Survey 4 radio data has now been released, with an interesting trend emerging behind the usual talk around station and network share. Whilst this has been the preferred success metric of radio, this type of data never reveals detail around the actual market audience variances.
Even though it is possible to identify key station opportunities per demographic and format when planning, it’s when when we dive deeper into the audience and reach data that we start see a subtle trend emerging.
More people tuning in to radio in 2019 BUT at a smaller average audience….. this means people tuning in to radio are on average listening less to the medium.
The biggest market that reveals this is in Melbourne. Survey 4 year on year average audience across the whole market is down 7.3%, while the cumulative reach is actually up 2.4%.
So with the hunger for radio content at a premium, and with digital radio audiences stagnating, more and more people are tuning into Podcasts.
The highlights of an ABC Podcast Research in October 2018 revealed some interesting insights – 91% of Australians knew what a podcast was and 33% listened to a podcast in the past month. Amongst podcast listeners, 59% said they were listening to more shows in 2018 vs 2017.
As early as two years ago, we were still talking about Millennials being an “on-demand” demographic. But it is becoming more and more clear that we ALL now live in an on-demand world. Everyone from our grandparents to our children are living on-demand.
Children of today are ever increasingly exposed to the use of Mobile phones and tablets from birth. Sad but true. It’s just the world we live in. So living on-demand is not just for Millennials, it’s for all of us.
Like Video on Demand has driven diversified revenue for TV, and introduced new entertainment avenues for consumers, Podcasts will become Radio’s true “secondary channel” and just like TV’s secondary channels, it can be used as a great way to add incremental reach to an existing Radio campaign.
Whilst podcast advertising is still in its infancy and not as targeted as one would think, there are still many benefits to the platform. Increasing reach to those who no longer listen to radio via podcast catch up, highly engaging and relevant environments in which to advertise in, more engaging and longer ad formats, and access to podcast back catalogues delivering higher engagement.
We also find that as a general rule, podcasts will deliver more on-line activity than conventional and general radio. It can also be a great tool to access audiences between Breakfast and Drive times.
