Nielsen: Just Because it’s Easy to Measure Doesn’t Mean it’s Effective
A new Insights piece from Nielsen looks at radio and podcasting’s value to advertisers. Titled, Everyone. Everywhere., it begins, “In the era of constant digital scrolling and fragmented attention, it’s easy for marketers to be lured by the ‘new and next.’ We often prioritize platforms based on how easily we can track a click, sometimes 
forgetting that ease of measurement doesn’t always equal effectiveness. Yet there is a legacy powerhouse that continues to outperform nearly every other medium in the one metric that matters most: actual human reach. That’s radio.” The piece underscores radio’s reach, zeroing in on the fact that radio doesn’t just reach older demos, every month it reaches the 87% of adults 18-34 – the demo often described as “digital only.” Additionally, the report says, “Americans spend nearly four hours a day with audio. Of the ad-supported time advertisers can actually buy, radio and podcasts account for 82%, while streaming music services account for only 16%. An audio plan built without both radio and podcasts misses most of the audience.”
But what about digital’s ease of attribution? The report says a survey of marketers ranked radio last out of 10 channels in perceived effectiveness, “yet it delivered a weighted ROI of $2.00, second only to social media at $2.22 and ahead of TV, display, search and CTV. Podcasts performed well too, at $1.49, comparable to TV and display. The lesson is to scale into digital without substituting away from high-reach, high-return platforms like radio.” See the rest of the story here.
radio (including AM/FM streams), the historic spoken-word listening leader. Edison adds, “Spoken-word listening time among Americans 13-34 is dominated by podcasts, with 53% of time being spent with that specific platform, versus 23% of time going to AM/FM radio. Radio does rebound among 35–54-year-olds but still falls short with 47% of their spoken-word listening time going to podcasts and 35% going to AM/FM radio. Our story completely changes among Americans ages 55+, who spend the majority of their spoken-word listening time with AM/FM radio, at 55%, and less than one-quarter of their time with podcasts at 22%. The dominance of podcast listening among younger age cohorts can certainly be attributed to their preference for on-demand content that also includes visual elements, qualities specific to podcasts and not radio. AM/FM radio carries a wide variety of spoken-word offerings, ranging from sports play-by-play and sports talk, NPR programming, news and entertainment talk shows, to political talk.”
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