Demonstrating Radio Audience Response
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If I got my pick of questions to ask an exec in the radio industry, this would be one: Do you know where your web site visitors are going?
The answers to this question can show at least a couple things: 1) an indication people don't like your web site and are leaving, and 2) what type of response your radio web site generates.
Don't think we need to get too deep into #1.
Number 2 is another topic though; it delves into how your web site acts as an advertising vehicle. Knowing the answer to "what type of response your web site generates" is critical for winning advertisers.
Here are examples. WBTS-FM, Atlanta management should send me a "thank you" for the 3,600 visitors I sent to its web site in the past thirty days. 4 Elements Radio in Trinidad should send a "thank you" too, for my sending 2,385 visitors to it during that same time.
I can continue with "Urban Hip Hop Radio," which received 1,679 visitors. 106 KMEL was sent 1,668, and Tulsa's "92.1 The Beat" saw 1,667 people that Audio Graphics' RadioRow.com sent their way. These are on the short-list from 88 stations in the Hip Hop genre that received visitors at RadioRow. I know, because I track.
Do you track outbound links on your station's web site? Do you know how many times a visitor to your site embraced a link that you suggested? Does the advertiser who gave you money to run their ad know how many people were sent to them, without relying on their web site's analytics program?
Numbers. For years radio industry sales execs would throw them around to sweeten conversations as advertisers handed them money. Arbitron numbers made a radio industry account exec feel powerful. They were usually big numbers and connected to fancy words like "cume" and "average quarter hour."
This type of radio-speak is from the "good old years" that don't happen anymore. Today it's difficult to offer yourself as an advertising solution when a simple question like "How many people will respond to my ad?" can't be answered - especially when there are alternative ad-vehicles that do track response.
Get to know the numbers at your radio station's web site. Know how many of the people who visit click on which banner. Know if a link positioned "top-page-left" draws as many clicks as that same link positioned on the right side at the top of the page.
This is not a call for radio to abandon the Arbitron ratings system. It should be read as a reflection of how important "other numbers" are becoming when you're trying to convince an advertiser that their money is best spent with you.
Some radio industry CEOs, like Cox's Robert Neil, think radio will see an upbeat year in 2010. What they mean is next year won't be as bad as 2009, which is really not the same as "upbeat."
No executive in the radio industry is saying that the audience numbers being used are outdated estimates, and that the figures don't carry as much weight with media buyers as just a few short years ago. Scaring me the most is we are not seeing radio industry execs looking anywhere besides PPM for the numbers they will deliver to advertisers.
If spoken by prospective advertisers, "Do you know where your web site visitors are going?" can be translated easily. They're asking, "Can you count the people who respond to my ad? You know, the ad that I'm going to give you money to run for me."
Demonstrating radio audience response will soon become more valuable than estimating the audience. As it grows in value, you are more likely to lose a sale if you can't answer the question just asked.
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From: Steven Burgess
The rational business solution to this is to move the transactional business (business that must be bought using syndicated audience data) from expensive account managers to low-cost transactional platforms such as those that are being built by Media Commerce Systems. The account managers should be re-purposed to selling high-margin local and regional businesses that can use emerging measurement technologies such as fused web and traditional analytics. |
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