2025 in audio: Audio’s ROI moment and the vodcast boom

2025 in Review

Audio is in rude health, with listening at record levels and commercial hours across radio, podcasts and streaming up 7% year-on-year.

Commercial radio has led the way, accounting for around 90% of ad-funded audio listening, reaching 40m people every week.

Heart overtaking BBC Radio 2 to become the UK’s biggest radio brand was a pivotal moment, and Q3 Rajar results showed commercial radio has reached a record share of 56% of listening compared to BBC’s 41.7%. 

Notably, audio ad revenues have continued to grow — a bragging right not all cross-platform channels have had this year.

The continued compelling linear offering, coupled with the expansion of digital audio through the growth of podcasts and video, is driving this resilience.

Putting the money where the mouth is

Part of the momentum behind Audio’s ad revenue growth has come from an increasing understanding of its ability to deliver return on investment (ROI).

A key moment for this understanding came in September, when Radiocentre revealed broken out individually, both broadcast radio and digital audio deliver significantly higher ROI than the all-media average across short-term and full-term campaigns. 

This finding formed part of the High Gain Audio research released at Radiocentre’s annual Tuning In event. It was developed with WPP Media, utilising data from Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 research, which covered 141 brands (84 with allocated audio budgets) and £1.8bn in media spend during 2021-2023.

As stipulated in the research, digital audio delivers a full-term (two-year) profit ROI of £5.20 for every £1 spent, while broadcast radio delivers a £5 return.

The all-media average was £4.11.

Notably, the picture was similar for the short-term (three-month) profit ROI, with digital audio returning £2.70 and broadcast radio £2.30 — both exceeding the all-media average of £1.87.

Moreover, the findings showed brands that allocated 15% of their total media spend to audio saw a 5% increase in overall short-term total campaign ROI, compared with campaigns that exclude audio.

This research not only provides planners with the clear evidence needed to invest in audio and plan cross-channel campaigns confidently, but the combined expansion of digital audio platforms this year is the cherry on top of the cake.

Digital expansion and enhanced measurement

There has been several digital platforms launched into the market this year which have continued to propel audio’s distinct offering forward.

For instance, in March Bauer Audio UK announced the roll out of digital audio advertising platform audioXi in the UK. The platform leveraged Bauer’s first-party data across its portfolio of 50 audio and publishing brands to enable targeting of audiences across a range of audio content.

The move followed Bauer’s divestiture from five year partner, Octave, after it sold its stake in the digital advertising marketplace to News UK in February.

In October, Bauer added to its digital offering and introduced audioXi Moment at the IAB UK Media Upfronts event.

This enhancement enables advertisers to target listeners based on “in the moment insights,” and combines user data from mobile gaming, meditation and brain training apps, with Bauer’s first party data.

It provides advertisers with a richer picture of users, including what mood they are in, what kind of activity they are doing, and what time of day it is.

Advertisers are able to buy audio slots through audioXi on some of these apps, which Bauer has exclusive access to in the UK.

Speaking at the IAB Upfronts event, Nadia Holmes, head of business development for audioXi, outlined audio’s specific advantage: “Audio reaches people in moments where other media can’t.”

The launch signals Bauer’s move to attempt to own the space where audio meets mobile behaviour.

Meanwhile, main competitor Global revealed from Q1 2026 Dax ID will have cross-device measurement capabilities.

Also announced at the IAB Upfronts event, this new capability uses AI to analyse data points such as location, device, and IP, triggered  when someone listens to an ad played in the audio content available via Globals’ digital ad exchange, or DAX.

An AI led device graph is then able to track patterns and connect listening moments together, providing a more accurate picture of an individual listener.

Through this, the device graph, creates a picture or profile of listeners that can be utilised in measuring cross-device activity across multiple environments and internet connections for the same brand.

Notably, this could improve the attribution of individual conversions and bridge the gap to enable audio to compete more successfully with other digital channels, which has proven to be a challenge, as attributing a conversion between different devices, environments and internet connections has not been possible until now.

The announcements in October didn’t stop at that either, with Global launching Global IQ, a data and insights platform at its upfronts event. 

This platform brings together first-party data from more than 11m registered Global Player users, second-party data from exclusive partnerships, such as Transport For London (TfL) WiFi and tap-in data, and premium partner datasets from BT/EE and Spendmapper.

Additionally, gold-standard planning sources such as TGI and TouchPoints and measurement data from RAJAR and Route are also layered within the platform.

The definitive strength of the platform is its ability to combine these datasets with real-time exposure data, data science and large language models (LLMs) to provide insights on audience behaviour and campaign performance.

Global is positioning IQ as an alternative to walled-garden adtech platforms.

The implementation of these capabilities and platforms marks significant progress in proving audio’s effectiveness with data, along with enabling integration of audio with video and linear channels.

Audio’s role in the broader media ecosystem is no longer up for debate, and perhaps provides an explanation for the rise of the next theme — video podcasts.

From a ‘nice to have’ to podcast shows