Sounder Targeting Tech Lands First Spanish-Language Deal With Mexico’s Grupo ACIR.

The Mexican radio company Grupo ACIR has selected Sounder’s brand suitability and contextual targeting capabilities to bolster its podcast and streaming audio advertising strategy across its digital properties. This marks the first Latin American and Spanish-language implementation of Sounder’s technology since its multilingual capabilities launched this spring, giving Grupo ACIR new tools to align its digital content with advertiser expectations in a scalable, automated way.

Triton Digital-owned Sounder says it leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand podcast and audio content at a granular level, and matches it with advertising guidelines and preferences, opening inventory to contextual targeting opportunities. The company says its deal with Grupo ACIR reflects a growing interest from publishers outside the U.S. in tools that support automated brand alignment while preserving editorial control and audience trust.

“Brand suitability in audio has been an ongoing conversation, but what’s been missing is a way to apply it consistently across languages and content types,” said Sharon Taylor, Executive VP of Podcast and Content Delivery at Triton. “Grupo ACIR came to the table with a clear understanding of the challenges and the opportunity. This partnership shows how we can readily support that need globally.”

Mexico City-based Grupo ACIR operates some of the best-known audio brands in Mexico — including the Amor, Mix, La Comadre, and Match station networks — and has expanded its reach through a strategic digital partnership with iHeartRadio, which operates a Mexico-targeted version of its streaming radio service. Sounder says the company’s adoption of brand safety tools comes as advertisers look for more consistency in how audio inventory is evaluated across markets and languages.

Sounder announced in April that it was expanding into Spanish-language media with an update to its platform that has brought its tools for transcription, analysis and monetization beyond English-language content for the first time.

The company says the task wasn’t as simple as translating what it already had been using to help analyze content for brand suitability and contextual targeting. That is because the tools built for English don’t automatically work elsewhere. Instead, supporting a multilingual ecosystem meant rethinking the entire stack — from how it transcribes audio to how it understands and categorizes its meaning. It also faced other challenges like all the nuances and the cultural identity of a tongue as it approached the Spanish-language market. It opted to use open-source multilingual models that could serve as the foundation rather than translating and applying existing tools even though the ability to reuse most of its existing tech stack was a major advantage.

“We’ve been evaluating ways to better connect advertisers with our content, but we needed something that works for Spanish and works at scale,” said Manuel Pérez del Castillo, Director of Quality and Systems at Grupo ACIR. “When we saw that Sounder’s technology could handle Spanish accurately, and that we could deploy it through Triton’s platform we were already using, it was a straightforward decision. This gives us more visibility into how our content is categorized and opens up new conversations with advertisers who care about brand suitability.” 

The integration is delivered through Triton Digital’s technology infrastructure. Triton Digital acquired Sounder in March 2024.