“The MENA & GCC market is full of potential, and there is a real hunger for AI innovation.”

That was the assessment of the region given by AI audio transformation expert, and AudioStack’s GCC/MENA lead, Adam Clifford, when AudioStack joined the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB MENA) in October 2024.

This was only a few months after Next Broadcast Media looked to AudioStack to launch the first AI audio ad production tool in the region, which itself happened just shortly after AudioStack’s entry into MENA/GCC in Q1 2024.

If there’s a story to be told here, it’s that AI transformation in the Arabic-speaking world is happening at a rapid pace - because there is hunger and ambition from businesses to transform old ways of working, to reach more people, more personally and across more channels.

For those in the Arabic-language broadcasting industry, it’s not hard to understand why there’s such excitement.

Why does AI audio matter for Arabic broadcasters?

The first distinction we have to make is that AI audio isn’t just AI-generated music or text-to-speech voices.

Of course, you might be aware that AI text-to-speech voices by providers such as Narakeet have become uncannily lifelike: even in reproducing the many languages spoken across the region:

But when we talk about audio in broadcasting, we understand that it’s far more than just a voice. 

A single voice becomes much more when you add a sound bed, make it converse with others, suppress echo and play with its emphasis, speed and intonation.

We’re talking about rich, broadcast-ready assets… like this one used by McDonald's (English example generated by AI):

And if you know the time, cost and complexity involved in producing those, you stand to benefit from transforming the entire end-to-end audio workflow with AI.

What does an AI-powered audio production workflow change for an Arabic broadcaster?

Scripting ads, voicing them, mixing and mastering them and delivering them for broadcast.

In the traditional audio production workflow, you rely on a lot of different moving parts to work. They work slowly. Each relies on a different, non-interchangeable set of expertise. And the time taken to make it all work incurs significant cost… which itself limits the volume of audio assets you can produce.

That’s not unique to Arabic broadcasters, but if you are in the region, there are additional challenges that that workflow encounters:

• Linguistic diversity, you have logistical constraints to producing audio that speaks to listeners in their own language (or dialect) - of which many live side by side in the region.

• Sourcing talent: sourcing home-based talent for each of these stages in region-wide campaigns - especially voice talent and scriptwriters - becomes more complex and costly the more ambitious your campaign is. Especially when time-sensitive contracts come into play.

With AI audio production infrastructure each of these steps can be automated, streamlined and scaled. How?

1. Write and tweak script instantly: With AudioStack, you can generate ad copy by prompting AI - or using your own script - to generate limitless variations of these scripts with a generative AI tool designed for the purpose.

2. Voice, mix and master in one go: The script won’t just be read by a lifelike human AI voice in your language or dialect of choice - but paired with music, mixed and mastered autonomously.

3. Democratise audio production: every step, from generating multiple scripts to additional mastering is automated and simplified - giving even those with no creative or production experience powerful tools to make broadcast-ready assets.

You might prefer to understand it like this: If it took you hours of work and days of preparation to create a single ad, now it can take seconds. If it took you weeks to create a highly-targeted DCO campaign, you can create the assets you need in minutes.

So, what does that mean for Arabic broadcasters who want to pioneer in the new audio paradigm?

What results can be achieved by using AI-powered audio production?

Reduction of production costs by over half. Producing 10x the audio assets in 1/10th the time of the traditional workflow. Completely in-housing, automating and democratizing a production process that could collapse entirely if one part failed - like a client demanding a copy revision after the final ad was finished.

Those are the practical, workflow problems that AI audio production solves. But you already know by now that changing the workflow can unlock your ambitions for richer, more ambitious campaigns.

“The demand for localized and personalized content is increasing, particularly in programmatic advertising, where brands seek deeper audience engagement.”

- Adam Clifford

As broadcasters, you know the most effective ads are those that are the most contextually-relevant to your listeners: so it matters what they hear, and where they hear it.

That’s where the truly transformational nature of AI for broadcasting stands out: when assets for complex DCO, omnichannel and programmatic audio can be produced in far less time, and for much less cost.

In simple terms, it means you can produce the volume of content you need for highly-targeted, campaigns that Arabic broadcasters previously struggled to unlock - down to targeting by region, language and dialect, but also gender, interests and buyer personas - and to update this in real time.

And once you produce one audio asset - like an ad - you can repurpose it in ways that would previously have been too expensive to achieve: one asset can be transformed into a ‘catch-all’ radio ad, a highly-targeted social video campaign, a Linear TV or CTV voiceover…

All because you have freed yourself from the limits of the traditional audio production workflow.

So, what’s next?

We’ve talked a lot about the power of AI to generate broadcast-ready audio ads - for publishers, it’s game-changing. But there are three more things you need to pay attention to:

1. Self-service advertising with AI will grow, as APIs allow these technologies to be embedded into their platforms. Next Broadcast Media used AudioStack’s technology to allow its users to create, deliver and air dynamic podcasts ads within minutes.

2. The way you engage with customers is changing too. When we partnered with ARN for its must-attend business club seminar, we trained salespeople with no production experience to create fully-produced demo ads for clients at their booth; paving the way for a new level of interaction and speed in the audio sales process.

3. Advertising will only get more personal for Arabic listeners as the quality of regional voices and dialects reflecting the diversity of the region improves in line with demand.

Transforming a single workflow for audio production with AI can unlock new ambitions for your broadcasting, advertising and partnership campaigns. But with AudioStack, hearing really is believing, and we encourage you to reach out to learn what we have done for other broadcasters in the Arabic-speaking world, and to see the true power of AI-driven audio for yourself.

And as our Whitepaper, co-produced with the University of Cambridge and Amazon Web Services outlines, MENA and the GCC nations in particular are world-leaders in AI innovation, which makes acting now on your AI transformation strategy even more advantageous. You can read that by filling in the form below; we'll send the whitepaper straight to your inbox.