Audion, the French leader in digital audio and podcast monetization, has raised a six million euros Series A funding round from Founders Future, Elevation Capital Partners, Financière Arbevel and business angels. In a rapidly changing global contest, digital audio is the only media that maintains a strong growth in H1 2022.

Audion is the industry leader in France thanks to an increase of turnover of almost 100% in 2022. The start-up, which enables publishers to broadcast advertisements on their audio content and convert their articles into podcasts, aims to become the European leader in the digital audio monetization market within three years and to open offices in three new countries. Audion is already present in the UK and France.

Audion announces the first fundraising in the ByoB digital audio sector in France, with its historical investor Founders Future (Yuka, Lydia, Omi…), Elevation Capital Partners (Morning, Certideal, Plug-in Digital…) completed by a bonded debt funding with Arbevel Dette Privée PME. The start-up, which provides text-to-speech and digital audio monetization technologies, aims to help publishers create and capitalize on their audio content.

Having raised €1.1m in seed funding in 2019, this new round should enable Audion to recruit around fifty people in the next twelve to eighteen months and open offices in three new European countries. The company, which already works with major media groups, will strengthen its offer and its presence with publishers, platforms (Spotify, Deezer, Soundcloud…), advertisers (Intel, BMW, McDonalds, Lidl, Ikea…),and media agencies (WPP, OMG, Dentsu…), to continue innovating and accompany this digital audio revolution.

Founded in 2018, Audion works with more than a hundred companies – media, publishers, podcast producers… – and has seen a nearly 100% growth of its turnover in 2022. It is the only French company offering digital audio monetization technologies and is the leader in terms of revenue, number of clients and campaigns, and it also operates in dozens of countries.

While the global advertising industry is being massively impacted, audio records the most significant growth (+50% according to the Observatorie de l’e-pub). Audion continues to grow with nearly +100% in both 2021 and 2022. The only French company in the BtoB audio market, Audion wants to use these funds to accelerate its growth and become European leader. Based in Paris and London, it currently has 25 employees. It’s latest technology PrintAudio, which converts text articles into podcasts and broadcasts them, has already been implemented on almost one billion web pages.

Consumers listen more and more to digital audio – radio replay, non-linear radio, native podcast music streaming, web radio, text-to-speech, etc. 63% of internet users listen to online content every month (IAB Digital Audio Panorama, 2022), pushing brands and publishers to adapt their offer and their communications channels.

But the growth of digital audio largely relies on advertising, as publishers and producers cannot create a large audio offer without monetization capabilities. As the only French player in the market, Audion is benefiting from this evolution in usage, which explains its constant growth despite a struggling advertising market.