Guest post: Digital radio has big potential for advertisers
Tomorrow sees Radio United, a five city outside broadcast featuring all commercial and public service broadcasters, to promote the launch of digital radio in Australia. In the guest posting, Commercial Radio Australia’s Joan Warner highlights its potential for advertisers and marketers.
What is digital radio? Put simply it’s all the stations you already know and love, plus new digital only stations such as Radar, Pink Radio, NovaNation, Koffee and The EDGE.
It’s digital quality sound and interference free reception, the ability to tune to the station by name, rather than frequency, and on some radios, the ability to pause and rewind a few minutes if you missed a song you like.
Plus you get scrolling news, sport and weather text and on screen based receivers like the new iRiver B30 you’ll be able to see the CD cover of the song that’s playing, the station logo, product shots, possibly weather and traffic maps and photos of a the radio presenter or guest in studio.
And digital radio is free – no subscriptions or signing up, you just need a new digital radio and tune in.
But before I go into more detail about digital radio, let me explain where Australian radio fits in the current media landscape. The radio sector is made up roughly of 48% am and 52% FM broadcasters. AM and sometimes FM spectrum is compromised in cities and built up areas.
Radio remains a favourite medium in Australia, with Neilsen survey figures showing, on average in 2008, Australians spent 17 hours and 2 minutes per week listening to commercial radio or 2 hours and 26 minutes per day.
Despite the global economic crisis, radio is one of traditional media’s most consistent performers. 2008-2009 advertising figures showed radio revenue is down by just over 3 percent, and is travelling better than other traditional media.
And Australia is fairing much better than the US and UK radio industries with 2008 figures showing a fall of 9% and 6% respectively compared to Australia which remained steady last year
Digital radio is free and yet offers more for listeners and advertisers with a more information and content rich broadcast experience.
Australian radio stations are already multi-media; they use their online presence to compliment their audio on air services. Their websites extend their reach to listeners and, for advertisers, across platforms. Digital radio will further extend this reach across digital technologies.
Radio advertising is quick to market, cost effective and highly targeted with a strong call to action. Some FMCG marketers may not have made full use of radio advertising because they have wanted customers to “see” their brand and logo.
Digital radio will be able to offer visual reinforcement to add to the already strong brand-building capabilities of radio. Digital radio’s scrolling text and, on some receivers, images on screen will not be a TV advertisement on radio but will emphasise the message of the audio.
Unlike digital television, where it took many years for the stations to introduce new digital programming, the radio industry has already launched original new DAB+ programming, with more to come.
A more intimate relationship with specific listener groups can be developed through utilising digital radio programming and the new ability to run parallel audio streams for specific events or time periods .
We will see more digital program partnering where a sponsor may, figuratively, “buy” the digital station for a period of time and own it, as Optus did with Pink Radio while the artist was touring in Australia. Smirnoff has just announced a digital radio sponsorship of a program on dance station NovaNation.
Commercial Radio Australia is in the final stages of the development production of technical and advertising production specifications for the synchronisation of “visual” and audio components of digital radio. The new production specifications developed with input from key industry stakeholders are designed to develop consistent audio and visual production values to meet digital radio’s unique needs and to ensure the correct visuals are displayed with the correct audio.
As an industry we’ve worked very closely with manufacturers of digital radios and retailers stocking the new products to ensure we have provided a co-ordinated approach about digital radio to listeners.
The digitalradioplus.com.au website is the digital radio information gateway, where listeners, retailers and all key stakeholders can easily access information about digital radio. The site displays the range of digital radios available on the market and where you can buy them and incorporates training modules for retailers and the advertising industry about what digital radio can deliver.
We’ve recently put together a very simple “What is Digital Radio” DVD featuring the Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina, for all retail outlets to play in store.
An SMS service is available to allow consumers to SMS their postcode to the mobile phone number 0409DRPLUS (0409 377587) to find out if digital radio is expected to be received in their location in their area.
Radio must to continue to evolve as a robust, free to air, anywhere, anytime medium as well as making use of any and all other technology platforms to reach our audience. To do any less would be to lose faith with the 98% of Australians who listen to free to air radio.
- Joan Warner is the CEO of Commercial Radio Australia.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Having seen the Radio National presenter shots on my iphone for podcasts, is it really a good idea to include presenter photos on digital radio? That’s why they are on radio not tv.
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Digital media is measurable and targeted – this is neither.
Radio hasn’t gone digital, they’ve simply created more stations/channels and a little bit more content
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