Dentsu: 'Radio Shines,' Outperforms Attention Paid To Video Ads

Dentsu Media this morning released findings of study of consumer attention paid to radio, podcasting and streaming service audio advertising, which found "unique strengths" across them, including "brand impact."

The study, which was conducted by consumer attention measurement platform Lumen Research, analyzed various ad formats across three leading radio (Audacy, Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia), five podcast (Audacy, Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia, Spotify and SXM Media), and one music streaming (Amazon Ads/Amazon Music) service.

Podcasts drove the highest attentive-seconds-per-thousand impressions compared to other digital, social and TV benchmarks," according to the report, but conventional radio broadcast ads "drove higher attentive-seconds-per-thousand-impressions compared to other digital, social and TV benchmarks.

"Radio shined as the most efficient of the audio formats studied, proving to be 10 times more efficient when compared to the average online video ads measured" by Dentsu's proprietary media attention benchmarks.

Specifically, the studies found that audio advertising (including podcasts, radio and music streaming) drove significant attention compared to other ad platforms:

  • Average attentive seconds per (000) APM for audio advertising was 10,126 compared to Dentsu norms of 6,501 APM.
  • On average, 41% of audio ads generated correct brand recall (vs. 38% of Dentsu norms).
  • Brand choice uplift for audio ads was 10% (vs. 6% for Dentsu norms).
  • Music Streaming (measured on Amazon Music across voice with Alexa and on mobile or desktop) drove key branding metrics. Brand recall was highest for ad-supported streaming music played on Alexa-enabled devices and drove even higher brand choice uplift for :30 ads compared to those same ads listened to through a desktop/mobile device.
2 comments about "Dentsu: 'Radio Shines,' Outperforms Attention Paid To Video Ads".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 1, 2023 at 10:01 a.m.

    I guess that the first question one might ask after reading this is how did they measure attentiveness to audio? So far we have seen visual attentiveness studies which measure wether a subject's eyes are on the screen ---or page---- and for how long. But what is the corrsponding metric for audio? Certainly it's not  "ears on". Or is attentiveness merely assumed if the ad message is played by the device?

    The second question concerns the notion---which seems to be at play here---that you can evaluate all media "exposures"----attentive exposures, that is----in terms of how many seconds the subject was "attentive" to the ad message---with CPMs calculated based on seconds of attentiveness. This  idea has been floated before but I have difficulty accepting it as it assumes that all attentive seconds have equal value.

    Is that true?

    Most ad messages start with some sort of creative hook to capture attention, then get into a briief story and sales pitch. If a consumer "sees" only the first two seconds of a TV commercial are these equal in value---or selling power ----to the last two seconds of a commercial as seen by a viewer who also watched, say, 15-18 seconds of the same message? I submit that the answer is probably not. What's probably needed is the determination of a threshold of ad effectiveness for each campaign that weights the value of each second by how many other seconds of the same ad were seen. In other words, one might discount any exposure lasting only two or three seconds as having almost no value while those where the viewer watched 10+ seconds were valued much higher per second.

    I know that making subjective assessments like this will scare off many but I simply don't but into the idea that all seconds have equal value.

  2. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 1, 2023 at 10:26 a.m.

    The last sentence of my first  post has me not "butting into" the idea that all seconds have equal value---of course, I meant "buy" not "but". My error.  I wish that MP would add an editing option so  folks  like myself could corrrect such mistakes---every other forum I post on has such options. It would be a great help.

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