How Broadcasters Are Monetizing In-Car Listening Data.

Heat maps showing the location of vehicles tuned to a radio station may be the sexiest tool in an ad seller’s toolbox.

During a RadioWeek 26 discussion, panelists explored new monetization opportunities for broadcasters enabled by tools that measure in-car radio listening in near real time, along with technology that synchronizes visual messages with broadcast radio spots.

Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer for Cumulus Media/Westwood One, relayed the experience of a radio manager showing a car dealer a heat map of vehicles tuned to their station and located near the dealership. “You have listeners literally coming right by my car dealership,” Bouvard recalled the dealer exec as saying. “I should be advertising on your station.”

Broadcasters have long been able to show the zip codes where their listeners are concentrated, based on their home address. Showing what they listen to while traveling to work, shopping or running errands is altogether new.

Mike Hulvey, CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, said audience heat maps provide a “proof of concept” for stations in smaller markets. For example, when a prospect asks, “Who listens to your station?” the salesperson can point to a heat map. “Here’s where our listeners are. Every single day it happens to be at your front door,” he explained. “It makes a difference in the dialog with the advertiser.”

Heat maps are one of the tools found in the latest version of Xperi’s DTS AutoStage Broadcaster Portal. They reflect listening to broadcast radio in some 14 million cars on the road from 13 auto brands that have integrated the hybrid radio platform. The majority are in the U.S. The portal gives participating stations broadcasting in analog or digital access to unavailable-until-now in-car audience analytics such as listening at the station level by time of day, market, rank and geography in core markets and beyond. These are reported in familiar listening metrics such as audience share, time spent, cume rating and occasions of listening, using sample sizes an average four-times larger than traditional radio measurement firms.

“Because the AutoStage platform, by definition, is a connected service, we are able to measure user engagement with radio and user exposure to advertising,” explained Joe D’Angelo, Senior VP, Global Radio & Digital Audio, Xperi.

This data enables radio to prove its heft in ways not previously possible. Broadcasters in resort cities, for example, can demonstrate how their audiences mushroom during peak season due to an influx of tourists.

A New Tool For Programmers

Beyond harnessing the data to grow revenue, the Xperi-sponsored session also explored programming applications. A Cumulus Media station looked at the audience impact of playing a two-hour block of music from one artist leading up to their concert performance. Listening levels went down, not up, Bouvard said. Xperi last year documented an average 40% in-car audience share listening increase for all-Yule stations from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday after the holiday.

The system democratizes audience data for markets of all sizes, Bouvard said. “In radio we’re used to big cities having fancy data, and medium cities getting some data, and small cities getting nothing. Here, everyone gets the same view.”

The biggest shortcoming is the lack of any demographic data. But that’s coming in a future generation of the portal that D’Angelo said could open new ad targeting capabilities and business models for radio. And in the next year or so, Bouvard said it will be possible to demonstrate a radio campaign’s lift by isolating vehicles exposed to a retailer’s ads and identifying which proportion visited the retailer.

Inroads have already been made to prove the effectiveness of visual components tied to a radio ad. A study commissioned by Quu, which provides this technology, showed consumers exposed to radio ads with accompanying visuals had higher awareness for the advertiser, stronger purchase intent, stronger brand consideration and stronger brand favorability.

“Adding a visual to the radio component makes the ad more effective, increases the impact that the ad campaign has, and just as important, is creating a real revenue lift for radio stations,” said Quu CEO Steve Newberry.

Xperi aims to make radio more easily accessible in connected cars where navigating sophisticated infotainment systems is often challenging. D’Angelo said AutoStage supports voice agents, meaning a listener could ask for a radio station now playing Taylor Swift, request a sports or country station, or just speak the moniker or call letters. “Once you tune to a station, we want to make sure that user experience is enhanced,” he explained. “It’s a very rich modern digital experience which also starts to bleed into monetization opportunities.”

The session was moderated by Omar Essack, head of Business Development & Strategy at RedTech, a global radio publication that produced the online conference.