With the beginning of another income tax season just weeks away, preparation services finalizing their marketing plans would be well-advised to look at how their ads on AM/FM radio performed this past year, in order to better allocate their budgets across formats and dayparts.
Cumulus Media/Westwood One's Audio Active Group has done the heavy lifting, with an analysis of Media Monitors' ad occurrences data for six major tax prep services from Jan.-Apr. 2023, combined with Nielsen Nationwide data – including all U.S. PPMs and diaries – from its Spring and Fall 2022 surveys. The report takes into account all AM/FM ads from the six brands, whether spot, local, or network radio.
Essentially, Media Monitors' data from nearly 1,700 AM/FM stations in 98 metro markets is run against the radio metro audiences from the same markets, representing 65.3% of the U.S. population.
For each advertiser, Cumulus examined reach and frequency, gross rating points, and share of voice (as in, each brand's GRP's, divided by total category GRPs) for their radio ads, broken down by month, among adults 25-54. Also examined were each brand's share of impressions by demographic, daypart, and format.
Among the takeaways: middays generate the highest share of total listening for the six brands (25.6%), while 25-54s accounted for nearly half of impressions (46.4%), and ads on adult contemporary and country boasted the largest share of listening (15.4% and 14.1%, respectively).
“What's powerful about this analysis is that it is based on actual as-run ad occurrences,” Cumulus Media/Westwood One Audio Active Group Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard says. “[This] data can provide national marketers with a precise understanding of their campaign audience deliveries.”