Radiodays North America heard there is a growing sense of urgency around the need for improved radio audience measurement.

A panel, moderated by Sarah Thompson of Mantis Group, featured Canadian Broadcast Sales President Gerry MacKrell, Cumulus Media / Westwood One Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard, Numeris Chief Research and Operations Officer Derrick Gray, and Krystal Seymour, VP of Buying at Jungle Media.

Globally, audio accounts for 25% of media, but just eight per cent of advertising revenue, with the vast majority of ad dollars going to Google and Meta. A central theme of the panel was the challenge radio faces in proving its value to advertisers compared to digital media.

“In advertising, we definitely buy what we can measure and what we can see,” Thompson noted, setting the stage for a discussion about the limitations of current radio measurement.

“When do you get really good quality data, what it tells you convincingly is radio is incredibly effective,” said MacKrell. “It’s great as a standalone medium, and it plays really, really well with others. So we fight ourselves in a position, which is not great, in that we’ve got a medium that works well, that isn’t well measured, competing with a medium that doesn’t work all that well – digital, which is really, really well measured, and they’re kicking our butt. Now, I know that’s not as true as I would like it to be, but it’s very consistent with what some of the biggest findings globally are, which is radio wins more often than it doesn’t.”

Seymour, representing the agency perspective, emphasized the need for easier planning and execution.

“There’s a lot of really exciting new opportunities, a bit shinier things in the audio space, and radio is losing out to that,” she stated. “It becomes a bit harder and harder for us to sell that on our side…it just needs to be easier all around, easier to plan, easier to execute, and then easier and quicker to give those results back.”

She’s in favour of instituting the equivalent of a BAM (Brand Attraction Monitor) for radio – which measures how well a brand is performing compared to its competitors using data like social media, search, and keyword metrics – or RAM, tracking demographics, reach and frequency of those exposed to specific content.  

MacKrell didn’t mince words about the current state of radio measurement in Canada.

“On a scale of one to 10 in Canada, how are we doing for measuring radio right now?,” asked Thomas.

“Oh, under five,” he said. “We’re sitting on a massive reservoir of streaming data…it’s hard to imagine that that doesn’t become kind of the off ramp to the the downward spiral of it’s more and more expensive to get more and more challenged panels.”

“If we get to a fantastic solution in three years, it’s too late. It’s too late,” said MacKrell. “What’s the line? Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight? We’re in a gunfight.”

Gray acknowledged the challenges Numeris faces in balancing the rising costs of measurement with the financial pressures on the industry.

“Measurement’s incredibly expensive, and it’s only getting more and more expensive as time goes on,” he said, adding that the measurement agency has learned a lot from the video side with the introduction of its Video Audience Measurement (VAM) solution incorporating set-top-box (STB) data.

Numeris is currently weighing two proof of concepts for the tier two radio markets, leveraging streaming data.

“We have new leadership at Numeris, and we are certainly looking at and will be building out a brand new audio strategy this year. It’s top of mind,” said Gray.

“I think the future is big data…between the connected car data, between the streaming data, we need to bring that all in, because a panel these days or a sample these days cannot measure on its own or well…that doesn’t mean the samples go away because you still need to convert that data to individuals, as opposed to device. You need to know who is listening. But it is the future, and at Numeris, we are quite aware of it. We are working on it,” he added.

Among potential solutions discussed, Bouvard advocated for a greater focus on demonstrating business outcomes.

“I would say harmonize one lane, but also spend more time on business outcomes, measuring that, because I think marketers will forgive the choppiness of the audience measurement thing,” said Bouvard. “If we move the needle on brand lift, we did something on sales attribution, we can prove search and sight traffic. I think that’s immediate, because you can feel those studies pretty quickly. And if we in the industry can get used to saying, look, we’re going to take a couple per cent of every national buy and buy the marketer study of their choosing, of their vendor, that’s something you can do pretty quickly. It’s an easy way for you to quantify that you don’t have as much waste as other channels from an effectiveness standpoint.”

“Don’t let great, get in the way of good,” said MacKrell. “We’ve got to move fast.”

“Progress over perfection,” added Thomas. “Especially in Canada, we like things to be perfect. It’s not helping these organizations stay alive.”