Millennial Media Launches Interactive Voice Ads for Toyota

Millennial Media has launched a mobile advertising campaign for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. that engages consumers with voice-activated technology. The campaign highlights the 2014 Corolla and lets consumers engage in a two-way conversation that mimics the experience of Entune Audio, Toyota's in-vehicle multimedia and telematics system with speech recognition.

The new campaign leverages Millennial Media's Voice SHOW & TELL ad unit and presents the consumer with images of three apps available on the Entune system: iHeartradio, Weather, and Text to Speech. The ad prompts the consumer to say which app he would like to find out more about. Depending on the consumer's verbal response, the ad then takes him through a demonstration that highlights the features of the app.

"Millennial Media's new voice ads deliver on three crucial areas of importance for advertisers: driving engagement and user interaction, delivering relevant content, and creating a campaign uniquely suited for mobile," said Mollie Spilman, executive vice president of global sales and marketing at Millennial Media, in a statement. "Toyota's innovative campaign represents a landmark occasion both in mobile advertising and automotive marketing."

"With Millennial Media's SHOW & TELL unit, we were able to convey the key benefits of Entune's voice recognition feature the way users would experience natively in an all-new 2014 Corolla," said Dionne Colvin-Lovely, national media marketing manager at Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., in a statement. "We wanted to develop an experience that packaged key product messages in a fun and authentic way the Corolla target would notice and appreciate."

The Toyota campaign will run on both tablets and smartphones for iOS and Android.

Unlike traditional push advertising, voice ads let consumers dictate the flow of the experience and guide the ad into providing them with the most relevant content possible. The Voice SHOW & TELL ad unit is part of Millennial Media's suite of voice ad solutions, which also includes Voice CHAT and Voice QUIZ. All three use voice technologies from Nuance Communications.