Radio advertising has been an effective way for brands to reach audiences for decades. But measuring radio advertising performance with data has always been a challenge.
Luckily, technology has been developed that provides a way for radio operators and salespeople to show their advertisers that advertising on their stations works. With these tools, stations can now obtain rich radio analytics they can share with advertisers. This data measures how impactful and effective an ad that runs over the air is by correlating the time period when an ad runs with a boost in web traffic.
Having radio analytics at your disposal can help you retain current customers and attract new business. We saw this with Hubbard Radio St. Louis, which won a critical deal by leveraging insights from its advertisements. But to achieve this type of success, you need to understand the ins and outs of radio analytics. In this blog, we’ll discuss the following:
- Metrics and data points in radio analytics
- Tools you can use to track this data
- What Veritone is doing to help stations prove performance
Key metrics and data points to measure for radio analytics
When running ads on the radio, there are several key metrics that technology can help stations track. In doing so, advertisers today can better understand exactly how their ads are performing.
Here are the metrics you can measure for radio ad tracking:
| Return On Ad Spend | Also called ROAS for short, this helps you determine what return you are getting by subtracting ad revenue from ad investment, then dividing it by your ad investment. |
| Average Ad Costs | Determine how much you’re spending on ads to help you determine your ROAS. |
| Ad Visits | Uncover how many visits to a website your ads generate. |
| Creative | Track all your creative variants to narrow down the best-performing one. |
| Daypart | Look at the ad throughout the different times of the day to see which returns the highest engagement. |
| Placement | Know exactly where your ads are being placed within a broadcast. |
| Total Ads | See how many ads you ran at any given time. |
| Total Visits | Determine how many website visits you received during a campaign period. |
There are other ways you can measure the performance of an ad campaign. For example, when an ad runs, you can look at gross sales, site traffic, or foot traffic. But an advertiser might also be running digital ads. To differentiate between the two, an advertiser can create a baseline without running any radio ads; when they launch a campaign, you can see the difference and impact. But how exactly do you track all of this data?
Tools and technology for radio analytics
Apart from the production and management of a broadcast, solutions that deal with radio analytics allow you to track broadcast content and provide ad attribution analysis. Automating the processing and tracking of your broadcast content means you can source airchecks faster. Westwood One did just that, reducing their four-hour aircheck process to a matter of minutes. This allows their staff to focus on other critical areas of their day-to-day activity and fosters more profound relationships with their clients, increasing retention.
With all of this content stored and transcribed, that enables search, which can accelerate resurfacing past content to repurpose for other uses. Past content can be used for future broadcasts, to engage with listeners on social media, and for licensing purposes, to name a few examples.
On the ad attribution front, historically, it was challenging to prove ad efficacy when a radio ad ran. Now, technology can correlate when an ad runs to increased searches related to the ad and website or in-store traffic. These new radio attribution tools enable stations to reduce churn and grow their business by earning more of their current advertisers’ marketing budgets and onboarding new clients with this invaluable proof-point data.
The role of Veritone Attribute in radio analytics
Veritone Attribute, part of our portfolio of media and entertainment solutions, is a turnkey broadcast attribution solution that helps broadcasters’ radio campaigns by correlating an ad with web lift in near-real time. With Attribute, stations can track and visualize campaign data, tying it to responses advertisers receive through increased web traffic. As a result, broadcasters can use this tool to obtain more significant insights to share with advertisers and solve some of the most difficult challenges they face. Attribute helps you:
- Automate and prove the lift radio advertising gives clients.
- Compete with data-driven insights and mediums, including digital audio, OTT video, social, and podcasting.
- Effectively prove ROI to grow ad share as part of a client’s marketing budget and increase renewals.
Stations can obtain near-real-time data collection, meaning shortly after a broadcast is aired, they can access how an ad performed. This data can be visualized in custom dashboards that station staff can easily use to track performance and share reports with clients. And if there’s any issue, Veritone provides training and support to ensure your staff masters the art of monitoring radio data analytics.
Best practices for using radio analytics
When you have the right tools to capture this data that doesn’t automatically mean you will become successful. You must still adhere to best practices to make the most out of the data you can now capture and apply.
Once you have access to radio analytics, here is the top thing you should do:
- Define Goals: To understand how to make sense of the numbers, you should figure out an advertiser’s main goals for each campaign. For example, is it to drive website traffic, increase sales, or generate leads? This will ultimately impact creative and force you to look at different KPIs to prove success.
- Create Benchmarks: As we mentioned, you can easily create benchmarks to determine the impact of your radio campaign. This is essential to ensuring data doesn’t become contaminated by any digital campaigns advertisers run concurrently.
- Act Like A Consultant: Don’t simply share the data with your advertisers but provide feedback and guide them into areas they can double down or optimize campaigns. Doing so will deepen your relationships with clients as they gain confidence in coming to you as their expert in advertising on the radio.
Given that most advertisers run multichannel campaigns with a combination of broadcast, digital, and social, let’s look at how radio fits into marketing strategies today.
The role of radio analytics in the digital age
Radio advertising remains relevant despite the proliferation of digital channels, as discussed in another blog. Radio’s audience reach sets it apart from other channels, touching more than 80% of Americans. And with radio, there’s less noise than with social media or digital advertising channels. As a result, people listening to the radio are more engaged, making it easier for audiences to deliver a powerful message and retain it.
But how exactly should advertisers use radio in conjunction with digital channels? Radio analytics can help inform digital advertising strategies by providing something to compare against. For instance, an advertiser might find tremendous success pushing website traffic through radio channels over others. This can help them adjust the intent and goals for a digital campaign to help maximize the spending of the overall budget.
A modern approach to radio analytics
Radio analytics are critical in helping you retain and build deeper relationships with your current customers. But moreover, it enables you to win more business by providing a performance record to illustrate the channel’s value. In doing so, you can more easily convince advertisers to dedicate part of their budgets toward radio.
Veritone Attribute helps you track, visualize, and capture this data in the dashboard and reports so you can easily showcase performance. When a campaign doesn’t perform well, you can act as that consultant to help them adjust creative, placement, and more to achieve the advertiser’s goals. Reach out today and learn more about Veritone Attribute.
Further Reading:
Hubbard Radio St. Louis Lands $70K Renewal With Lift Data From Veritone Attribute
Bonneville Seattle Earns Key Account’s Business With Veritone Attribute
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