https://lnkd.in/g4g4MxKa Radio’s upfront selling season is in high gear but booking business for 2024 comes amidst financial challenges consumers are facing. “There are headwinds, these are really challenging times,” Audacy CMO Paul Suchman said. “There are a lot of advertisers who are thinking about their spends,” Despite that, some marketers are increasing their ad investment, as long as the campaign demonstrates a measurable return on ad spend.
Focused on the middle and bottom portion of the purchase funnel, these advertisers are looking to drive quantifiable results, whether sales, website visits, engagement, or other campaign objectives. That’s why Audacy’s upfront sales pitch this year revolves around attribution & accountability.
Radio’s second largest group is also using research in its pitch to brands and agencies, making the case that advertisers are underinvested in audio as a whole. Media agency network dentsu & Lumen Research measured various audio formats and environments across 3 unique studies in podcasts, radio, and music streaming. The headline: audio performs better than video in grabbing people’s attention and generating brand recall. The study found that each audio channel has its own unique strength in driving attention and brand impact. Podcasts drove the highest attention while #radio was found to be the most #costefficient #media platform in driving attention.
“What we're seeing is that marketers are paying more attention to attention,” Suchman said in a conversation with Adweek SVP Chris Ariens. At a time when Americans are bombarded with 4,000 advertising messages daily across multiple platforms, devices, and channels, research that shows audio’s ability to cut through the #clutter and grab consumer attention opens new opportunities for radio and podcasting to play a larger role in media plans.
Suchman told the Adweek audience that the dentsu study and an earlier one by Neustar are having an impact. “There's some really great research we're doing and that's having a wonderful upstream impact on helping #planners think about #audio as part of their plans,” Suchman said. “But the message is really focused on performance and differentiating products.”
The Neustar analysis showed a slight shift of ad dollars to optimize audio brings significant returns across various categories: a 1.2% shift of media investment to audio would increase brands’ return on audio ad spend by as much as 23%. Suchman said they are taking that message to marketers in the entertainment industry, where audio investments are down. “Entertainment probably stands the most to gain,” Suchman said. “There's a visual bias, particularly for movies and TV shows. But the absence of video really triggers theater of the mind,” he said. When audio is done right, it allows entertainment advertisers “to connect in a very, very impactful way.”
Editor in Chief @ ADOTAT | AdTech | Marketing
4moyou can't do worse than the previous campaigns lol