Contributor: Beth Osborne, director, marketing and content, Marketron
For 13 years, the Borrell-RAB digital benchmarking report on radio digital sales has been a valuable resource for the industry. The insights of local media buyers and station management allow us to look backward and forward on the opportunity for radio to be a leader in local digital ad sales.
The headlines from this year’s survey are exciting. Digital revenue hit $2.1 billion in 2024, a 10.2% growth from 2023. The 2025 forecast is also promising, with an expected increase of 9.7%.
You may be wondering what to do with all the data insights about what buyers want, need and expect — along with how stations are maturing and strategizing to get their cut of this spending.
With meaningful analysis of the information, I’m sharing what I think radio’s next moves should be.
1. Continue to Place Radio as a Core in Local Media Plans
This survey focuses on digital advertising, but we never want to ignore or exclude broadcast radio advertising. The report revealed that 96% of radio buyers will continue to purchase broadcast radio ad spots. We’d love it if it were 100%, but 96% is a pretty solid number.
You don’t have to lose radio revenue to gain digital. The response from radio advertisers demonstrates they still find it valuable, and they are more likely to purchase social media, display and CTV/OTT. Three out of five radio buyers also plan to increase spending on tactics, with social media, SEM (search engine marketing) and display leading the way.
An integrated campaign with all these tactics plus radio will have the strongest performance. It enables reach plus targeting with consistent messaging to deliver results, ensuring you have a better chance at the renewal.
2. Prompt Advertisers to Shift Budgets from Ineffective Tactics
The report asked businesses what they believe to be the most effective tactics. An important angle to think about is what’s at the bottom — online directory listings and print.
Even if businesses don’t consider these advertising platforms good for ROI, it doesn’t mean they’ve actively changed their media planning. So, it’s time to make sure they do by pointing out the expense of these tactics and how little they deliver. These are dollars they could shift to digital where they can target and measure.
3. Promote Your Marketing and Digital Savviness
Another question asked survey takers to rank radio companies as marketing and digital advertising experts. Many radio buyers (46%) agreed that radio companies were exceptional or substantial in their marketing expertise, and 59% said they were digitally savvy. Your efforts to promote this are paying off, but nonradio buyers have slightly less enthusiasm.
Spreading the message that you are marketing and digital experts helps build trust and attract advertisers not currently buying from you. Promote your expertise and foster new relationships in 2025 by:
- Hosting lunch-and-learns for local businesses.
- Using digital advertising tactics to market your services.
- Gathering more testimonials from happy clients.
- Working with on-air personalities to spread the message to listeners.
Also, don’t forget to focus on your local market knowledge and access local audiences. This will set you apart from agencies and other competitors.
4. Keep Nurturing Sellers
Last year, station managers rated digital-only sellers as the best way to fuel digital sales. This year, training across all sellers takes the top spot. You can have success with digital-only sellers, but why sell in silos? The point is to deliver a media plan with radio and digital, so focusing on training everyone will likely generate long-term results.
Developing your sales staff should include diverse training, from in-person to virtual and on-demand. It should also be consistent and frequent; 48% of stations are doing this weekly.
Digital and your market are always changing, so your team must be savvy. Ensuring they have access to training and continued professional development could also lead to less turnover.
5. Evolve Your Digital Strategy Continuously
The survey revealed that 44% of station managers think their digital strategy is brilliant or good and 12% don’t have one. Having a strategy is crucial to reliable digital ad revenue, but it must be a living document. It also needs its own goals for salespeople for digital only. Without digital-specific goals, sellers may be less inclined to present them.
There’s great data in the report that can actually influence your strategy, including the benchmarking information and numbers on the obtainable digital revenue for radio. A successful digital strategy is localized to your market and its specific industries, economy and audience.
Many factors will impact the success of your strategy. With so many rapid changes in digital, it’s a good idea to check in on your plan at least bimonthly for any tweaks based on your sales forecasts and environment.
Digital Growth Is Ahead, Be Ready to Capture It
There are so many great takeaways from the report. The bottom line is that radio’s digital offerings are growing and becoming a larger portion of the revenue pot. However, digital doesn’t have to rob radio’s pot. They’re stronger together and allow you to emerge as a local-first organization, uniquely positioned and qualified to support this part of the ad market.
By acting now with these strategies, you’ll be poised to do what every customer wants — deliver campaigns that solve their challenges and meet their goals.