Veritone Has First Profitable Quarter And Year; Sees Big Opportunity In Voice Cloning Tech. – Inside Radio

Veritone says business remained robust for its advertising services division, used by podcasters and radio stations. The company says the average active client spent $625,000 during the fourth quarter, a 15% increase compared to a year earlier. For the year, Veritones ad business had $40.8 million in total revenue in 2021, up 29% from $31.55 million in 2020.

Overall, Veritone reports its fourth quarter revenue jumped 230% to $55.1 million. And its 2021 revenue nearly doubled that of 2020, climbing 99% to $115.3 million. That increase was in part due to a $150 million cash and stock deal to buy the Israeli based technology platform PandoLogic which leverages AI to help companies make hiring decisions.

Q4 was our first profitable quarter, 2021 was our first profitable year and our first year of positive cash flow, our focus on profitability, operating efficiency and our customer success have paid-off, said CEO Chad Steelberg. These results are the culmination of years of hard work and determination and a continuation of a trend that we started nearly two years ago as Q4 is our seventh consecutive quarter of record revenue.

Veritones artificial intelligence-powered voice cloning technology has made headlines in recent weeks, as the company struck a deal with iHeartMedia which will use it to take English-language podcasts and convert them into different languages, dialects, and accents with eventual plans to use it on the radio production side of its business as well.

During Veritones conference call with analysts, the company showed off the voice cloning system with a cloned voice clip of CEO Chad Steelberg.

AI is alive. It is alive in the podcast that we listen to every day, synthetically producing the content and advertising that inform and entertain us, he said, noting that iconic Los Angeles Dodgers radio announcer Vin Scully is already using his synthetic voice for commercial purposes he did not say what they were, however.

The implications are wide-reaching as Veritone is already the leader in podcast advertising, and we are rapidly building a deep list of synthetic content prospects to follow iHeartMedia's lead, said President Ryan Steelberg. When both large and small commercial businesses seek to leverage synthetic content, they are rapidly turning to Veritone. In addition to iHeart, we are inking deals in a number of voice markets beyond podcasting like audio books, production studios, audio advertising and digital influencers.

The voice cloning is built from several hours of audio that uses AI to train the system on how to produce the synthetic voice. The more audio ingested, the more life-like the results, say executives.

One of the luxuries that we have of working with so many media entertainment customers, and we're sitting on tens of millions of hours of content, said Ryan Steelberg. We are also in a very unique situation to do this at scale. We can also repurpose a lot of historical footage. So we're really excited about several of the major use cases that we're taking this to market with.

Veritones artificial intelligence aiWARE operating system is how many media companies work with the company, and despite its new ventures Chad Steelberg said they remain focused on expanding the AI-powered operating systems including adding support to a growing number of applications.

Veritone ended 2021 with $254.7 million of cash in the bank as well. That could open the door to more deal-making. Heading into 2022, with over 60% consolidated revenue growth, a rock-solid balance sheet and profitability we now have the business momentum and financial leverage to accelerate our growth story even further, said CFO Mike Zemetra. For now, Veritone says it expects 2022 revenue to increase more than 60% to between $180 and $190 million.

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Veritone Has First Profitable Quarter And Year; Sees Big Opportunity In Voice Cloning Tech. - Inside Radio