Jelli

Jelli operates as a technology firm focused on the programmatic advertising market for radio. Established in 2008 by co-founders Michael Dougherty and Jateen Parekh, the company initially launched with a novel, interactive platform for radio listeners. Dougherty, formerly of Tellme Networks, and Parekh, who worked on the Amazon Kindle project, envisioned reinventing radio for a social, web-savvy audience. Their first product was a crowdsourced broadcasting service where listeners could vote on songs in real-time via a website and mobile app, influencing the station's playlist directly. Songs that received enough negative votes would be stopped mid-air and replaced.

Pivoting from its consumer-facing model, Jelli transitioned its focus to advertising technology in 2012. The company developed a cloud-based platform designed to automate the process of buying and selling radio ad space, effectively bringing programmatic capabilities to the traditional broadcast radio industry. This platform, which includes products like RadioSpot and SpotPlan, enables advertisers to purchase ad time and compare stations through an online interface, while allowing radio broadcasters to manage their ad inventory. The system also provides real-time logs and the ability to alter ad copy with minimal lead time. This shift proved successful, and by 2014, Jelli had ceased its listener-controlled radio services to concentrate solely on its ad tech solutions.

The company's technology gained significant traction, attracting major broadcasters such as Townsquare Media, Entercom, and iHeartMedia. This growth culminated in iHeartMedia acquiring Jelli in November 2018. Following the acquisition, Jelli continued to operate as a division within iHeartMedia, with Michael Dougherty remaining as its CEO, to spearhead iHeartMedia's ad technology development from its Silicon Valley base. The deal was a strategic move for iHeartMedia to enhance its programmatic offerings, allowing advertisers to buy broadcast radio with targeting and data attribution tools comparable to major digital platforms.

Keywords: programmatic audio, radio advertising, ad tech, advertising platform, broadcast radio, Michael Dougherty, Jateen Parekh, iHeartMedia, RadioSpot, SpotPlan, audio advertising, automated ad buying, ad inventory management, media buying, crowdsourced radio, ad technology solutions, radio broadcasting, digital audio advertising