Local publishers lose readers — AI narration to convert issues into audio

Local publishers lose readers — AI narration to convert issues into audio targets a $3.0B = 100,000 niche/local publishers x $30K avg annual audio monetization/SaaS value total addressable market with low saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 25% — reflects podcast/audio-ad growth and publisher digitization.

Key trends driving demand: Neural-TTS quality leap -- makes automated narration acceptable to mainstream audiences and brands; Audio-first consumption -- listeners prefer audio for commuting and multitasking, increasing demand for spoken content; Programmatic audio ads growth -- ad tech is maturing for non-music audio enabling monetization for publishers; Accessibility & compliance pressure -- publishers need low-cost audio to meet accessibility expectations.