ART19 Releases Inventory Management and Forecasting Platform

Oakland CA, USA—ART19 announces a new Inventory Management and Forecasting Platform that allows ad sellers and campaign managers to forecast and manage dynamic ad inventory across podcast catalogs, including new and old episodes. These features address one of the biggest pain points in the podcast industry, opening up untapped revenue streams, and providing publishers with long-overdue professional ad tech tools.

On June 16, 2020, ART19 announced its launch of industry-leading inventory management and forecasting tools to address one of the biggest needs of its customers. While inventory analytics tools are common in the rest of digital media, their absence in the podcasting space has led to inaccurate and incomplete understandings of podcast inventory to date, leaving money on the table if inventory is undersold, and frustrating clients when impression goals are not met. ART19’s new Inventory Management Platform addresses these pain points.

“For as long as we’ve been in business, our network customers have been clamoring for better inventory management and forecasting tools,” said Sean Carr, Founder and CEO of ART19. “The number of variables that go into doing this properly, however, presented a monumental challenge. This release has been in the making for two years.”

Carr continued: “Now you can finally sell the right amount of ad space and know whether your campaigns are likely to over or underdeliver. That means better optimization, happier clients, and higher revenue. We’re proud to push audio ad tech to catch up to other industries with professional tools.”

The Inventory Management and Forecasting Platform is a consolidated system that includes forecasting episode downloads and displaying available ad inventory. The platform considers historical show data, along with time of day, day of week, and seasonality, among other data points. For shows with little historical data, the ART19 Data Team has developed lookalike models to help create an initial predictive structure, until the forecast can be driven by the show’s own accrued data.

The platform leverages significant computing firepower to repeatedly simulate 15 months of listening across entire network catalogs. Forecasts are continuously updated to reflect the latest sales and ad trafficking settings. This allows users to understand how ads will be distributed, even when multiple campaigns target the same shows. Moreover, there are multiple filtering capabilities to breakdown available inventory — for example, by show, episode, or ad position — allowing a seller to immediately ascertain what’s available to meet an advertiser’s needs.

“ART19’s Inventory Management is a single, clean place that houses all of our ad inventory — it’s simply a game-changer,” said Hernan Lopez, the CEO of Wondery.

Future plans for the Inventory Management Platform include an integrated Order Management System (OMS) and API support. The OMS will be one centralized place for all of the information from Sales and Ad Ops, including campaigns, targets, goals, avails, and more. It will also enable IO generation and the ability to place holds. API capabilities will not only support the ingestion of orders from a CRM but also export of IOs to external accounting platforms.

The Inventory Management and Forecasting Platform is currently available to select customers at this time. To learn more, please contact hello@art19.com.

About ART19

ART19’s leading audio platform provides cutting-edge tools for on-demand hosting, distribution, ad serving, and audience measurement. At the intersection of publishers and advertisers, the company powers hundreds of millions of podcast downloads every month for the industry’s largest shows. ART19 enables publishers to manage all content and ad operations in one place, offering best-in-class targeting capabilities, seamless integration with listening platforms and a flexible infrastructure to continuously enhance revenue opportunities for its clients. ART19 equips advertisers with services to reach audiences through smart targeting and custom ad creative capabilities.