NEW YORK — The competition among broadcast groups for radio advertising dollars continues to escalate, due in no small measure to new technologies. The revolution began with the introduction of programmatic ad buying, which streamlined what had been a cumbersome process. At the same time, the drive towards better real-time analytics began. RW recently reported about Veritone’s announcement of partnerships with Beasley Media Group, Reach Media, the Tom Joyner Network, Townsquare Media and Results Radio, giving these broadcasters a license to use the Veritone aiWARE platform at their stations to process, transform, and review audio data in near real-time, with ad and content tracking, analytics.
The driving force behind much of this effort is bringing radio analysis to a parity with the traditionally more precise online media metrics. Now, iHeartMedia is jumping in with “iHeartMedia Analytics,” which it claims is the first fully-digital attribution service for broadcast radio. By leveraging the data from iHeartRadio’s digital ecosystem, the company claims, iHeartMedia will enable broadcast radio to measure and show results in the same way as digital media, giving advertisers easy access to campaign performance insights.
Brian Kaminsky, president of Revenue Operations and Insights for iHeartMedia, explained the logic behind this move: “We continue to see advertisers spend money on less effective mediums simply because they provide a perceived level of measurability and accountability. Now, marketers will be able to capitalize on the scale and reach of iHeartMedia’s more than 270 million monthly broadcast listeners. They can receive the same kind of real-time measurements, insights and custom reporting they are accustomed to getting from digital media, quantifying the full power of radio. In addition they can get attribution information that is missing from most of the digital marketplace.”
iHeartMedia Analytics is the latest addition to the company’s marketing optimization toolbox. It also includes SoundPoint, a programmatic real-time radio ad buying platform, and the recently introduced SmartAudio, which enables advertisers to do impression-based audience planning and dynamic radio ad creative that utilizes real-time triggers such as weather, pollen counts and sports scores.
