Study: Personalized Audio Gives Advertisers Creative Flexibility, Drives Performance.

The ability to customize advertising content and personalize messaging puts audio ahead of digital media, social media and TV when it comes to creative flexibility, according to a recent survey of brand marketers conducted by the Association of National Advertisers.

“When an ad feels like it was made just for you, it stops being noise and starts driving impact,” a deeper dive into Audacy’s Insights blog says. “That’s the power of personalized audio, where brand messages are tailored to a consumer’s passions, location or needs. No other media channel matches that creative versatility, or results.”

The blog singles out three keys to the success of personalized audio ads: their creative flexibility, allowing for immediate response to dynamic market conditions and quick turnaround due to lower production costs; ability to target ads by interests, demographics, location and even mood; and copy delivered by trusted hosts who can influence brand consideration, purchase intent, and conversion.

“Audio is the only mass-reach medium that lets you scale your message and stay nimble, customizing your ads quickly by audience, location or even real-time events,” Audacy’s blog says. “Want to launch a versioned campaign tomorrow? You can. Want to update creative across markets? Done.”

A pair of case studies demonstrating how brands use audio makes a strong argument that customization drives performance. A 13-week radio campaign for a sportsbook featured ads tailored by sport, event, location, demographics, and fandom, with 2,000 creative variations, each crafted in real time to respond to results, headlines, and current games and events, to ensure that ads stayed fresh and relevant.

“No other media can deliver that hyper-personalization with efficiency and scale,” the blog says. “Fans heard timely, authentic messaging that matched the energy of the games they loved, and they responded with thousands of new customer installs. This is creative agility at its best. No other channel can pivot this fast, with this much authenticity, at this scale.”

The second case study focused on a telecom brand looking to increase visits to its retail stores via a radio campaign that included host endorsements and ads tailored to nearly 300 individual store locations, where each ad mentioned the location's address, city and store manager. “By quickly producing dozens of creative variations and equipping hosts with dynamic, real-time copy, the campaign was relevant, timely and intimate,” Audacy's blog says. “No mass media delivers that personal connection at scale like radio.”

The brand’s strategy paid off, as several stores saw as high as a 20% lift in foot traffic, as a result of which the client expanded the campaign to new markets. “This kind of hyper-local customization is only possible in audio, where you can run hundreds of variations without the production burdens of video or TV,” the blog says. “It’s fast, affordable and scalable.”

Both examples drive home the point that “audio’s creative flexibility is more than a production perk, it’s a growth strategy,” as Audacy’s blog says. “When brands tailor their message, they see stronger results. Customized audio cuts through the clutter and commands attention.”

For advertisers, customization puts radio front and center, as it “delivers radical creative flexibility at scale, speed, and efficiency that no other media channel can match,” the blog says. “As brands embrace performance and agility, radio is well-positioned to drive share of market for brands.”