Interview with Cristina Pianura, founder of AudioBoost, the first Audio Native Tech Company that turns your content into podcasts
Podcasts, although with great delay, are now a reality also in Italy. The new frontier of digital content seems to be going in this direction, following a truly remarkable growth in podcast viewing. Audio Boost is the first company in Italy to offer to content creators the ability to convert articles and texts into podcasts and monetize them. Let’s know the company more closely.
What does AudioBoost offer to publishers?
AudioBoost, through a proprietary technology can convert every article or text into podcasts of the highest quality in Italian but not only. The company’s flagship services are essentially three:
Speak Up Article
Proprietary solution that converts text content into podcasts. The synthesization takes place in real time by simply placing the Player in the article-pages to synthesize them into high-quality Podcasts. The system can be easily integrated on any website, and it has a simple and responsive layout.
Audioboost A-CMS for Publisher
It is a solution offered in white blocks that includes the Speakup Article, an audio CMS where you can customize the publication of your podcasts, an analytics reporting Ideal for micropublishing, for small blogs, for the use of educational or institutional content or specific editorial services.
A-Seeding solution
It’s the Ideal solution for those who want to design a branded Podcast distribution strategy. It can be integrated with the audio controls of cars, it is a unique product of its kind that we are told more in depth by Cristina Pianura, founder, and administrator of AudioBoost.
Where? Right down here!
Read the interview with Cristina Pianura
Hi Cristina, it’s a pleasure to meet you and thank you for the time that you are dedicating to us. Tell us about AudioBoost in your own words:
Audioboost is an innovative startup launched a few months ago on the Italian market with the aim of revolutionizing the way internet sites are used, also adding the Audio dimension to the text and Video. We are Audio-First by definition, so we reinterpret every aspect of engagement with users of a site in an Audio key.
How and when was the AudioBoost idea born?
The idea that audio was a sector on which to specialize had already been present for a couple of years, it is no coincidence that our Incubator is Podcastory, led by Davide Schioppa, born two years ago as a reality specialized in Branded Audio Content. On its more technological version-linked to the text-to-speech – we began to think at the beginning of 2021 outlining the list of essential characteristics and the technical and market conditions necessary to make the project work.
How long did it take to shape the project?
We reasoned by step: with the development team we deepened the technical feasibility of the idea since the goal was to go on the market with a highly competitive product. At that point we decided with Davide not to delay because time-to-market in MarkTech is fundamental: This is how Audioboost was born with the aim of validating in 6 months the business model and the technological solution we had developed in house. Arriving at the end of the year we can say that the publishing market has welcomed our product and the business lines imagined are correct. There is the limit of current market sizing, but early adopters need to be patient before seeing revenue numbers increasing.
Tell us more about AudioBoost products
The product in fact is one but offered in different ways: substantially free for web publishers interested in advertising remuneration. In those cases where they are interested in the editorial service but without advertising inside the offer is in the form of a subscription. Being able to manage two markets and such different needs has imposed an extreme flexibility in the customization of the features of the Suite Speakup Article, the commercial name of our product, such that they seem almost different products and technologies.
According to you, why did Podcasts find it so hard to get to our country?
We must distinguish the plans: spontaneous production by users and its consumption have grown in recent years in proportion to the availability of technologies and consumption has followed growth rates in line with other countries, especially the production and listening of music content. The production of original content, not musical but highly qualitative, needs a ready-made reference market. This has emerged over the last 18 months without a doubt. What was missing, not only in Italy, was a low-cost production model remunerated by advertising. This is where we have positioned our Speakup Article, which allows us to evolve in line with the evolution of the advertising market by guaranteeing a revenue stream to publishers. With Audioboost there are conditions to make the leap, exactly as happened 10 years ago with native Video, or Widget Recommendation.
How did you launch your brand?
We opted for a very BTB industry communication. Using social media and the specialized press. But the real promotion is done by publishers who gradually get on board. Having the product installed on some publishers has allowed us to gain increasing trust.
What about the future?
A tech company never stops developing, we have a very long road map of new things and improvements to apply related to the distribution and sharing of podcasts generated with the Speakup Article, and the whole system of semantic analysis based on the principles of Artificial Intelligence and Neuronal language Program applied in an advertising key. To this we have added a more commercial development: we will launch in January 2022 thanks to a partnership with an American company, a revolutionary product in the audio advertising sector. I can only go into details then. We are currently under disclosure.
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