If adverts could talk, would you be more likely to pay attention to them? Most people would probably say no, but Nuance Communications, known for making some of the best voice recognition around, begs to differ.

It’s no secret that mobile advertising is a bit of a problem for ad agencies. Indeed, it’s fair to say that mobile ads are pretty damn terrible. Fact is, they don’t make that much money because most people don’t click on them that often, and even if they do, there’s a good chance that they did so by mistake.

So what can be done to remedy the problem? Up until now, advertisers have been stumped, simply throwing money at it with no clear vision of how they can make mobile ads more appealing. But Nuance has come up with what might just be a game-changing idea – integrating its voice recognition technology to engage consumers with ads in a way that banner ads never will.

Nuance, whose voice recognition technology powers both Dragon and Siri, has just announced a new product that brings an altogether new level of engagement into mobile advertising. The basic concept of Voice Ads, which is available to advertising companies through an SDK, is to bring a two-way, interactive element to mobile advertising that effectively allows consumers to ‘talk’ to different ads, with the idea being that they’ll presumably be (a) entertained, and (b) be convinced to buy whatever product or service is being advertised.

The ads work like this: Let’s say Lady Gaga is the spokeswoman for a particular product or service. Rather than just a pop-up of everyone’s favorite pop queen showing off whatever it is you intend to sell, Lady Gaga would actually be on hand to answer consumer’s questions about it. The answers would be pre-recorded, but as Nuance demonstrates, it’s possible to record dozens of unique answers to provide some depth to conversation. In addition, Nuance says that the technology can incorporate things like location data (working out where you are) to better target ads/responses. Ad agencies, as creative as they can be, would definitely be able to have some fun with the concept.

Clever Gimmick Or Just A Pain In The Butt?

One of the biggest advantages of mobile voice ads, from an advertiser’s perspective, is that they’re not only engaging with their audiences for the first time, but they’ll also be generating more actionable data. Using Voice Ads, advertisers will be able to keep track of how well each ad is performing and get a much better idea of how many people are actually interacting with the medium.

As Peter Mahoney, Nuance’s marketing chief points out, “We can measure how much people are actually using this stuff. There are no more accidents.”

It’s not clear how soon we’ll start seeing talking ads pipe up on our smartphones, but apparently there’s been quite a bit of interest from advertisers, with firms like OMD, Digitas, JumpTap, Ad Marvel and Millenial all getting on board.

There is one thing advertisers will have to be very careful of though – annoying the hell out of people. So far, Nuance hasn’t said exactly how the ads will work. Will the voice only start speaking if the user clicks on the ad to begin with, or will Lady Gaga just start screaming at you the second your web page loads up, just like those incredibly annoying embedded videos do on certain websites?

I’m sure that most readers will agree that banner ads and pop-ups are hardly the most endearing aspects of browsing the mobile web, and Voice Ads clearly have the potential to be equally as irritating, if not a lot more so.