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Bright Ideas

Radio: Reach Without the Expense

Posted by Josh Johnson on 3/28/16 10:58 AM
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The air of a car is usually filled with music and advertisements. But do people actually remember what they heard? You’d be surprised. As advertisers, this is a time when reaching the audience through ads is more important than ever; not getting your name out could be the end of your company. One of the most cost effective ways to get your message out is through radio. Nielsen did a study covering various forms of media and advertising and discovered that the reach of radio cannot be beat. Radio advertisements reach nearly 223 million adults listening weekly; that’s about 93% of all U.S. adults. When that many consumers are reached, messages are spread quickly.

With such a wide reach, radio seems like the obvious choice of many companies, right? Wrong. When marketers and ad planners examine their choices, TV, digital, and radio are typically the top three media options, but TV and digital control almost 70% of the market.

During an average week, adults spend 775 minutes with radio, that’s about 20% of their total time spent, yet only 8.2% of the total U.S. media ad spend in 2015 was used on radio. It seems as though the effectiveness of radio has gone greatly unnoticed. But radio’s possibilities have only just begun. Nielsen did a study and found that radio can generate up to 17-to-1 return on ad spend. For each $1 spent on radio advertisements, the return could be up to $17. Radha Subramanyam believes part of the high ROI most likely relates to radio’s relatively low pricing.

While the usage of some media outlets have seemed to decrease, radio has had the most consistent minutes of listening time across all age groups! This means that no matter which age group you’re aiming to reach, radio is a very efficient way to do so; and it’s pretty cheap too! Leslie Wood commented that she believes the reach of radio is so great due to people’s affinity with their radio stations…”it’s shocking how connected people are to their radio.” The tapping into the radio market will prove to be very prosperous. The overall message of Nielsen’s report is that radio remains a critical medium for advertisers and is on its way to competing for a larger share of the advertising pie. If your company is looking for a easy, low-priced, wide-reaching advertising medium, radio is the way to go!

 

Other Sources:

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/apples-to-apples-radio-reaches-the-most-americans.html
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/radios-returns-have-advertisers-across-categories-tuning-in.html
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/all-things-considered-comparable-metrics-offer-a-solid-line-of-sight-for-the-industry.html
http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/reports-downloads/2015-reports/comparable-metrics-report-q2-2015.pdf
http://adage.com/article/media/surprise-radio-beats-return-investment/292305/

Radio” by Alex Kahn is licensed under CC BY 4.0

 

 

Topics: Radio Production, Radio