World's largest study reveals that radio is highly effective at driving short and long term demand for brands

Big Audio Datamine is a big data analysis which builds on results from the long-running and ongoing Radiocentre UK campaign effectiveness research project, Radiogauge. Since Radiogauge launched in 2008, over 1,000 campaigns have been measured using the standardised Radiogauge approach, for some of the UK’s – and the world’s – biggest advertisers. These individual advertiser-level Radiogauge results have played an extremely valuable role in demonstrating the effectiveness of the medium and growing confidence in radio advertising.

The final Big Audio Dataset that emerged from the data cleaning and alignment process to inform this Big Audio Datamine consisted of a total of 1,002 discrete campaigns for 463 individual brands across 14 sectors. The dataset features information relating to seven radio campaign planning factors, with each ad coded on the basis of 22 creative attributes. All of this data is then linked to five different effectiveness outcomes, from ad awareness through brand sentiment and finally response. In combination, all of these elements provided a total of 800,598 data points for analysis.

Thanks to all of the analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank conducted by Les Binet and Peter Field over the last decade, it is now generally accepted that the most successful campaigns use a mixture of long-term brand-building combined with shorter-term activation. Long-Term brand building is essentially creating future demand while shorter term activation is converting existing demand.

Accepting that these are the two main roles of marketing, the study reviewed different measures to understand how effectively radio advertising can both create future demand and convert existing demand.

Creating Future Demand

Building Brand Awareness

The study showed that the average uplift rate  for those people answering yes to the question “have you seen or heard any advertising for specific brands in the last four weeks?” is almost 50% higher among commercial radio listeners compared to the matched sample of non- listeners. It’s fair to say that, over the years, radio’s ability to reach out to wide audiences and drive awareness has generally been acknowledged among advertisers of all sizes. However, this analysis also allows us to review how radio performs against more-challenging-to-shift emotional metrics.

Building Brand Relevance

This measure of brand relevance (respondents who strongly agree “this brand is for people like me”) is on average 24% higher among people exposed to the radio campaigns compared to those that weren’t. This reflects how radio listeners often perceive themselves to be part of a wider audience community consisting of people who are just like them.

Enhancing Brand Trust

This sense of audience community has another important effect beyond just building brand relevance. The study clearly shows the benefit of this trusted relationship for advertisers with respondents who strongly agree “this is a brand I trust” is on average 32% higher among people exposed to the radio campaigns compared to those that were not exposed to the campaigns.

Converting Existing Demand

Driving Purchase Consideration

There is an average uplift rate of 18%  for respondents who are highly likely to consider buying the advertised brand after being exposed to the campaigns compared to respondents who were not exposed. This highlights how radio’s ability to drive ad awareness, brand relevance, and brand trust, also translates into purchase consideration.

Stimulating Online Response

The other measure of radio’s ability to convert existing demand that we have data for is online response. 21%of respondents searched online for details as a result of hearing the campaigns while 19% accessed the brand’s website.

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