Author: Tammy Greenberg, SVP Business Development, RAB
At a recent MediaPost conference, one of the panelists responded to a question posed to him by stating that we have left the “exposure age” and we are now in the “age of outcome.” He further expressed his opinion that marketers, agencies and all media must continue to evolve to measure outcome in robust, transparent, statistically significant ways.
Data helps us reveal insights and craft stories of real outcome that enable advertisers to create relevant messaging for their audiences – messaging that will ultimately equate to high value touches with their consumers.
There are many rich and robust data stories coming out of radio that shed light on the interests and behavior of loyal and passionate consumers. Data is also driving successful outcomes for the brands that are leveraging the insights to optimize and reinvest in their plans, messaging, promotions and schedules on radio stations across the country.
Paul Cramer, Managing Director of Enterprise Radio Solutions at Veritone, couldn’t agree more. “In the last decade, ad budgets have shifted from being spent to being invested. When you invest, you measure ROI. Radio has always provided great ROI for the reach it delivers, and now is able to provide the same real-time data, analytics, and transparency that data-driven mediums like digital are able to provide.”
- One such data story comes from Dial Report, a radio attribution platform powered by NextRadio, which can directly correlate radio advertising to store traffic and provides insights into the behavioral patterns of the radio listeners. Through Dial Report data, a local automotive dealership learned that among those who heard their spots, 1 in 10 planned on purchasing a vehicle in the next 6 months AND their radio efforts increased dealer visits by 69.8% over the course of the 13-week campaign. Click here for the full case study.
- Thanks to advancements in AI (artificial intelligence) we can now also quantify everything happening in the radio broadcast. Through Veritone’s proprietary platform, radio stations are able to provide full transparency on playout of both spot and native campaigns. This data reveals delivery, accountability and transparent metrics never before available in the broadcast radio industry. How does this impact a brand? Here’s an example…a major market children’s hospital purchased radio for the first time. The campaign consisted of a combination of spot, testimonial, and live-read creative to serve as a branding mechanism for several medical conditions they were specialized to treat. The radio stations were able to provide the agency with data throughout the campaign that quantified the full reach and delivery of both the spot and live-read creative. The reach and audience-delivery far exceeded the pre-campaign estimates, and the agency was able to determine that their radio campaign was very efficient given the ROI it delivered. Radio is now a regular part of their marketing mix. Click here for the case study.
- AnalyticOwl, a leading attribution analytics partner, has proven that over 90% of campaigns that include live reads (copy presented by on-air radio personalities) are the top generators of response. One automotive dealership in the Southeast leveraged their strong response from a morning show radio personality to drive response in Midday, Afternoon and Evening by airing recorded versions of the morning live read. The live read spots were the top 6 ads over their entire quarter based on listener response. In addition, AnalyticOwl has the ability to conduct A/B testing for various creative and targeting approaches – matching message to messenger can make a significant difference in driving listener response. An auto dealership in the Northeast aired two spots each for three different vehicle models. Each model employed a single script, but had the script recorded in both a male and female voice. They found that for one model, there was no difference in performance between the two ads. For another, the male voice drove 15% more response. For the third, the female-voiced ad drove 30% more response. The dealership was able to use these trends to drive more overall response from their campaign, which had a direct impact on their sales. Click here for the case study.
- Radio works in terms of generating ROI for advertisers, Nielsen has been able to accurately measure the Return on Ad Spend for marketers by linking radio listening data to the actual transactions of more than 125 million consumers and 80% of all American credit card holders. The results are consistently positive and in line with findings from other media like TV and digital and based on a dozen studies of various products and categories, radio’s average return for every dollar of ad investment was $10. And based upon the product, some advertisers received a considerably higher return than the average by example – a grocery advertiser achieved a $23 return. The most recent analysis was commissioned by Westwood One in partnership with Nielsen Catalina and in this case it was for a men’s personal care brand. In households where men were exposed to the AM/FM radio campaign, there was an 8% lift in sales for the parent brand and among all households it was proven that radio delivered $12 in sales for every $1 spent.
- Creative plays a key role in determining the degree of ROI, and data from Veritonic’s proprietary pre-market creative testing platform has revealed that audio branding is key to success in the radio medium with spots that had an audio logo scoring 5% better, on average, than spots without an audio logo. These spots were also 13% more likely to be perceived as unique to the advertiser’s brand.
- Location data is about knowing where someone goes and in what order they travel from place to place and like other mobile and digital platforms, radio is helping partners to use location to enhance behavioral profiles and connect online ad exposure with real-world activities. This is evident in the attribution cases from data partners as described above. Important to recognize is that the in-car “location” remains a high quality destination for audio consumption – we know from U.S.A. TouchPoints data that more than half of adults 18-64 have shopped in a retail location and been in-car during the same thirty minutes in any given week. And according to Nielsen trends and insights, the share of in-car listening is growing, with 82% of drivers tuning in to AM/FM radio while in the car.
- The #1 story coming out of RAB’s Radio Drives Search study released in late 2017 revealed that not only did radio drive 29% incremental Google search activity for the 6 brands across 8 categories analyzed, but it also revealed that the quality of radio creative has a direct impact on increased search behavior. In fact, the ads in the top two performing quintiles out-performed the average by more than 2X and 7X.
According to a 2018 online survey of members of the IAB Data and Programmatic Councils, when asked what will occupy most of their time in 2018, 64% say cross-channel measurement and attribution (with 52% planning to improve their cross-device audience recognition capabilities and 51% citing predictive modeling and/or segmentation). Understanding what motivates consumers, the ability to know what messages work best among whom, striking the correct balance of media and the quantification of touches with precise points in time and place are the outcomes that we all strive for and radio is poised to deliver.