digital revolution”.

To that end, AI will be at the “core” of audio innovation as Bauer further embraces the digital transition.

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“As our understanding of the listener develops and our data becomes richer, we’ll be able to utilise advancements in voice tech to bring new layers of connection between the listener and the advertiser,” Kilby teased. “Audio won’t just be able to target by daypart, location, age etc.”

He also believes generative-AI voiceover will become an increasingly powerful tool by opening up the media channel for small and medium-sized brands (SMBs) by reducing the cost of creative.

“Synthetic voices are starting to sound pretty real and improving at a dramatic rate,” said Kilby. “That opens up a lot of possibilities for creativity in advertising. Just imagine the thousands of variations each bit of copy can have without spending hours recording and editing.”

By enabling “lower barriers to entry”, Kilby argued that AI creative will emancipate SMBs from feeling “trapped into just pumping more money into Google and Meta”.

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Elevation, not replication

Despite the focus on innovation, Kilby was keen to add that audio “mustn’t forget what makes our industry special”.

“The success of audio boils down to the connection between the presenter and listener,” he explained. “Radio is the original influencer — no other media has such a special relationship with its audience.”

As Greatest Hits Radio presenter Ken Bruce asked rhetorically in a pre-recorded video: “We couldn’t have PopMaster done by an AI Ken now, could we?”

Kilby added that the closeness of the presenter-audience relationship has expanded in recent years with the growing popularity of podcasts, allowing talent to build their own communities around niche interests that can be of value to brand partners and advertisers.

“We see massive opportunities in AI, but we also have a fundamental belief: human beings are our superpower,” Kilby affirmed. “AI tools are already helping make our work more efficient and adding layers of connection on to the listening and advertising experience. But, as humans, we crave connection.

“AI can elevate, but it can’t replicate.”

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Underinvestment?

Despite commercial audio’s strong audience growth and efforts in technical innovation, during his speech Kilby also lamented the channel’s continued secondary place on media plans.

“With the weight of evidence in audio’s favour, it’s frankly to me quite shocking that it underperforms by so much when it comes to advertising investment,” he remarked.

Kilby pointed out that audio currently maintains a 7% share of UK adspend, despite the fact that it beats all other channels in terms of weekly reach, is highly trusted and “proven to generate and convert demand”.

Citing Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 study released last year, he noted audio advertising is highly effective even in the short term.

Kilby continued: “We must continue to remind adland that we are no longer just the box in the corner of the kitchen or in the car.”

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