New Report Shows Radio’s Sweet Spot: Fast Sales And Lasting Brand Impact.

A new advertising effectiveness study from System1 and Effie Worldwide is putting hard numbers behind something many radio sellers have long believed: emotional, well-branded creative drives stronger business results. And according to the data, radio and audio have untapped potential — if used with the right kind of creative.

The report analyzes 1,265 ad campaigns across the U.S., UK, and Europe, spanning 16 years and representing an estimated $139 billion in market activity. It draws on performance data from the Effie Awards and System1’s ad testing platform, which tracks second-by-second emotional responses and brand recognition from more than 200,000 global consumers.

One of the clearest takeaways is that emotional advertising pays off. Campaigns rated high in emotional engagement consistently produced more profit, more share growth, and more new customers. Campaigns with strong emotional response over multiple years delivered nearly twice the brand effects and business outcomes compared to low-emotion ads.

“Emotional advertising taps into broad attention by prioritizing characters, storytelling, communication and music,” says Andrew Tindall, Senior VP Global Partnerships at System1. “If I wanted to feel happy, I wouldn’t go to my bathroom and start reading toothpaste instructions or comparing toilet roll prices online. No. I’d head outdoors, put on my headphones, or hang out with friends. To create emotion, stop acting like a salesman and start acting like a human being,” he writes in a blog post.

For the radio industry, the findings highlight an opportunity. Audio ads were among the media touchpoints evaluated in the study. Both radio and podcast ads are seen as “super touchpoints” since they manage to create not only an immediate impact on consumers, but also lasting effects as well. For radio, that suggests campaigns built around long-term audio branding — whether through voices, jingles, or taglines — may have a compounding effect.

The study says the audio ads achieve more than 85% of their sales goals within six months. The data shows audio ads sit in the middle, with channels like contests and promos and in-store displays delivering short-term results while TV and print ads building their results over time.

The audio ad agency Oxford Road says it puts radio and podcast ads in a sweet spot. “With audio, chief advertising officers can have their cake and eat it too: results now, and brand equity that generates results over time,” the agency says in its weekly newsletter.

System1 says the campaigns that performed best in radio or podcast environments combined emotional resonance with brand clarity — what System1 calls “fluency.” At the same time, campaigns with poor brand recognition, even if emotionally engaging, underperformed across the board.

The data showed that roughly 20% of people couldn’t correctly identify the brand behind an ad after exposure, an especially risky stat for audio, where visual cues aren’t an option. Using distinctive brand assets like taglines, sonic logos or familiar voices proved critical in lifting campaign impact.

Another major finding in the analysis is that creativity is undervalued. The analysis finds that four in ten (41%) see creativity as a potential risk. The result is marketers consistently rate targeting as more important than creativity, even though creative quality has a much greater impact on profitability. Campaigns that scored high in both emotional engagement and branding delivered significantly higher ROI. In fact, ads deemed “dull” — those that triggered little or no emotional response — generated 40% less return on investment.

“Creativity is only risky when it is disconnected from the very people it aims to connect with,” Tindall says.

The report also challenges the industry’s increasing focus on short-term performance metrics. Marketers who lacked confidence in their creative work were far more likely to track impressions and clicks instead of measuring profitability, loyalty or brand equity. And campaigns that prioritized these short-term objectives delivered fewer long-term business results.

One segment of the study broke out “challenger” brands — those outside the top tier of market share. For those advertisers, high-emotion campaigns were even more critical. Smaller brands that delivered emotional and distinctive audio creative performed much more like category leaders when it came to brand and business growth.

There’s also a lesson in consistency. Brands that stuck with a consistent creative tone, brand assets, and messaging over time saw greater ROI and more frequent profit reporting. While all advertising delivers results, the analysis says dull campaigns have an average $4.40 return on investment for every dollar spent, compared to a $7.10 return for more engaging ads — a 40% difference. “Entertaining ads make media spend work harder,” it says.

Download the System1-Effie report HERE.