Adthos founder explains how his platform will change the way ads are broadcast on radio

Content from Adthos


The Adthos ad server was launched, globally, less than two weeks ago and has already generated thousands of downloads across the planet. 

It is the brain child of Raoul Wedel, who is the founder of Wedel Software which produces one of the most popular traffic scheduling systems in the world. 

It’s been touted as a breakthrough in radio broadcasting. But is it? 

Let’s find out as Raoul Wedel speaks with Peter Saxon about his latest venture.            

radioinfo: Can you explain, in a nutshell, exactly what Adthos does and how it will benefit the radio industry?

Wedel: The current release is the first release of the platform. The Adthos Ad Server is a small lightweight app that replaces the playout of commercial breaks of your current automation system. So your current system plays everything except the commercial breaks. By doing so, it takes away the need for setting up and maintaining about a dozen integrations that stations otherwise would have to manage.

It will benefit the industry by providing all radio stations with a service that is agnostic to any automation system and is free to use. 

radioinfo: What about advertisers… can they use Adthos to schedule ads from their own desk?

Wedel: Without commenting on future releases, the platform currently allows radio stations to provide their advertisers and agencies a login to the platform where they can view their schedules being reconciled in real time and listen to an air check of the audio. 

radioinfo: I understand that The Adthos Ad Server has been two years in the making and involving more than 100 people at 19 companies in 11 countries. Without naming all 100 of the people, can you tell us who some of those companies are and what countries are involved?

Wedel: To start in your part of the world, big data consultants from Sydney. Cloud Storage consultants from The Netherlands. Documentation writers and testers in India. Electronics an acoustic engineers in Germany. Data cleansing factories in Pakistan. Developers in Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, The Netherlands and the US. 
Since we had to test compatibility with most Automation system, Console System and Traffic and Billing providers without knowing companies like Telos, Wheatstone, DHD, RCS and Wideorbit have contributed to the project.

radioinfo: What did those companies bring to the Adthos project?

Wedel: It’s a multi-disciplined project that brings together many facets of the tech stack of most radio stations. From audio engineering and processing to traffic logs, automation systems, big data and AI.

radioinfo: I notice Triton is listed on the Adthos website. Wouldn’t they be a competitor of yours?

Wedel: No, the platform is designed to be open and platform agnostic to any automation, traffic or streaming provider. We integrate well with Triton or Adswizz. One of the use cases we had in mind is that we would like to be able to provide the CBRA (Check) stations the best possible integration that is easy to use and set up between their terrestrial radio ad playout and their online ad playout. 

 

 
radioinfo: What were some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome to make Adthos work?

Wedel: On a personal level having people lose family members during the various lockdowns or having to work at home with large families and small kids. On a technical level most innovative (and patent pending) our way of providing frame accurate replacement of audio in streams.

radioinfo: The marketing material says that the Adthos app costs nothing for radio stations to download. So, who pays? What’s the business model?

Wedel: The ad server is the foundation for future innovations and releases. Our business model is based on those future releases. Much like when you get a free dropbox account up to a certain storage limit. But in the end it is about innovation and giving radio stations the tools to compete with the other big tech players. If radio (and audio) wins, we will win and we will all benefit. 

radioinfo: I know it’s been little more than a week since you launched Adthos… what’s been the take-up so far?

Wedel: We’ve had massive interest in the platform and had to limit new registrations. We’ve had most major groups in the world interested. Of course the bigger groups move faster but we expect to have at least 2.500 stations on the platform before the end of the year. 

radioinfo: The website, which has a very simple URL – www.Adthos.com, suggests that this is only the beginning and that there’s a lot more to come. Can you at least give us a hint at what’s coming?

Wedel: Programmatic or self-service buying has never been successful for radio just because no one was able to provide a platform agnostic way to integrate and run it. We feel we have built the solution and -putting our money where our mouth is- gave it away for free.

For our next release we feel that we are in a technology race and are on the frontier of new technologies. Until now we have not seen anyone in our rear-view mirror. We will have a world’s first in advertising that we feel will change audio advertising. We will get the news out in a month or so and are scheduled to release after the northern summer for our second part.


Peter Saxon

 

 


 


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