This is excerpted from the ebook “Where Tech Meets Revenue.”
Rick Ducey, managing director of BIA Advisory Services, sees radio broadcasters applying various technologies to help drive revenue.
For instance, “iHeart, Cumulus and Audacy are among those using ad tech integrations to sync broadcast radio and outdoor digital billboards run by ‘out of home’ (OOH) advertising companies like Clear Channel Outdoor, Lamar Advertising and OutFront Media,” he said.
“This can create dynamic creative executions tied to event-driven triggers like weather, traffic, events, etc. The combination of local radio plus digital OOH creates a high-value messaging environment offering dynamic creative inventory tying together the power of DOOH boards and live radio.”
BIA forecasts Digital Out of Home ad revenue to be $2.5 billion in 2026. (It started tracking DOOH separate from OOH this year.)
What role do platforms like OTT and CTV have in the radio sales ecosystem?
“Buyers targeting local audiences highly value both audio and video inventory, and increasingly in cross-platform activations,” Ducey replied.
“Radio stations with locally deployed sales forces and high-value client relationships can add CTV — i.e., premium content ad inventory on TV screens — and OTT — i.e., in-stream video ad inventory on TV, mobile, PC, tablet screens — offers into the marketing mix they offer clients.”
He said CTV/OTT are high-growth media channels offering local radio stations some differentiation from the competition and path to revenue growth. BIA estimates that this category will grow to $5.1 billion in 2026, up more than 50% from the year prior.
“CTV can be local radio’s highest revenue growth category and combined with audio — broadcast and streaming — makes an extremely compelling local, cross-platform activation.”
Ducey also noted the application of “visual geotargeting” by GeoBroadcast Solutions, which is a BIA client. “FM stations using MaxxCasting technology to fill in weak coverage areas can geotarget RDS and HD Radio text and visual content at the booster level,” he said.
Ducey said that everything MaxxCasting does is compatible with existing RDS and HD Radio receivers.
About GBS ZoneCasting, which allows geotargeted content on localized FM boosters, Ducey said it is in various stages of deployment in about a dozen markets.
“The path to revenue is in early stages. Using FCC experimental licensing, ZoneCasting was deployed in the San Francisco and embedded San Jose market to showcase geotargeted ads for San Francisco/South Bay as one zone and East Bay as another zone.
“Different ads, traffic, weather, community information, etc. originated in each zone for part of the broadcast day. Dentsu and its client Jack in the Box were among those trying ZoneCasting during this project and expressed optimism for its value to buyers.”
Ducey feels that the combination of ZoneCasting and DTS AutoStage analytics creates an important opportunity for advertisers and stations.
“Sometimes it’s not just one innovation that creates the most value, but a combined use of new capabilities that will get stations to their maximum ROI.”
According to Ducey, audio is hot for the brand and agency community right now, including cross-platform broadcast, streaming and podcasting.
“As programmatic trading becomes more dominant in campaign planning, activation and optimization along with more accountability and performance solutions, buyers can plan, activate and steward extremely compelling campaigns at the local level,” he said.
“Knowing the tech and its value add to brand and performance campaigns is critical to competitive success.”
His advice to radio people: Don’t speak about technology with clients. Speak about the combined marketing power your stations bring to their business goals of driving client and revenue growth.
“It’s not the tech that matters, it’s the people.”
Read about technologies that can drive revenue at http://radioworld.com/ebooks.
