The upgraded Total Audio measurement system, Radio 360, officially launched yesterday and the message from networks and buyers is a loud and clear one that speaks to the health of the medium.
“It is a watershed moment for the radio industry,” Nine Radio’s managing director Tom Malone told Mumbrella. “Because we are now getting – as the title of the survey suggests – a radio 360.”
Tom Malone
While Nine Radio’s station 2GB came off second best in Sydney’s Total Audio market in the third GfK survey of the year yesterday, it nabbed the most share in streaming audiences with 21.2%. It’s a similar story with 3AW in Melbourne, with a 15.3% share in Total Audio but 23.3% in streaming.
Malone was upbeat about the new perspectives these streaming datasets would bring to talk radio. But more importantly, he stressed that Radio 360 was about boosting advertisers’ confidence in the medium itself.
“We have been united as an industry, and this is a step that we wanted to take to make sure that advertisers feel even more comfortable buying and trading radio inventory for their clients,” he said.
“Radio 360 is the first time we’ve been able to split out the streaming audience, and with the overlay of data and technology, we’ll be able to trade that audience separately to the linear audience.
“It’s a question of when and how we do that, and that’ll be over the coming months as people get comfortable with the dataset.”
Nova Entertainment’s chief growth officer, Adam Johnson, shared a similarly positive sentiment about the function of Radio 360, especially in attracting more advertisers to the medium. This was under the backdrop of declining monthly metropolitan commercial radio ad revenue since the beginning of this year, on the back of a strong 2022.
Adam Johnson
“I think it would bring more advertisers into audio – who only maybe considered digital media as visual – because now we can reliably across our entire industry show the number of people that are having a connected audio experience,” Johnson said.
“We will see more investment, and that will come off the back of greater trust and appreciation of audio’s impacts on a marketing plan.”
Johnson added that while networks have always kept a close eye on their streaming numbers, Radio 360 was the first time where they could see the data in the context of a wider market. On whether that brought any new perspective to the networks’ programs, Johnson said that “there’s been no surprises, good or bad”.
“Overall, the benefit will be to the category and the sector, rather than necessarily as a way [for advertisers] to shift between stations or networks.
“Ultimately, we will start to obviously reflect the numbers that our agency and client partners see in Radio 360 within our own commercial conversations with them because it is the industry currency now – not necessarily as a way of trading on those numbers because we’re not there yet, but as a way to validate why digital audio should be on every single audio plan.”
So what do media buyers actually think of the system so far? EssenceMediacom’s head of marketplace at Melbourne, Anthony O’Callaghan, said while the system was only the first iteration, it was an “awesome” first step towards Total Audio measurement for them.
O’Callaghan
While buyers had data points from research – such as the annual Infinite Dial survey – that broadly provide audience figures in client conversations, there was a lack of post-campaign measurement opportunities.
“All the theory was there as to why people are consuming across different platforms, but there was nothing in terms of actually selling tangible results from campaigns,” O’Callaghan said.
Radio 360 is “measurement in one spot”, he added. It integrated data sets that used to come from radio surveys and streaming platform data, providing a further understanding of overlapping audiences and unique reach into Total Audio.
“Being able to work with commercial partners such as Southern Cross Austereo and Nova and see total audio and audience consumption across the broadcast signal and streaming online – – that’s really massive for us.”
Regarding how Radio 360 could change audio buying, O’Callaghan pointed out buyers need to keep a refreshed mindset and “plan for audience, not platforms”.
“Those coming up through the industry or those who have been playing against traditional panels, it’ll be a different approach for them, but they’ll start thinking outside of their job descriptions and outside of the channels they’ve learned in the past.”