Thirty-six percent of advertising spending is local or regional, and traditional radio and television are among the top types of media that marketers plan to use in that effort during the second half of 2020 — despite the continued surge of digital channels.
That was one of the findings shared by Lauren Fisher, Vice President of Business Intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, during a Veritone webinar on Tuesday called “Uplift Your Broadcast TV and Radio Advertising.” The event also featured remarks from Paul Cramer, Managing Director of Enterprise Radio Solutions at Veritone, Inc.
Fisher said the combination of an election year and COVID-related uncertainties will make local and regional marketing efforts more complicated and more expensive — and will lead more advertisers to turn to legacy media to achieve their goals.
“You see those same digital channels at the top, but there is a strong emphasis on television and radio,” Fisher said. “And that makes complete sense when you think about where these advertisers are trying to affect consumers, how they’re planning to try and move them for the Q4 season from a holiday perspective. You also have to keep in mind that these are prime political advertising channels. It’s going to be competitive. It’s going to be complicated. These are all things we need to keep in mind.”
Fisher also said radio and TV will serve as key top-of-funnel channels for advertisers who will be reviving postponed product launches in the second half of 2020. According to Fisher, 48% of advertisers will be trying to revive such launches.
In addition, you can expect a shift in advertising dollars that were previously earmarked for cancelled sports or other forms of live programming. According to Advertiser Perceptions, loyalty to a particular medium isn’t a major factor: 75% of advertisers are open to different formats they deem to be an “acceptable substitute,” Fisher noted.
“The important thing to emphasize here is that there is this sort of wild-card factor,” Fisher said. “There is a lot of money that could potentially move into different areas. So as an advertiser you have to go in very much eyes wide open and continue to work with your media partners to understand how this landscape is moving.”
Cramer shared some more insights from the recently released “Veritone Uplift Study,” which is based on a 15-month analysis of 250 local and national campaigns across 100 radio and TV markets in the U.S. and Canada. (See previous Inside Radio coverage of the findings HERE.)
The research found that the average broadcast campaign lift across the study, as measured by an ad’s impact on website traffic, was 6.6%. When compared with display ads, Facebook ads and email marketing, the study found broadcast advertising can outperform digital in driving traffic to advertisers’ websites.
In terms of the top 20 performing categories, Discount Membership Club (77.4%) was easily No. 1, followed by Station Promotions and Contests (25.14%) and Podcast Promotion (13.05%).
“Radio has such a great, engaged audience that they can create these promotions and content extensions over the air to promote additional programming,” Cramer explained. “Podcasts do really well when they’re being promoted on the air. There are a lot of new folks that will go and discover those podcasts, visit and download the podcast afterwards.”
One recurring theme of the webinar was flexibility. Media planning periods have been reduced to no more than three months out in the era of COVID-19, according to Advertiser Perceptions. The firm’s research found that planning time for traditional radio was 4.07 months pre-pandemic and 2.34 months now.
Digital audio, meanwhile, has fallen from 3.63 months to 2.02.
Linear broadcast television has taken the biggest overall hit in this regard, from 5.34 months to pre-pandemic to 2.71 currently — a change of 2.63 months.
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