Jelli is a

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ; ) is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula. About 20 miles (32 km) south of San Francisco, the city borders Burlingame to the north, Hillsborough to the west, San Francisco Bay and Foster C ...

-based advertising technology firm, which develops solutions for the programmatic sale and airplay of

radio advertising In the United States, commercial radio stations make most of their revenue by selling airtime to be used for running radio advertisements. These advertisements are the result of a business or a service providing a valuable consideration, usually ...

. The company was originally established as a provider of interactive music programming for radio stations, in which listeners were able to upvote and downvote songs played by a particular station in real-time (with songs disliked by listeners being automatically stopped and replaced by a different song). The company introduced its advertising platform in 2012, which eventually became its main business in 2014.

iHeartMedia iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...

acquired Jelli in December 2018.

History

Crowdsourced broadcasting

In 2009, Jelli was founded by Michael Dougherty, formerly of Tellme Networks, and Jateen Parekh, formerly of the Amazon Kindle Project. Based on the concept of

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

, Jelli offered a modernized version of an all-request show, and was promoted as a "

multiplayer video game A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

on a radio station". Jelli debuted on

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...

-owned

KITS Kits may refer to: * Kitsilano, a neighbourhood of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada *Kits, an American taffy candy made by Gilliam Candy Company *KITS, a San Francisco, California radio station *Kottayam Institute of Technology & Sci ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

on June 28, 2009. After starting out with a Sunday night Jelli show on KITS in 2009, Jelli was further expanded to a Monday through Friday night show called "Free for All" in January 2010, hosted by DJ White Menace. Jelli shows were broadcast on KITS six nights a week. Listeners would select songs for a station via Jelli's website and

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

. Users could upvote and downvote songs to determine the next song, and issue "Rocks" and "Sucks" votes for songs currently playing — with songs immediately stopped if they receive too many "Sucks" votes. Users could also be awarded "Rockets" and "Bombs" to move songs up and down on the app's charts. Jelli's success with KITS led to a further expansion of Jelli to other radio stations, and in October 2009, Jelli announced a syndication deal to distribute its programming throughout the United States through the

Triton Media Group Triton Digital, LLC, formerly Triton Media Group, is a digital audio technology and advertising company based in Los Angeles. The group was formally owned by E. W. Scripps Company which sold Triton to IHeartMedia in October 2020. The company work ...

beginning in early 2010. In May 2011, Jelli announced it would launch a 24/7 version of its format in the

Las Vegas metropolitan area The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area is ...

. On June 30, 2011,

KXLI KXLI (94.5 MHz ''Exito 94.5'') is a commercial FM radio station serving the Moapa Valley, St. George, Utah and Las Vegas areas, but focused on Las Vegas as a rimshot station. Licensed to Moapa, Nevada, it is owned by Activo Broadcasting LLC. ...

and

KYLI KYLI (96.7 FM, ''La Campesina 96.7 FM'') is a radio station serving the Moapa Valley, St. George, Utah the stations is Licensed to Bunkerville, Nevada, The Chavez Radio Group outlet operates at 96.7 MHz with an ERP of 13 kW and broadc ...

launched the new Jelli formats, with KXLI carrying a rock format, while KYLI offered a Top 40 remix. Jelli was also part of a partnership with

Austereo Austereo was an Australian mass media company based in Melbourne. It was founded in 1980 by Paul Thompson, and operated 16 radio stations in metropolitan and regional Australia under the Today Network and Triple M brands. In 2011, the company' ...

, involving a station called Hot 30 Jelli, which was launched on November 1, 2009. The station was then renamed to Choose The Hits on February 1, 2010. It was broadcast online, on DAB and overnights on

2Day FM 2Day FM (call sign 2DAY) is a commercial FM radio station broadcasting in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on a frequency of 104.1 MHz, and is part of Southern Cross Austereo's Hit Network. History 1980s 2Day FM was one of three radio st ...

in Sydney, Fox FM in Melbourne,

B105 B105 or B-105 may refer to: * B105 FM (call sign: 4BBB), a Mainstream CHR radio station broadcasting out of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia * B105, one of the B roads in Zone 1 of the Great Britain numbering scheme * WUBE, a country music radio sta ...

in Brisbane,

SAFM SAFM (official callsign: 5SSA) is a commercial FM radio station owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo as part of the Hit Network. The station is broadcast to Adelaide, South Australia from studios in Franklin Street. History The stati ...

in Adelaide and 92.9 in Perth between 10:15pm and midnight on Monday to Thursday nights. The Austereo partnership was terminated effective May 24, 2010, and Jelli is no longer being carried on the air in Australia.

Programmatic advertising

On June 29, 2012, Jelli formally announced its new programmatic advertising platform, RadioSpot. The cloud-based platform functions through a server installed by the station that is triggered by station traffic and automation software. The software also produces logs viewable in real time. Ad copy can be changed with just one to two minutes of lead time. In March 2014, Jelli unveiled SpotPlan and an API, allowing for advertisers to buy ad time and compare stations through an online interface. On June 29, 2014, Jelli officially ended its listener-controlled radio services. The move was preceded by the remaining Jelli stations bailing on the format. In 2012, KXLI dropped Jelli when it was sold to a new company who instated a new Spanish-language format. On June 24, 2014, KYLI was relaunched with a variant of the

Pulse 87 Pulse 87 is an online radio station with an Electronic dance music, EDM music format. It started out as the audio feed of a Channel 6 radio stations in the United States, channel-6 “Franken-FM” television station in New York City, audible on t ...

dance/EDM brand, known as Pulse 96.7. On June 26, Jelli announced it would cease operations; classic rock WJLI in Paducah, Kentucky, and Top 40/CHR

KSKR-FM KSKR-FM (100.9 MHz) is an American radio station licensed to serve Sutherlin, Oregon, United States. The station, which began broadcasting in 1998, is currently owned by Brooke Communications, Inc. Programming KSKR-FM broadcasts a Top 40 (CHR) ...

in Roseburg, Oregon immediately dropped the "Jelli" moniker and the platform altogether. The remaining affiliated stations continued to broadcast Jelli shows until 11:59 p.m.(PDT) on June 29, 2014, when the platform shut down for good.

Adoption

Within two years, Jelli had 360 stations on RadioSpot, with large broadcasters including Sun Broadcasting Group, Townsquare Media, and Entercom. Additionally, RadioSpot had entered several new large markets with its debut on

WQHT WQHT (97.1 FM, ''Hot 97'') is a commercial radio station, licensed to New York, New York, which broadcasts an urban contemporary music format. The station is owned by Mediaco Holding and operated by Emmis Communications under a shared service ...

in New York,

WPWX WPWX (92.3 FM) is an urban contemporary radio station licensed to Hammond, Indiana and serving the Chicago metropolitan area in addition to Northwest Indiana, and is owned by Crawford Broadcasting. The station broadcasts from a transmitter a few ...

and

WSRB WSRB (106.3 FM) is an urban adult contemporary radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan area and Northwest Indiana. It is licensed to the Southland suburb of Lansing, Illinois, and transmits within that city from a tower along the north ...

in Chicago,

KKDA-FM KKDA-FM (104.5 MHz), known as K104, has been a leading radio station in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex for 46 years. It is a longtime heritage urban contemporary formatted station. It is owned by Service Broadcasting Corporation alongside K ...

in Dallas and

WDJQ WDJQ (92.5 MHz, "Q92") is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Alliance, Ohio, and serving the Canton metropolitan area. WDJQ broadcasts a Top 40/CHR radio format and is owned by the family company of Don Peterson, the former publisher ...

in Cleveland. Later in 2014,

Emmis Communications Emmis Communications is an American media conglomerate based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Emmis, based on the Hebrew word for Truth (Emet) was founded by Jeff Smulyan in 1980. Emmis has owned many radio stations, including KPWR and WQHT, which hav ...

added

WBLS WBLS (107.5 MHz) is an urban adult contemporary formatted FM radio station, licensed to New York City. It is currently owned by Mediaco Holding and operated by Emmis Communications under a shared services agreement, along with sister stations ...

to RadioSpot, and Beasley Broadcast Group entered with stations in Philadelphia, Miami and Las Vegas. In 2015,

introduced a new programmatic solution for its stations powered by Jelli. Jelli was acquired by iHeartMedia in December 2018.

References

{{Reflist

Supplementary references

Music Start-Up Jelli Raises $7 Million
New York Times, May, 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
Jelli crowd-sourcing launches with 10 stations, including a second CBS outlet
Radio-Info.com, March 9, 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
Jelli’s User Controlled Radio Gets A Big Win: Live 105 To Use It Daily
Techcrunch, January, 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
Jelli: Making old-fashioned radio hip again
San Jose Mercury News, November, 2009. Retrieved 1 September 2015.

External links

Jelli official website - jelli
Companies based in San Mateo, California