San Diego Jayebitrons Are In And AM-FM Radio Wins By Many Miles

Sometimes multiple data points all appear to converge, calling out for back-of-napkin research.  Your humble correspondent is delighted to do the math for you.

Blogger Jennifer Lane points to an "interesting new study by GroupM Next comparing broadcast and internet radio listeners. (GroupM Next is the “forward thinking, innovation unit” of GroupM, the largest conglomerate of Ad Agencies in the world. The unit studies consumer use of new platforms and provides insight to agencies on usage of such.) 

"The study reveals several positive facts about the Internet radio audience. The average age of an Internet radio listener is 34 years old versus the average age of a broadcast radio listener which is 47 years old. Since the average income was found to be similar in both groups, the Internet radio audience is more affluent given their substantially younger age.

"86% of Internet radio listeners listen to free services and have never paid to listen. They don’t mind ads, and don’t try to avoid them, and are twice as inclined to make a purchase after hearing an ad. In fact, 29% of Internet radio listeners have purchased something they heard advertises, versus 14% of broadcast radio listeners."

Today's Inside Radio reports on a Hivio San Diego presentation by Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds who said the the entire San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.  

That is when I got the napkin out.

• Say that in an average quarter hour in San Diego roughly 15% of all people are listening to AM-FM radio.  That would be a napkin-calculated average persons of about 354,000.
• Assume that 90% of the total population of San Diego cumes a radio station at least once in an average week.  That would put the total cume persons using AM-FM radio in an average week at 2.1 million.

Five to ten thousand people vs 354,000, let alone 2.1 million????

Is there any wonder why terrestrial radio is only billing 5-7% of its total revenues from interactive?

No wonder online ad rates are so low.  No one's listening, if you believe my trusty napkin.

Hey, you "forward-thinking innovators:"  caveat emptor!
 

Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM

Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM

Improve Your Efforts

Arbitron's Bill Rose and Edison's Larry Rosin shared more insights into "Infinite Dial 2012" Sunday at Kurt Hanson's RAIN Summit in Las Vegas. 

Country may rank #1 in "Radio Today" listening levels, but when it comes to engagement, we're tied with six other formats for FIFTH place!

The country format is, sad to say, "just average" when it comes to getting the random radio listener in their town to sign up for email loyalty efforts and we have a lot to learn from rock, religious, public radio and urban stations in the typical radio metro.

Social is certainly growing for radio, but its impact as a marketing tool on listening prospects is HALF the reach of email.

The 2013 data is telling us to spend at least as much time with email marketing - if not twice as much as you do with social media.

We have work to do.

Reasons To Simulcast On Your Steam

A great discussion yesterday at Kurt Hanson's Las Vegas RAIN Summit on monetization of mobile and streaming media.

Key takeaways for me:

1.  That email database you've been building and using for two decades or more is still much more important and valuable to you than social media.  Use your social to grow and refine it.

2.  Stop with the irritating/time spend listening-killing ad insertion and just increase your broadcast rates to compensate for the additional streaming audience, which is growing and driving more use of your radio station, as A&O&B's Roadmap 2013 of country radio users has tracked for years.

Listeners are loudly telling us that they don't enjoy our streams as much as they do our over-the-air programming:

If I Ruled The World

I'd make every radio owner, manager and programmer sign up for Pandora and spend thirty minutes per day with it and then switch over to their stations' online stream.

One of the two will captivate you with its flow and consistency and the other will treat you to clipped songs, the same Ad Council PSA's over and over, a time delay which makes it impossible to win their contests and promotions, technical glitches and snags.

With one, the two quarter hours will will seem to speed by and you might even forget to turn it off.

With the other, you'd likely become so frustrated with the experience that you'll probably switch it off early.

Aren't we supposed to be the "TSL" experts?

Do You Feel Like A Wounded Gorilla?

Mel Karmazin, always the master of hyperbole: "...terrestrial radio, though wounded, they are still the 800 pound gorilla.."

Radio as gorilla works, but wounded? Naw.

For some exciting and fresh pro-radio facts, email Katz's Mary Beth Garber.

Once Again, Bonneville Gets It Right

“We are in serious jeopardy. We’ve got to invest….we’ve run historically at such great margins, we’ve been reluctant to knock a point or two off of it to invest. I'm still not sure that streaming by itself is a great business.”

I am with Bruce Reese: streaming should be thought of as a promotional expense and we should stop playing low dough (or bonus spot) commercials on our streams, other than maybe sponsoring 20-60 minute blocks of the music we want our portals to be famous for.

If we are going to take on Pandora we need to use our megaphone differently on the web.

Example. Instead of getting a buck. Get 10 and play 10 less commercials. Or hours sponsored by major advertisers (not for value-added, for value!).

Mary Beth Garber Stands Up For Radio

December, Media Life ran an article headlined "Outlook for radio in 2010: More struggle" That got the SCBA Exec Director’s dander up. (click to read her fact-based rebuttal)

"Contrary to media industry myth, radio listening has been positively affected by new technology."

Today every computer, virtually every MP3 and iPod, and any cell phone capable of downloading apps is streaming radio’s over-the-air content.

Which helps explain why approximately nine out of 10 people of all age groups listen to radio each week, far more than any other medium except broadcast television (RADAR 103, December 2009).

And why the average person spends between about two and a half to three hours or more each day with broadcast radio (Nielsen, RADAR, Arbitron, Scarborough and The Media Audit).
In fact, people spend more time with broadcast radio than they spend with any other form of audio (Council for Research Excellence’s "Video Consumer Mapping – How U.S. Adults Use Radio and Other Forms of Audio," October 29, 2009).

Virtually all of that radio listening is done live, in real time. It's the only mass medium that can make that claim.

Radio Is The Internet's "C Student"?

Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah McBride writes that more than 42 million people each week listen to radio streamed over the Internet, more than double the rate from five years ago, according to Edison Research and Arbitron.

Many of those are either new listeners or people tuning in at times when they never listened to regular broadcast radio.

But radio has been slowest among the media industry to turn its Internet audience into cash. Gordon Borrell calls radio the "C" student of the Internet. Radio gets only an estimated 2.4% of its revenue from online, while TV gets 3.4% and newspapers 7%.

For the clients that do pay for Web commercials, radio companies haven't been able to command much in the way of rates. Advertisers who buy on streamed radio typically pay about half the rate per thousand listeners that they do for regular broadcast ads, media buyers and radio executives say.

Charitably, I guess you could term that "growth potential."

A clue from one of streaming media's A students: tight control on inventory is one of the reasons Pandora is on track to eke out its first quarter of profit in these last three months of this year, says chief operating officer Tim Westergren. He expects full-year revenue of about $40 million.

Many listeners to online audio are tuning in to Internet-only services such as Pandora Inc., which typically play far fewer ads. Pandora offers only a fraction of the ad time on digital streams of regular radio stations. "They're trying to keep it clean," says Kathy McLaughlin of planning and buying firm Media Spot Inc., which means Pandora can command high prices.

In recent research she did for a client who wanted to target Los Angeles listeners, Ms. McLaughlin found that buying spots on Pandora cost 20% more than buying regular over-the-airwaves radio spots in the city, one of the most expensive ad markets in the U.S.