WWO: Studies Show AM/FM and Tax Prep Services a Good Match
The latest blog post from the Cumulus Media | Westwood One’s Audio Active Group contains data from five studies that indicate AM/FM radio is a good medium to advertise tax preparation services. Some of the findings include: 1) AM/FM radio is an ideal medium for the tax preparation category: Heavy
AM/FM radio listeners are 39% more likely to pay $301+ to have their taxes prepared and show greater familiarity, interest, consideration, and usage of tax category brands; 2) AM/FM radio ads drive site traffic for tax preparation brands: In the LeadsRx attribution study of a tax preparation service’s multi-wave campaign, AM/FM radio generated between a 43% to 47% increase in website traffic; 3) Branding early and often in tax preparation service ads drives more site traffic: LeadsRx found the top three creative executions that drove site traffic for a tax preparation service had the marketer’s brand name within the first five seconds of the ad; and 4) compared to other radio formats, a 2023 tax prep campaign on news/talk and sports stations realized a higher percentage share of interactions than the percentage share of their Nielsen ad impressions. See the blog post here.
“while AM/FM radio represented only 16% of the media budgets, AM/FM radio generated 25% of site and search traffic.” Further, it discovered that “AM/FM radio delivered +58% greater site traffic than its share of spend. In contrast, TV delivered -11% less conversion lift than its share of the budget.” A Nielsen sales effect study of a campaign for a major retailer matched Portable People Meter panel data with credit card data to reveal how TV and AM/FM radio impacted sales. The AM/FM radio-only segment, those consumers only reached by the AM/FM radio campaign, had 3 times the sales lift of the consumers reached by the TV ads. Consumers only exposed to the TV ads generated a +4.6% sales increase. Those who saw both the TV ads and the AM/FM radio ads had a +4.8% sales lift. The segment only exposed to the AM/FM radio ads had an outsized +13.4% increase in sales.