• by Larry Dobrow , November 19, 2003

Online radio has been around for several years, boasts millions of listeners and has everything most marketers want in terms of demographics. But as far as many buyers and planners are concerned, the medium is still evolving and thus not yet deserving of their clients' dollars.

This is no small source of frustration to media veteran Ken Dardis, president of television and radio production firm Audio Graphics. "That's pretty much what we're facing," he shrugs. "The big problem is retraining the whole system to accept what online radio offers." Dardis, however, believes that most Internet radio broadcasters are relying way too heavily on impressions during the sales process. To this end, he is attempting to create an alternate model for online radio sales via his RRadio Network.

RRadio, a community of more than 40 online radio stations that have aggregated their audience for sale to advertisers, is hoping to lure marketers to the Internet via data collected through station-branded surveys. The concept is pretty simple: visitors to any of the network's sites (which include www.boomerradio.com and www.beethoven.com) are given the chance to fill out a survey, which asks two or three questions about a specific product category or service. For example, the survey currently running across the RRadio network asks listeners if they plan to buy a car, truck or SUV during the next year, which ad medium they believe is most effective, and how old they are.

Over the last 20 months, Dardis has conducted 19 of these surveys, collecting a veritable mountain of data in the process. What he plans to do is take this information to advertisers and, ideally, use it to crack their skepticism about the viability of advertising on Internet radio.

"By showing them the data, what we're doing is strengthening the argument that the online radio audience will tell us specific things about themselves and about what they want," Dardis explains. "In no other media do we have that happening. For us to sit back and wait for Arbitron to tell us who's listening based on 1,200 phone calls is ridiculous."

His sales pitch is similarly unique. "Rather than going to a client and saying 'I want to sell you one million impressions,' we're saying 'I'm going to deliver you 12,000 completed surveys with an email address attached to them," Dardis explains. Of course, in the process of compiling 12,000 surveys, Dardis estimates that roughly 110,000 people will have opened the survey and more than 1.2 million will have viewed the ad leading to the survey. "All of those impressions are free," he says. "All that clients are buying is the data. We're here to deliver information, and advertising is a by-product of that information."

Of course, he will also have demographic data about online listeners in hand during these conversations. "Online radio delivers a more affluent and educated audience that you can purchase in any other media - it's not even that close," he says fervently. "A classical music station doesn't sell by Arbitron. They sell the quality of what they deliver, and that's what online radio is bringing to the table."

When asked about his list of clients, Dardis quickly retorts "none, zero, but we're only now starting to push this forward." He believes that similar patience will be necessary if online radio is to take off as a medium. "I used to go around to radio stations with [Metro Networks founder] David Saperstein, and we'd get thrown out for saying that they should put traffic reports on the air," he recalls. "I think that's the same resistance we're seeing now with online radio. It took six years to get those traffic reports accepted, and that's where we are on the timeline with online radio."

Other companies under the Audio Graphics banner include www.RadioRow.com (a portal for radio stations that stream) and www.RRadioMusic.com (a site designed to expose unsigned artists to radio programmers). The company also produces a handful of software products.