Jelli is a
San Mateo, California
San Mateo ( ) is the most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It is part of the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan region, and is located about south of San Francisco. San Mateo border ...
-based advertising technology firm, which develops solutions for the programmatic sale and airplay of
radio advertising.
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., or 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 founded by ...
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 digit ...
, 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-owned
KITS
KITS (105.3 FM broadcasting, FM, "Live 105") is a commercial radio, commercial radio station in San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Owned by Audacy, Inc., it broadcasts an alternative rock radio format known as "Live 105". The studios ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
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 smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...
. 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 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
Clark County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Nevada with 2,265,461 residents as of the 2020 census. The county is the location of the state's three largest cities, Las Vegas (the county seat), Henderson, and North Las Vegas ...
. On June 30, 2011,
KXLI
KXLI (94.5 Hertz, MHz ''Exa FM'') is a commercial radio, commercial FM broadcasting, FM radio station serving the Moapa Valley, St. George, Utah, and Las Vegas Valley, Las Vegas areas, but focused on Las Vegas as a Rimshot (broadcasting), rims ...
and
KYLI launched the new Jelli formats, with KXLI carrying a rock format, and KYLI carrying "Top 40 Remix" (a
dance radio
Dance radio is a type of radio format that focuses on dance music, dance and electronic music. These formats typically feature current and recent hits in the genres, and may often include DJ mix, mixshows featuring songs mixed by Disc jockey, DJs ...
format featuring
electronic dance music
Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...
and remixes of current pop hits).
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 in Sydney,
Fox FM in Melbourne,
B105 in Brisbane,
SAFM 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 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 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 broadcasting, 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, a subsidiary of the Standard General hedge ...
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 in Chicago,
KKDA-FM in Dallas and
WDJQ in Cleveland. Later in 2014,
Emmis Communications
Emmis Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Emmis, based on the Hebrew word for "Truth" (''Emet'') was founded by Jeff Smulyan in 1980. Emmis has owned many radio stations, including KPWR ...
added
WBLS
WBLS (107.5 MHz) is an urban adult contemporary radio format, formatted FM broadcasting, FM radio station, city of license, licensed to New York, New York. It is currently owned and operated by Mediaco Holding, along with sister station WQHT (97 ...
to RadioSpot, and Beasley Broadcast Group entered with stations in Philadelphia, Miami and Las Vegas.
In 2015,
iHeartMedia
iHeartMedia, Inc., or 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 founded by ...
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