IAB Says Radio’s Attribution Gap With Digital Is Quickly Closing.

There is an old adage that it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese, and in the case of audio it might be time to heat up the fondue pot. Audio spent years playing catch-up with digital media when it came to proving what happened after someone heard an ad.

Radio’s massive reach has never been difficult for broadcasters to demonstrate. Showing advertisers what happened after someone heard an ad — using the same attribution and measurement systems available to other media — has been more challenging. In a new report examining the evolution of audio measurement, the Interactive Advertising Bureau says audio may have been late to the attribution party, but a wave of new measurement tools, identity systems and industry partnerships is quickly closing the gap.

“Audio’s effectiveness often outpaced the measurement systems marketers relied upon to observe and prove it,” IAB says in a white paper. The reason is largely historical. Exposure-level measurement and attribution capabilities that became commonplace in other digital media arrived considerably later in audio.

Pixel-based attribution, for example, became common in digital audio and podcasting years after it had become standard across most other digital channels. Yet IAB says the arrival of audio pixels, dynamic ad insertion, identity resolution, attribution and outcomes measurement has dramatically changed what advertisers can see. The bigger challenge now may be convincing media buyers that the old limitations no longer apply.

“The industry’s perception of audio measurement continues to reflect the realities of the previous decade more than the capabilities of the current one,” IAB says. The group argues that disconnect can hurt both advertisers looking for incremental growth and audio companies increasingly capable of delivering it. There is a sense that disconnect has shifted as some new data capabilities are moving into broadcast.

IAB points to the AudioGraph launched this summer by iHeartMedia. The platform combines first-party listener data, identity resolution and predictive listening models to bring audience-based planning and measurement capabilities to broadcast radio. Early tests using the system have generated 75% higher KPI outcomes compared with traditional demographic-based plans. More importantly, advertisers can use it to plan, target, measure and attribute radio audiences with what IAB describes as “digital-like precision.”

Former Hershey executive Vinny Rinaldi sees an opportunity for radio as those capabilities develop.

“Radio now has a chance to see its day, helping drive demand creation and new intent for brands aligned with the measurement architect of the rest of the digital ecosystem,” Rinaldi says. He calls AudioGraph “a great innovation for the industry,” saying it brings radio’s “massive scale” into brand growth models and can help advertisers “reach genuinely new buyers.”

Other initiatives are moving radio in the same direction. IAB cites iHeartMedia agreements with Amazon Ads that make broadcast inventory available through Amazon DSP via programmatic workflows, while tapping into radio attribution from Magellan AI. “Data becomes significantly more valuable when it can move seamlessly into the planning, activation, measurement, and optimization systems marketers already use across the rest of their media investments,” the report says.

For radio, the evolution is particularly noteworthy as AM/FM still accounts for roughly two-thirds of all ad-supported audio listening and reaches 87% of U.S. adults each week.

While many of audio’s biggest success stories are from streaming and podcasting, they provide a glimpse of what radio may offer in the future. One healthcare campaign cited by IAB found audio added 25% incremental reach beyond audiences already exposed through connected TV and out-of-home advertising.

A separate analysis involving SiriusXM Media, Amazon Ads and OMD found streaming audio and streaming TV had just 1.2% audience overlap, allowing audio to generate 75% incremental reach beyond streaming TV alone. The campaign also found combinations that included streaming audio produced stronger downstream engagement.

For broadcasters, that creates a potentially important shift in the radio sales pitch. Reach remains a core strength. But as AM/FM becomes more connected to identity, attribution and omnichannel measurement systems, the industry’s pitch can increasingly move beyond how many consumers heard an advertiser’s message to what happened after they heard it.