Facebook is increasingly becoming a place for fair-weather friends, especially among younger users of social media. This is good news for AM/FM radio, which still reaches that younger demo and can give advertisers on Facebook that extra exposure, according to research presented in Westwood One's latest “Everyone's Listening” blog.
“All of Facebook’s audience erosion is coming from young demos, persons 12-34, who are horrified that their grandparents are the fastest-growing audience segment on the platform,” Cumulus Media Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard says, citing figures from Edison Research showing a 9% decline in users 12+, driven by a 28% fall in 12-34s while users in the 55+ segment are up +16%.
At the same time, Nielsen Scarborough shows AM/FM radio reaches 56% more persons 18+, 47% more 18-34s and 43% more 25-54s than Facebook, and an even greater percentage more of each of those demos than other social media sites.
So how can radio come to the rescue of Facebook advertisers looking to grab those lost users? Cumulus's Bouvard points to an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) study showing AM/FM radio ads have a greater level of engagement than social media, which had the lowest level of consumer concentration. Additionally, ads are exposed more frequently on AM/FM than Facebook, given the average daily time spent among persons 25-54 is 1 hour and 22 minutes, twice that of social media (40 minutes), according to Nielsen.