With significant changes in the past decade, the way we use technology in our daily lives has changed drastically, and the way we listen to music is no exception. While music subscription companies such as Spotify or Pandora have taken care of the need to buy and burn CD’s, AM/FM radio has not been made irrelevant. Found in a recent study conducted by Westwood One, AM/FM radio remains dominant with nearly two hours of daily time spent among persons 18+. Pandora’s daily time spent is 12 minutes while Spotify is slightly less at 10 minutes daily. The same study states the constant exposure that the average person experiences with radio on a daily basis led to what some would consider shocking results in the Q3 2018 Share of Ear audience share study. While some may assume advertising on these subscription based music companies is a practical way to reach a consumer, the audience exposure from AM/FM radio is actually eight times bigger than Spotify and Pandora combined.
Retail is an industry that remains constant and dominant in radio advertising. On a regional level, The Radio Broadcasters of Chicago recently aired a :60 clip across 40 stations in the area from Brent Stern - the VP of Marketing & IT at Rogers & Hollands Jewelers, discussing how radio is a primary advertising avenue for reaching customers. According to the recent article in Radio Ink:
“Radio is a big part of our marketing mix,” said Stern. “Chicago is unique in that it has an unbelievable breadth of radio stations. These stations provide the most efficient way to get our message across.”
This is not going unnoticed by major retailers and advertisers across the country, either. Especially with the end of the year approaching, major department stores continually utilize the radio and find major success during the holiday season. So much success, in fact, according to Inside Radio, Thanksgiving deals were estimated to provide around 20% of yearly sales for companies J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. With this amount of success, large scale advertising agencies such as Proctor and Gamble fully intend to not only continue this strategy but increase it in the coming year.
RadioMax is no stranger to the benefit of radio advertising, specifically when it involves digital advertising. Serving as a mobile platform for independent radio, RadioMax offers stations the ability to deliver instant calls-to-action with meaningful and impactful responses on their mobile app at the exact time a commercial, promo, or song plays on-air - all of which is tracked and measured. With the aforementioned studies pointing towards the continued success of both traditional and digital radio advertising, it comes as no surprise the spending on these mediums is projected to grow. Statista shows an increasing trend in radio spending, with the projected amount to reach an excess of $18.8 billion by 2021.
