Jon Gosier’s new adtech startup launches today at the Nashville Music Biz expo

The advertising industry is racking its brain trying to keep your fingers off the “Skip ad” button when you watch a video. Local startup Audigent, cofounded by Cross Valley Capital’s Jon Gosier, says it may have the solution: adapting ads to each consumer through music.

Today, the company will be launching its service at the Music Biz conference in Nashville, Tenn., armed with data obtained through a partnership with a music industry leader.

“What Audigent does is help optimize video ads and how they’re targeted across platforms,” Gosier said. For example, think YouTube, Hulu and Facebook.

The project, which started in December 2015, is able to target fans by genre and artist, changing backing tracks in ads for either actual music, or music akin to users’ preferences.

“One of the things we use to target people is music data,” Gosier explained. “All ads have music in them, and people are engaged with music. By improving music in advertising, the advertiser can improve engagement.”

Artists are another story, Gosier says. Musicians can log onto the platform to monetize the work. According to Gosier, Audigent is capable of yielding attractive royalties.

“We can give them a much bigger piece of the action, because they can see how their ads are performing,” he said.

For the time being, the company is self-funded via a $400,000 friends and family round. Gosier’s fellow cofounders — Shelton Mercer, Brian Brater and Drew Stein — have backgrounds in industries like sales, data science, the music industry and adtech.

Watch Gosier explain some of the science behind Audigent: