People are always on the go. Whether they’re driving, cooking, exercising or going about any number of other activities at any given time, their hands and eyes are too busy to read.
Publishers are aware of this trend and have capitalized on the mobile audience market. Listeners now have at their fingertips a new and improved alternative that tailors to them when it comes to reading — or rather hearing — articles.
Welcome to the era of information, commodity and content development.
Newspapers faced a challenge when blogs became mainstream. And now, radio seems to be approaching a similar challenge: spoken articles. Music mobile applications like Pandora, Songza, Spotify and others have taken over a large chunk of music radio stations’ market, but the news audience remained somewhat untouched. Mobile apps and browser extensions have offered text-to-speech services for some time now; however, the voice can sound somewhat robotic. Even though the voice quality of these services has greatly improved, it still lacks human emotion.
Facing this roadblock, companies have started to hire voiceover actors to create spoken versions of their articles and publish them through (mainly) mobile apps. Umano, available for both Android and iPhone platforms, is an app that’s leading the industry in this field. With over 1.5 million users, they have partnered with Forbes, Mashable, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, New York Times, The Atlantic and many other blogs to offer a wide variety of spoken articles. And with Google and Apple announcing that they’re launching a device integrated in automobiles, radio stations are in for it this time.
Besides allowing listeners to reach their content in a new and handy way, Umano has three other major advantages:
- Convenience. Not only can you use it on the go, listeners spend an average of 40 minutes per session, according to Oded Pelled, head of business operations and strategic partnerships at Umano. That’s a great number, considering people spend much less time on other apps and even less time using desktop Internet. In fact, tablet users spent an average of 24 minutes per session (about four times longer than their usual Web site visit) and Smartphone users spent an average of 13 minutes per session (about three times longer than their usual Web site visit), according to Adobe.
- Offers emotion. There is an intangible appeal to the experience. The service offers a wide variety of voice actors to not only convey the message verbally, but also portray the same emotion the writer put behind the words. It can feel somewhat intimate the way these actors speak the words. At times, it feels like a friend is telling you about something you’ve wanted to hear, a favorite subject or a story of interest. There is no doubt radio spokespersons are talented, but, as it’s been said, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.”
- Space. The Umano system holds an unlimited amount of articles in a database, allowing them to be filtered into categories and accessible on demand. Additionally, listeners can add them to their favorites, comment on them and share them across social media.
So how does this all tie in with us at Davis Advertising? Here at Davis, we’re on the forefront of the content development revolution. With our audio production studio, we have the capabilities to turn written information into engaging content that people can listen to wherever they are. With the right advertising agency, you can use information — in any form — to market your company and attract visitors to your Web site or brick and mortar.
