“LiSTNR will be the most dominant audio app 5 years from now”: SCA’s Grant Blackley
Following the release of Southern Cross Austereo’s H122 results, SCA CEO Grant Blackley has pegged the affiliation switch to Ten, a growing thirst for premium content, and a notable influence of the attention economy on consumer behaviour as causation for bolstered profit and audience numbers.
Speaking to Mumbrella earlier today, Blackley highlighted several core challenges faced by the media industry, some of which he believes have been deftly circumvented by audio, and therefore by SCA.
“The major challenge for the industry has been the continued pace of recovery. What radio enjoys is a balance between both national income and support from advertisers. To that end, the shape of the recovery for audio and more specifically for radio is often different from many of our other peers in the media industry. So TV is fundamentally led by the national recovery, and fundamentally the radio industry probably has the widest and deepest exposure to the SME market of most media sectors, probably only on par with newspapers,” Blackley said.
The nationwide resurgence of the return to office has spelled strong listenership, with enhanced figures in H1 partly down to shifting post-COVID consumer behaviours.
“Over the last six months we’ve seen the commute come back to the market – that’s been very positive for consumption. Secondly, the habits that they [consumers] adopted within COVID of listening across other IP-enabled devices have continued to be resilient, so you’ve seen consumption come back. Consumption’s at an all-time high for the industry.
“What we’ve seen in the last 12 months is a growing thirst for premium content, and LiSTNR has unlocked that. From Nine across to 10, digital audio revenues and consumption is up substantially.”
Commenting on the affiliation switch to Ten, Blackley highlighted the bolstered market representation conferred from the switch has given way to a more enhanced advertiser offering, with a more ‘scaled’ and ‘simplistic’ repertoire of stations in the portfolio.
“Network 10 has continued to offer us good content for our teams to obviously excel. The power ratio of revenue to an audience that our sales teams across all of our offices have delivered is second to none in the TV market. They’re a highly skilled and focused group selling good content. Effectively that’s good for 10 and that’s also good for SCA.
“We’ve been delighted with the partnership with 10, and we’ve also expanded our remit by representing Northern New South Wales, Tasmania, and Mildura along the way. Adding those sales representations to our overall mix has made us more whole than how we started the year.
So we did start the year with representation of only three aggregated markets, plus Tasmania. What we now have is effectively more representation, which means that that whole repertoire of stations is far more appealing for an advertiser and agency because it’s more scaled and it’s more simplistic,” Blackley said.
When asked which broader sociocultural trends have given way to the strong segment recovery seen in the H1 results, Blackley noted that consumer behaviour as it pertains to audio consumption reflects a number of post-COVID shifts that the entirety of the market has felt.
“I think one of the positives coming out of the last couple of years with COVID is that people have had the time to understand and explore their audio habits. To that end, more people are listening to more audio. So whilst radio has retained its resilience, we’ve extended that resilience across multiple devices and hence ended up controlling the transformation of radio.
What we’ve done on top is add substantial layers of on-demand content. that’s content from our radio stars across to unique and very specific podcasts that are either large by nature, like Hamish and Andy, right through to specific messages and podcasting for niche areas as well.”
“Many of our peer set in media, are not necessarily growing, they are contracting because they have a consumption problem. Audio doesn’t have a consumption problem and neither does radio,” Blackley said.
Blackley was optimistic about the future of LiSTNR moving into H2 and 2023. Three core strategies were mentioned as the priority for SCA’s offering leading into the remainder of 2022.
“I think LiSTNR will be the most dominant audio app five years from now. I think it’s a very bright future moving forward. I think we’re accelerating at this point in time towards greater scale.”
“We believe over the next 24 months that our signed-in user base, our known audience will actually move to 1.5 million signed-in users, which is more than double what we have today. We’ve obviously enjoyed strong growth in our broadcast radio product, with audiences up 20% over the last five surveys. So we want to continue to drive that agenda particularly in key markets and in key formats so that we become more relevant to the broader advertising and agency community.
“Secondly, we want to accelerate LiSTNR, which as I’ve mentioned is core to SCA and sits in the center of our business. In adopting a digital audio first strategy, we feel that will unlock further growth moving forward as this product naturally scales at the rate in which its scaling at this point in time.
“Thirdly, I think over the year, we’re going to continue to see this change in consumption. And the habit is that we are listening through a more connected device. Therefore as an operator, we know more about our audience, and we have more data and insights about our audience, which gives us more opportunity to sell that audience very specifically to the needs and requirements of a broader base of people wanting to invest in audio.”
When asked what competitive advantage SCA had in relation to its advertising business, Blackley noted that the majority of briefs received being in line with the dominant audio demographic meant LiSTNR’s audience was understood as highly engaged and desirable for advertisers.
“Our competitive advantage is that about 70% of briefs that come to us are in the 25-54-year-old group, and that is consistent with the broader market, where about 70% of all briefs are targeted towards 25 to 54’s. We are the leader in radio broadcasting for 25 to 54’s.
“We are most importantly growing our leadership through on-demand content because we are a premium operator with LiSTNR. So to that end, I think that all goes well for the market. And I think we have growing importance and responsibility to serve the market with a greater depth of content, and a high level of consistency.”
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