Marketers have long landed on radio’s doorstep when wanting to boost sales, whether it is the ads running right before Black Friday or the political consultants pouring dollars into radio just before voting begins. But radio’s mass reach — nine in ten Americans still consume radio each month, according to Nielsen — is working in favor of what iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman sees as a growing realization by CMOs that too narrow a target can result in too little sales.
“This year, we’re suddenly seeing brand building and mass reach coming back in vogue,” Pittman said. “People have gone through the phase of over-targeting as the audience has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller, and they realize people that are on the outside aren’t responding. One of the basics of marketing is the more people who hear your message, the more people can buy your product. And so I think we’re seeing a return to that, and obviously that is good news for us.”
In a video sharing his perspectives produced by Nielsen, Pittman also said he’s seeing a return to reach and frequency metrics by brands as they assess their 2025 marketing mix.
“Audio provides a kind of incremented audience, especially radio,” Pittman said. Excluding podcasting, he said digital offers “enormous overlap” so when an advertiser thinks they are reaching a lot of people, they are more likely hitting the same targets over and over. “And then when you look at radio, it has over 90% reach in a month, and provides this incremental audience for every advertising campaign. I think that’s becoming important,” Pittman said. “People are also looking for something very efficient to be always-on, so they keep a constant presence. The cost of radio, plus the reach of radio, is a unique place in that media mix.”
Pittman says that as iHeart has discussions about 2025 with advertisers, one of the messages that they’re delivering is the fact that about a third of Americans’ total media consumption each day is with audio. So if a brand is putting all its advertising budget into television, video or display ads, they are essentially “going to go dark” for a third of the day with most consumers.
“That becomes very important,” Pittman said. “And keep in mind that radio is measurable. It wasn’t for years, and I think there’s still this perception, ‘oh, I can’t measure radio. I can’t measure the performance.’ But you can now, and we’re all investing heavily in those tools to allow people to do it.”
As he looks forward, Pittman tells Nielsen that what he is most excited about are a few things that may initially sound “a little boring” but are nuts-and-bolts moves that will continue to strengthen iHeart in 2025.
“We’re making investments in measurement, so we can help people in planning the value of the audio investments. And we’re interested in sports,” he said. “We just launched the women’s sports network in which we’re going to do regularly scheduled reports on women’s sports throughout the day on all of our radio stations. And we’re doing on-demand podcasts as well.”
The new iHeart Women’s Sports Audio Network and sister Women’s Sports Podcast Network are helping to fill that opening. Launched at the Cannes Lions Festival in France, iHeart now airs the “Women’s Sports Reports” across more than 500 iHeart-owned broadcast radio stations nationwide. And among the first podcasts it has launched is Good Game with Sarah Spain. The daily podcast will focus on the biggest stories in women’s sports.
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