The International Convention Centre’s large theatre was packed with advertisers and radio industry leaders for last week’s HEARD conference.
They learnt about the commercial audio industry’s next step forward in digital data matching to give advertisers an improved way to reach their targets through digital audio.
Commercial Radio and Audio CEO Lizzie Young told conference delegates about the growth of digital audio consumption and explained how the industry will grow revenue with the new digital data offerings.
Speaking just before the conference to radioinfo’s Steve Ahern she said the commercial audio industry now has “the highest audiences ever. We’ve got 12.3 million Metro listeners to radio, the highest it’s ever been and we’ve got 4.6 million Regional listeners on top of that. We’ve obviously got an enormous Podcasting boom happening in Australia and now there’s 11 million Australians listening to podcasts on a monthly basis.”
While broadcast revenue is “flat,” digital revenues for the commercial audio industry are booming, up 30%. “We believe that as a medium we can deliver incredibly effective growth for clients… we want to make it easy for them to buy.”
One of the innovations from CRA this year will be the launch of the CRA Audio ID, a new unique ID solution that sits across all of the networks. “It will operate in a way that enables clients to buy across the networks’ reach and frequency, which enables them to optimize campaigns across all networks.”
After the CRA ID is rolled out for streaming radio, it will expand to cover podcasting, so that advertisers can buy audience segments across a range of stations and podcasts that deliver the exact audience an advertiser is targeting.
“It’s really the first milestone. Over time we’ll be able to bring in podcasting inventory, we’ll be able to bring in data matching capabilities as well… it certainly sets us on a path to look at what other automation is there and what technology can we access to ensure we’re delivering ease of access for advertisers’ strategy and making it as easy as possible for them,” said Young.
The innovation is an industry-wide initiative that has been planned in conjunction with the advertising industry.
“This has been done very much in consultation with the industry. We sought feedback from the consortium groups, from independent agency groups, from clients direct about this product and launching an offering such as this. It was met with overwhelming positivity which is really what’s led us here.
“We’re very excited about it. We’re partnering with GfK who also run our audience measurement system, Radio360, so together I think we’ve got a fantastic robust solution for clients that does give them that reach and frequency optimization across networks. It’s the first milestone in a road map [that will] include podcasting, further data matching enrichment and capabilities and then who knows beyond that around what we could do in terms of a trading platform.”
There is “a world of opportunity for advertisers” with audio.
Other HEARD speakers built on last year’s Mark Ritson research that showed allocating just 11% of a campaign budget to audio doubles the campaign’s effectiveness. This year the conference built further on that message, showing that the right creative can “double the double” effect, build trust, and have a postive influence on the audience’s emotional response to the campaign.
Andrew Tindall explained the findings of the UK RadioCentre’s ListenUp research, showing that effective audio creative can make audiences feel good.
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“Emotional connection, creative synergy, and measurable impact” – HEARD 2025 showcases radio’s ROI