Radio advertising ‘drives ad awareness by up to 50%’

Radio advertising was shown to drive effectiveness across the board in a “landmark” long-term analysis of campaigns.

The “meta-analysis” of Radioguage data examined 267,200 consumer interviews, 1,002 ad campaigns, 463 brands and more than 100 media and creative agencies across 14 categories between 2008 and 2021. Radiogauge is a radio advertising analysis tool managed by Radiocentre and funded by the commercial radio industry.

The research found radio advertising had positive post-campaign uplifts ranging between 18% and 50% in ad awareness, brand relevance, trust, brand consideration, and ad response.

Radiocentre has worked with analytics company Colourtext to launch what they say is the world’s most comprehensive and longest-running “benchmarked database of radio advertising effectiveness results” called Big Audio Datamine.

The Big Audio Datamine report referred to radio as a “multiplier medium”, as it cost-efficiently drove increases across different measures of effectiveness as part of a media mix in a campaign despite having an average share of spend of around 8% according to Nielsen.

The study also included data provided by Mediatel’s J-ET, which handles over 90% of all national radio advertising.

Brand relevance and trust

Commercial radio listeners had almost 50% higher ad awareness, whether a consumer had seen or heard advertising from a brand in the previous four weeks,  than the control group of non-listeners.

People who strongly agreed that a brand “is for people like themselves” was 24% higher among people exposed to a radio campaign than the unexposed, meaning radio advertising increased brand relevance.

Trust in brands was 31% higher and purchase consideration 18% higher among commercial radio listeners who had been exposed to radio campaigns compared to non-listeners.

In terms of ad response, the Big Audio Datamine found that out of all the people who could recognise an audio ad, 21% said they and 19% visited an advertiser’s website directly, meaning radio had an audience response rate of between 4% and 5%.

Consistent audio branding and mass exposure biggest drivers of effectiveness

The use of consistent audio elements like music, voices, straplines, brand characters or a sonic brand device featured in the top ten creative attributes for effective radio adverts.

This consistency should be applied across media channels for the strongest results.

Also a focus on building reach rather than frequency was pointed to as having a stronger impact on the outcomes of a radio advertising campaign.

Colourtext found the average uplift rate for ad awareness was 15.7% higher in higher-reach campaigns than lower-reach campaigns in its segmented analysis of campaigns in terms of size and planning factors.