Published July 30
Digital audio — including platforms like Spotify, Deezer as well as traditional radio broadcasters gone digital — was France’s fastest-growing channel last year. Spend grew 22.8% year on year, double the growth rate of the country’s digital ad market, according to IAB Europe’s latest AdEx Benchmark report.
While smaller European countries like Austria and Ireland also registered growth above 20%, France’s digital audio growth rate is more than double that of the continent’s other four major economies — U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain — where growth ranged from 8.5% to 10.5%.
Podcasts and other new audio formats have seen a surge of listeners across Europe. But experts think the growth is not only coming from listeners migrating from radio to digital audio, but also from the presence of a more mature ad tech ecosystem that’s rapidly caught up with consumer behavior.
“France benefits from a historical advantage: a genuine radio culture,” said Sébastien Ruiz, head of audio and cinema at WPP Media France.
“Advertisers, media agencies and sales houses have built deep expertise in the medium over several decades. Audio is naturally embedded in media strategies. The shift from linear radio to digital audio has therefore been gradual rather than disruptive, unlike in other European markets where radio plays a less central role in media planning,” Ruiz said.
To support that transition, France’s digital audio ad tech infrastructure has made big leaps forward, becoming “dramatically easier to buy, measure and activate programmatically,” said Gautier Drouard, director of ad operations at Deezer for Business.
Tools like the new Deezer Ad Exchange have put digital audio into the same buying workflows advertisers already use for display, video and CTV. “Removing that operational friction has been just as important as expanding audience or inventory,” Drouard said. Indeed, both platforms and traditional radio sales have seen double-digit sales growth in the first half of the year, with digital audio revenue rising by 25% in the first half of 2026.
Major broadcasters, such as NRJ Global, CMA Media, M6 Unlimited and LAP News, have also invested heavily in their digital ecosystems, which creates premium, brand-safe ad inventory. “That really reassures advertisers,” said Frédéric Piot, audio director at Havas Media Network. Even among younger audiences, he said, “digital audio is no longer just a radio extension. It’s becoming a true digital channel.”
The shift to programmatic audio buying
Today, programmatic, data, performance and omnichannel teams increasingly buy audio using the same DSPs, audience strategies and optimization frameworks they already apply to display, video and CTV.
“A much broader set of teams within advertisers and agencies can now buy it — and for a wider range of objectives,” Drouard said.
These objectives go beyond traditional awareness campaigns to include more precise audience activation, geographic targeting, retargeting and measurable outcomes further down the funnel. In the first half of 2026, programmatic audio revenues grew by 51%, compared with 13% for non-programmatic audio.
That’s helped diversify advertiser demand. According to Drouard, Deezer has seen interest from retail, e-commerce, financial services, telecommunications and travel, alongside continued investment from major automotive brands, which have been the traditional major buyers of audio ads.
The state of audio measurement
Piot and Ruiz say that digital audio is hoovering up linear audio budgets from radio. But while the latest growth rate is impressive, digital audio still only accounts for less than 1.5% of the country’s digital ad spend.
One obstacle is measurement, even as marketers chase hard outcomes. “It’s still quite fragmented. Players like Médiamétrie are working on it, but until we have a clearer cross-audio view, it will remain a barrier to scaling investment,” Piot said.
The bigger issue, according to some, is that advertisers seem obstinate in wanting to “prove audio’s value through the frameworks they use to allocate digital budgets,” Drouard said.
Audio’s effectiveness is hard to capture in dashboards built around visible interactions such as clicks and views, he argued. This can lead advertisers to undervalue audio because its influence is often indirect. Someone may hear an advertisement, remember the brand and search for it or make a purchase later, potentially through another device or channel.
“If measurement only rewards the final interaction, audio’s contribution to creating that demand can disappear,” Drouard said.
To address that gap, advertisers are moving beyond impressions to metrics like attention, completion rates and incremental reach.
At the top of the funnel, that means demonstrating incremental reach, attention and brand lift. Further down, it means connecting exposure with actions such as searches, site visits, store visits and purchases.
Until true cross-platform measurement arrives, Drouard said that authenticated first-party audiences and privacy-conscious identity solutions can help bridge that gap.
He points to Deezer’s EUID-enabled inventory, which he said generated 35% more bids, achieved a 92% higher win rate and delivered a fill-rate 2.6 times higher. While these are supply-side rather than campaign-outcome metrics, they demonstrate that buyers respond when audio inventory connects more effectively with their audience and data strategies, according to Drouard.
“The objective is not to force audio into a last-click model. It is not simply competing for a larger share of existing audio budgets, it is expanding the objectives, and therefore the budgets, for which audio can be considered,” he said.
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc. EUID was developed by The Trade Desk.
