According to the report, 23 radio websites are attracting over 2% of all adults in their immediate markets and this figure would double if considered as a percentage of only those adults with internet access.
“We think 2% is very respectable at this stage of Internet market development,” says Bob Jordan, co-Chairman of the research firm that produces The Media Audit. To put the radio web site numbers in perspective, Jordan says, “it helps to compare them to TV broadcast web sites. Half of the 345 TV broadcast web sites covered in our recent surveys attracted less than 4% of their market. Even the web sites of the dominant daily newspaper in most markets attracted less than 10% of that marketÂ’s adults. The radio market is much more fragmented than that of TV broadcasters or newspapers. In most markets there are at least 15 to 20 radio stations competing for listeners. This splintering of radio audiences adversely affects an individual radio stationÂ’s opportunity to reach a large Internet audience. However, group owners can aggregate their local stations web site audiences and significantly improve their ability to compete with television station and newspaper web sites.”
The report details the most successful radio websites and the formats of these stations, ‘rock’ appears to be the most popular genre in this market although Jordan points out “The only meaning we would attempt to glean from the format data,” says Jordan, “is that radio formats that generally attract younger audiences were more successful on the web than formats that generally attract older audiences.”
