All great things come to an end. Even the hyper-connected tech savvy consumer will eventually get tired of being on their phone constantly. A recent study from iHeartRadio sheds light on media consumption trends.
The results highlight the effects of “tech-fatigue”. This refers to consumers scaling back phone usage. This means less opportunities to reach your audience.
1. Digital Detox
The digital detox trend, coupled with data privacy and malware fears has made the mobile advertiser’s life difficult. 64% of participants in the study reduced their daily phone usage from 5 hours to 4 hours in the span of 14 months. That is a 20% drop in phone usage.
2. Broadcast Radio is Unaffected by Digital Detox
The listening rates for AM/FM radio have remained constant over the past 5 years. 90% of listeners have listened to the radio at the same consumption level, if not more.
3. Broadcast Radio Gets More Time Than Social Media
This one may be a bit hard to believe, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average daily time spent per adult (18+) in the U.S. on radio is 102 minutes and 51 minutes on social media. Radio gets twice as much engagement time than social media.
The moral of the story is to prevent your campaign from being hurt by trends such as tech fatigue. Having radio in your marketing mix ensures reach, scale, and reliability.
Call us today for great deals on radio spots! 562-439-3900
When advertisers are preparing a new spot for an audio advertisement, a lot of time is spent on deciding how long the spot should be. Westwood One wanted to see if spending a significant amount of time on deciding spot length had a strong enough impact to justify the time spent on this otherwise simple decision. What they found was that longer ads do perform better, but they do not always lead to a significant difference in creative scores.
Now that advertisement length is known to not drive a significant impact on the performance of the spot, attention can be turned to finding other ways to optimize audio advertisement performance. Three best practices were identified.
1. Less messages leads to better recall!
Millward Brown, a global leader in brand strategy consulting, advertising development and optimization, media effectiveness, and brand equity research, reports that more messages in an ad leads to a lower likelihood of a single message being recalled. Powerful numbers are provided to prove this point. The first message of an ad with four total messages only has a 43% recall rate compared to an ad with a single message.
This makes sense once you think about it. Cramming a bunch of messages into an ad makes it harder to remember anything that was in the ad. A 15 second ad with one message will likely perform far better than a 30 second ad with three messages.
Instead of taking a 30 or 60 second ad as an opportunity to say everything you can about the brand, take that time to communicate one central idea in an entertaining & memorable way. Think about Snickers’ advertisements. “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” One central idea that is communicated in a consistently entertaining & attention grabbing way. Time is not wasted talking about taste, size, packaging, price, or the myriad of messages they could communicate. Instead, the message is just to eat a Snickers when you’re hungry. Now that’s memorable.
2. Prioritize brand building, not sales activation
The Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Les Binet, and Peter Field, a Marketing Consultant, studied the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) database of case studies to prove this point. They explain that sales activation campaigns focus on customers who are likely to buy in the very near future which is accomplished by leveraging existing brand equity to drive sales.
They make the analogy that sales campaigns are like carbs; they produce a sugar rush-like short term sales boost followed by a crash. Sales campaigns are easy to measure because results tend to be immediate and direct.
Similarly, branding campaigns are compared to protein; a sustainable and long lasting source of energy. Brand building is more difficult and requires greater investment, however, it is critical. This involves the process of creating mental associations and beliefs that ultimately leads to the preference of one brand compared to the next. To build a brand, mass media like television and radio are necessary. This is because the objective is to communicate to everyone in the category, not just people in the market right now.
The difference compared to sales campaigns is that brand building sales effects grow and compound, becoming a main driver of long term growth. The ideal mix of sales and branding campaigns should be 60% branding and 40% sales. This makes sense because that means more brand equity is being built than being spent on sales activation.
3. Focus Creative on Emotional Claims Instead of Rational
This may sound backwards, but let’s stop and think about it. Becoming top of mind for consumers is an issue of reach. Creating brand likability and understanding is the product of good advertising. Does this sound like a feat that is accomplished through dumping facts or telling a captivating story that touches the heart?
The Binet & Field analysis reveals that emotional branding performs more strongly across all metrics, including: awareness, commitment, trust, differentiation, fame, and image. Emotional advertising and storytelling creates bonds and associations more efficiently than throwing a bunch of facts about the brand or product at the audience. Naturally, these efficiencies translate to an increase in the bottom line. Creating emotional bonds with the target market yields higher long-term sales, share, pricing power, and loyalty.
To sum up, it’s not the spot length that matters. Focus on the number of messages, branding and sales mix, and emotional claims in your audio creative.
Give us a call 562-439-3900 so that we can create high quality audio creative for you and get you great deals on media placement!
It’s 2020! And at Media Partners Worldwide we are still experiencing a lot of interest in radio and audio, and with life life-changing technology at our fingertips like our smartphones, AirPods, voice assistants and smart speakers, it continues to thrive and be the king of mass reach!
According to Nielsen, Radio is still the #1 reach medium, and has held its top position consistently for 16 quarters. Moreover, mobile devices, streaming, and podcasts have fueled the demand for content that can go wherever the consumer goes.
So what trends do we see in 2020?
Fragmentation of all media not affecting radio
Radio may be the king of mass reach, but it also commands a majority of our attention. In Nielsen’s Total Audience Report Q2 2019, time spent with radio among adults 18 and older is nearly 12 hours per week, while adults spend just under six hours a week with their TV-connected devices. They say we’re living in the golden age of TV, but there are only so many hours in a day one can set aside for binge-watching. Radio is there to entertain and inform when you are in your car, at the gym or wherever you go, helping to keep AM/FM radio as the #1 in-car entertainment choice.
Political Season with News/Talk driving the listening
Even though, pop music and country is reaching more of the younger audience, News/Talk was by far the most listened to genre last year according to Nielsen with a 9.5% share of listeners among persons 6+ in 2019. Though it’s held the top spot among general audiences for almost a decade, listening typically spikes around key election years, and 2020 will be no different. Radio has proven itself as a trustworthy resource for consumers who want to stay informed at the global and community level, and as usual, radio will not disappoint.
Looking to reach loyal, highly-involved listeners? Media Partners owns inventory on many News/Talk network that are jam-packed with top stations across the country.
Demand for Attribution on Radio
Attribution is a buzz word for 2020 and what everyone is looking for and wants with radio/audio.advertising has made it easy for marketers to precisely track campaign response, and that granular level of detail has raised the bar for other media platforms. At Media Partners Worldwide, we provide our ADTRACTION software so we can measure and pinpoint how your campaigns drive traffic to make smarter creative and media buying decisions, so you can get the most of your dollars spent.
Radio is still relevant as a medium for many advertisers, with less fragmentation, more attention and now attribution is possible.
The Television Bureau of Advertising announced in late 2019 that it is planning to lead an industry wide change involving the transition from a rating-based to an impression-based system of audience measurement for television. Their plan is to implement these changes in 2020. Is it possible that radio will follow in suit?
Many big players in the television world are on board with the change. This includes NBC, CBS, ABC, and other television media giants. Ratings got the job done in an era of limited media platforms, but simply won’t cut it in today’s fragmented and measurable media landscape.
The problem that the TBA is trying to solve stems from the local TV market being based on cost per rating point. This is calculated by taking a program’s Average Quarter Hour Persons and divides them by the population. This is called a rating. These ratings are shrinking. An impression-based system solves this problem by providing more granular measurement that minimizes ratings compression. Costs would then be based on a cost per thousand impressions system. The bottom line is to give media sellers more power when it comes to pricing and simplify the job for advertisers when they are buying media by having everything on a common metric. A large part of this transition is educating key stakeholders on the benefits of the switch.
Now, the radio industry isn’t just closing their eyes and covering their ears while all of this is going on. Brad Kelly, Managing Director of Nielsen Audio says, “Advertisers are telling us having a commonality of metrics would ease cross-media planning and buying, and help remove friction from their processes.” Kelly is not the only decision maker for the whole industry of radio. There needs to be a consensus in the marketplace for any change to start being implemented.
As of now, there are no signs that radio is either for or against a change in metrics in their respective industry. However, one can only imagine they are feeling the pressure to innovate as they watch their fellow traditional media giants make the switch.
Industry leaders like Tom Langmyer say, “TV and radio are the only mediums that typically don’t transact based on CPM calculations, but we have the data.” A metric that can highlight the value of using radio as an advertising platform could be exactly what the industry needs. However, radio “must continue to sell integrated marketing plans, sponsorships, events, and unique experiences that aren’t valued solely on impressions. That’s where smart sales and marketing people provide even more value,” Langmyer states.
This transition allows for simplification when buying and selling media, accurate targeting and evaluation, less friction in media planning. Is this decade going to be the comeback for TV and radio?
Instagram often gets neglected by marketers because they believe it will be of no use to their respective business or that their target market is not on there. With over one billion monthly active users, it is safe to say that at least some members of the chosen target audience is present. There are five big reasons to start including Instagram in marketing plans.
Target market access: with the one billion monthly users mentioned above, combined with social media’s ability to communicate personable messages, this is a great medium to find your target audience.
Intuitive: Instagram’s user interface is powerful and simple. There is no learning curve or training necessary. For the most part, you can jump right in and get to work.
Free: It costs nothing to make an Instagram, publish content on it, and see an endless amount of content. There is also an option to do paid advertising on Instagram as well. The core functions are free, though.
No equipment necessary: Smartphones are sophisticated enough that an expensive camera, studio, or any other content production tools are not necessary. Creativity, patience, and the slightest photography know-how will get the job done at superb quality
Automation capabilities: Adding another platform to the marketing mix can sound like a lot of extra work, but it really isn’t thanks to recent developments from Facebook, Instagram’s owner. There are automation dashboards that allow Instagram posts to be scheduled ahead of time, in bulk with tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.
To summarize, start using Instagram in your marketing plan because it’s free, easy to use, doesn’t require fancy equipment, and your target market is on there!
Instagram often gets neglected by marketers because they believe it will be of no use to their respective business or that their target market is not on there. With over one billion monthly active users, it is safe to say that at least some members of the chosen target audience is present. There are five big reasons to start including Instagram in marketing plans.