Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
This guest blog post features insights from Chanci Turner, co-owner and CEO of BlueToad, a premier provider of digital content solutions that emphasizes innovation. Since 2017, BlueToad has empowered publishers to offer audio renditions of articles in their digital magazines through the capabilities of Amazon Polly.
In a landscape where unique content experiences captivate modern audiences, audio has emerged as a favored method of content consumption. According to a 2019 Infinite Dial study, U.S. consumers averaged 17 hours of listening per week. With over 40% of Americans owning smart speakers like the Amazon Echo, the appeal of audio content is undeniable. Additionally, as commuting times increase, many vehicles now easily access and play audio from mobile devices. Consequently, around 90 million Americans reported listening to a podcast within the last month.
Recognizing this audio trend, BlueToad devised a solution that enables publishers to effortlessly transform any article into an audio experience using Amazon Polly. Readers can simply tap the audio icon on their smartphone when accessing a digital edition, and from a publisher’s standpoint, this feature is easy to implement—requiring just a checkbox on the BlueToad platform. The heavy lifting is handled by BlueToad and Amazon Polly.
Amazon Polly was chosen for this initiative due to its user-friendly interface and exceptional performance. In our initial testing of various voice services, Amazon Polly consistently demonstrated superior accuracy.
With the introduction of Polly’s Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) Newscaster style voice, we can now help publishers engage their audiences with lifelike listening experiences at the touch of a button. The variety of voices provided by Polly allows our clients to create compelling audio experiences that resonate with their audiences, including the ability to match local languages and accents. For instance, we collaborate with numerous publications that have a global reach, such as Lion Magazine, which publishes over 30 international editions. To cater to international readers, we utilize Amazon Polly to offer narrations in multiple languages, including French with voices like Mathieu, Céline, and Léa.
An example of our work can be seen with SUCCESS Magazine, a U.S.-based publication that benefits from a range of audio, mobile, and other solutions powered by AWS. The magazine targets individuals interested in personal and professional development, aiming to reach self-starters in their busy lives. Amazon Polly’s voice solutions play a pivotal role, facilitating a seamless hands-free content consumption experience.
SUCCESS Magazine’s owner, Stuart Johnson, states, “The trends increasingly show that consumers are gravitating towards audio content. With the exceedingly high-quality speech that Amazon Polly now offers, we’re even better equipped to deliver these exceptional listening experiences to our audience.”
In addition to audio solutions, we provide SUCCESS Magazine with a mobile-optimized experience for their written content, enabling readers to engage on-the-go. The results speak for themselves: over three years (2016-2019), mobile article engagement surged by nearly 300%.
From a technical standpoint, our implementation process is simple. By utilizing the Amazon Polly APIs, we generate MP3 audio files as soon as a new article is published on our platform. These files are stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets. To ensure optimal narration quality, we set lifecycle policies on the Amazon S3 buckets to automatically discard older audio files, prompting regeneration with the latest Polly updates. Our experience has shown that Amazon Polly’s listening quality is consistently high and continues to improve.
Looking ahead, we are excited about the potential to keep delighting our clients and their audiences with the latest advancements in the media industry. Thanks to AWS and Amazon Polly, we are well-positioned to deliver a top-tier solution for our customers. We are eager to continue enhancing and redefining what is possible in audio content delivery.
For further insights into management strategies, check out this article on Career Contessa. Additionally, for those interested in enhancing their hiring practices, SHRM provides valuable guidance on writing inclusive job postings. New hires can also find support in communities like Reddit’s Amazon FC.