Page 33 - Adnews Magazine January 2022

Investigation
content they consume as they become more familiar with using their streaming platform of choice and as publishers become better at guiding their audiences around their offering.
“For advertisers, this presents a greater volume of inventory to play around in, ultimately presenting an opportunity to better tailor their communications environmentally and to start thinking about tactical media buying strategies such as sequential creative messaging.”
Other radio networks across Australia saw similar trends from listen- ers, with Nova Entertainment CEO Peter Charlton saying the pandemic demonstrated the loyalty of radio audiences.
“Despite everything, they’ve come out of 2021 largely unscathed,” Charlton says.
“We obviously saw a shift in how and when they listened in line with their new routine, with desktop and smart speaker consumption growing considerably, and workday picking up reflecting the changing pattern of lockdown life.
“But that daily habit of consuming and connecting with their favourite shows never wavered, they just looked for new ways to do it. And now that life is returning to normal, so too are our pre-COVID-19 numbers and occasions for listening.
“So, if nothing else, 2021 has proven to me that when it comes to radio, old habits die hard. In fact, it’s our broadcast audience’s desire to stay connected to the format they love that’s ultimately helped accelerate their digital audio uptake.”
Advertisers are starting to follow audiences to new platforms with a shift in where and how they are allocating advertising dollars. According to IAB’s ‘Audio Advertising State of the Nation: Wave 5’ report, audio is taking up more advertising dollars.
The report surveyed more than 200 decision-makers or influencers in the allocation of marketing spend and had either placed or planned audio advertising campaign. It found that audio is playing a more con- sistent role in media plans than it did five years ago, with 69% of media agencies found to have streaming digital audio advertising as a significant or regular part of their activity and 36% had podcast advertising as a significant or regular part of their activity — up from 33% last year.
Additionally, 62% of media agencies have used ads within streaming services this year, up from 51% last year, while 63% have used ads within live radio streams, up from 48% last year.
However, Charlton says this growth in digital won’t necessarily come at the expense of the broadcast audience.
“Rather than it being a case of ‘either/or’, we know people are genu- inely making more time in their day for audio,” he says.
“So, if we’re all listening to more content than ever before and our expectation of accessibility isn’t going anywhere, the only real limit to digital audio’s potential is how quickly advertisers can respond to it.”
ARN’s Lauren Joyce argues that despite the rise of new technologies giving users significantly more content options, radio will continue to have a place.
“If the changes to our lifestyles and media consumption habits across the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that at the end of the day, we all crave live and local content,” Joyce says.
“We want to feel connected to our community, and we rely on humans who we can relate to deliver that connection. The global streaming plat- forms have some incredible product developments that try to emulate the radio experience.
“The reality is, radio is inherently social and the level of audience involvement, and thus the connection to the community that can be created via the medium, is something that the large streaming plat- forms would find difficult to emulate without shifting their entire business model.”
Charlton says Nova Entertainment anticipates digital audio revenue to grow by at least 50% a year during the next four years, alongside broadcast radio revenue recovery to pre-COVID-19 levels.
“There’s certainly an opportunity to improve creative by approaching each channel within total audio quite separately and specifically.”
Publicis Media Exchange Brooke Aniseko, commercial director
of performance
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