Radio streaming platform TuneIn has relaunched its apps and website adding greater social sharing functions and new opportunities for brands.

TuneIn users and publishers on the platform, which includes some 70,000 radio stations like those from the BBC, can now use the Twitter-style follow function to grow their audience and share updates or echoes. Users can follow individual shows, broadcasters or genres.

Lexus and Universal Pictures have signed up as advertisers and will be offered sponsored audio placements deployed in combination with rich media display ads across iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry, as well as smart TVs. The company says that ad response rates increase 30 per cent when an audio ad is paired with an accompanying display ad. TuneIn advertising can be targeted by genre, geography and time of day, with customisable content options for big brands.

The company says it has 27m global mobile listeners, as well as 7m in the US, with each person listening to its aggregated audio content for 1.7 hours per day.

TuneIn has been backed by the likes of Google Ventures and Sequoia Ventures.