“Does anybody even listen to the Radio anymore?”
Of course you can pull out RAB’s latest research that shows 91% of adults 18 and older listen every month, making it the number one mass-reach audio medium; AM/FM Radio’s reach is greater than that of live and time-shifted TV, smartphones, connected TV devices, PCs, and tablets; Radio remains the most-used medium in the car, with 70% of people stating Radio is the audio source thy use while driving; 227,022,000 people 12+ listen to the Radio each week, and so on.
But how do you respond when a digital-addicted agency minion who never buys Radio says, “obviously nobody’s listening or your CPM wouldn’t be so low?”
What that doubting agency rep who has never bought Radio doesn’t understand – what seasoned agency buyers know only too well – is that Radio continues to deliver the most efficient, cost-effective ROI for advertisers looking for direct results.
As an agency VP and owner who sells it all, Radio, TV, cable, out-of-home, digital, social, SEO, SEM, PPC, etc., over the past 10 years, RADIO has consistently outperformed all other media. Not to say the others don’t work; I’ve also experienced first-hand, that when Radio is the foundational strategy, digital tactics layered in for support always perform better than they do on their own.
Radio’s lower CPM isn’t a reflection of lower value. It’s a reflection of greater efficiency due to the nature of the medium and the affordability of Crowd Delivery.
I was surprised to find zero search results for the term Radio Crowd Delivery. To do away with the dreaded eight-word question, we need to do a much better job of repositioning Radio’s greatest advantage.
Radio is a one-to-many broadcast medium.
OTT and Podcasts are a one-to-one digital medium.
It sounds sexy to a Gen Z media buyer that digital ads can be personally delivered to a defined audience using targeting algorithms. But that technology comes at a premium. It costs a lot.
Digital’s one-to-one delivery system also comes without the power of Crowd Delivery and the social component built in when tens or hundreds of thousands of people hear the same message at one time.
Add in the way Radio’s cost efficiency allows for significantly higher frequency, and you get a stickiness that only happens when you reach a massive audience delivered at scale.
The Crowd Delivery effect also creates instant awareness, social momentum, a positive mob mentality, and a shared buzz that fuels direct response – a level of shared influence that one-to-one digital ads simply cannot replicate.
In the late 1800s, if podcasts were how people listened to news and entertainment, H.G. Wells would never have written War of the Worlds. It was understood then that Radio had the ability to create mob-mentality, and it can accomplish the same today, in a much more positive way for advertisers looking to drive traffic to their stores and websites.
Mass Media = Direct Results
