Triton Digital Media announced a new strategic partnership with AirKast by offering its affiliates the AirKast mobile media platform as an integrated solution with Ando Media and StreamTheWorld. RBR spoke with Mike Agovino, Co-Founder and COO for Triton Media Group.
What is unique about what you’re doing here?
“First of all, in an effort to make this both simple and affordable, we used our relationships with a couple of different companies to bring everybody together. On one hand, you’ve got a significantly different offering in AirKast than any of these iPhone apps or mobile provisioning strategies that you’ve seen thus far. This isn’t just a way to stream a radio station live via your mobile phone. It’s a complete content discovery platform. So, I can go in and look at what a station has played recently; I can click on any piece of album art; then click on song lyrics; I can put a song in the ‘locker,’ tag it and come back later and buy it; I can buy it right then and there.”
What have you done to make this easier for radio stations to implement?
“Well, Number One, if you are an Ando or StreamTheWorld affiliate, other than an an initial small set up fee, we’re going deliver you the platform for free. So all we’re charging stations is ad serving fees and bandwidth charges.”
Is there any additional barter the stations need to give up?
“No, not if they’re already a StreamTheWorld or Ando customer. Ando already has like 5,000 clients; StreamTheWorld has a couple thousand. So all they have to do is get a hold of us and say we want it. Then we’ll get them in the queue and get them going. The other thing that is unique about this is that any station that already uses Ando’s admin tools for ad serving can serve the mobile inventory through that same dashboard. So you’re not having to learn a whole new system in terms of trafficking ad content.”
What else is unique?
“Well, for most of the other applications that I’ve seen, the second you try to multitask—pick up a phone call, send a text, browse the web—you lose the connection and then have to reconnect to stream the station. Not so here. The second you decide you want to text or make a call, it begins caching the content and you pick back up again right where you left off.
The Triton Digital sales force is selling the ads on a national basis, along with what your sales force sells locally. The ads are a variety of audio, video and rich media.”
