StatsRadio™: Transforming the Business of Radio in Québec
StatsRadio™ co-founders Louis-Phillipe Sutton and Benoit Pelletier have strong broadcast, agency and marketing backgrounds. In 2014, they predicted that without intervention, radio’s advertising dominance in Québec would be usurped by digital platforms like Google and Facebook. Real-time data availability – anytime, anywhere – was the innovation radio needed in order to compete in an impressions-based economy. But how?
From Cottage Country to Constant Data Access
Sutton and Pelletier began dreaming up new ways to measure and understand radio listeners. One afternoon, on a floating dock in Québec’s Cottage Country, they hit on the solution. They formed a partnership with Écho Sondage, whose client roster includes Air Canada, IBM, Heritage Canada, the National Bank of Canada and the University of Montreal, to create StatsRadio™’s proprietary hybrid measurement methodology.
StatsRadio™’s innovation was strategically designed to give radio stations a competitive edge for advertising contracts. It extrapolates radio listenership totals and demographics in real time, using a hybrid of streaming data with telephone survey data.
Real-Time Data Transforms Radio Station Revenues
Armed with reliable, real-time data, early adopters in Québec City, Lévis and Montréal began to transform their programming as well as their sales approaches. Like all radio broadcasters, these stations used to wait months, and sometimes years, to gauge the impact of programming choices. Now, having adopted StatsRadio™, they were accessing and analyzing data at will, and applying what they learned to each decision. As a result, the stations became more agile than they’d ever been, increasing audience sizes through swift, responsive shifts in talent and format.
While the stations’ program managers were increasing listening audiences, their sales teams were more accurately estimating reach-potential during ad buys and measuring campaign results in real time. With agility equal to their programming counterparts, sales teams were able to correct for reach discrepancies during each campaign to satisfy their clients’ expectations.
By adopting StatsRadio™, these forward-thinking broadcasters grew their audiences and expanded their advertisers’ reach. With one transformative step, they increased revenues in a highly competitive environment.
Hear it from 96.9 FM
“Our partnership with StatsRadio™ completely changed how we do business,” said CJMD 96.9’s Jonathan Drolet. “It allowed us to consolidate our reputation. The precision and immediacy of the statistics we received from StatsRadio™ helped us react quickly with our content creators, with a goal of achieving higher listenership satisfaction.
“The quality of StatsRadio™’s data and analysis changes advertisers’ perspective about our station, and even about radio as a medium. At CJMD, we are convinced that StatsRadio™ will become a must-have in the media industry in no time.”
Hear it from Radio Unie Target
The innovative tool soon caught the eye of radio sales organization, Radio Unie Target. Account Executive Josée Loiselle had this to say:
“We have been using the tool for over a year now. Through the radio stations we represent, the statistics gathered by StatsRadio™ have allowed us to present our clients a concrete overview. Currently, twenty-seven stations from our network are StatsRadio™ members. The platform’s data have allowed us to develop new clientele and to open up new opportunities, making it possible for us to demonstrate our stations’ performance with much better clarity.
“Additionally, with such an efficient analysis methodology, and with a much wider sampling spectrum compared to traditional surveys, our results with StatsRadio™ are now closer to the actual listenership figures for regional stations.
“The platform is simple, efficient and easy to use, even for starters.
“With their creative, flexible and open team available for support and continuous improvement, we are happy to be part of one of StatsRadio™’s business partners.”
Innovation and Further Transformation
Members of StatsRadio™’s client list currently surpasses 70 Canadian radio stations located from coast to coast. These broadcasters are increasing advertising sales by applying platform’s cost-effective suite of tools to understand, accurately communicate, and grow their reach.
In addition to its ground-breaking audience-measurement methodology, that measures any size market’s total listenership, StatsRadio™’s Web Platform digitally displays real-time measurement results, for anytime-anywhere access via internet browser.
Follo™ allows radio-broadcast clients (advertisers and agencies) to digitally track real-time campaign performance (ad delivery, cumulative reach, listening hours, demographic breakdown and impression), just like they’ve become accustomed to doing with digital-advertising platforms.
The company’s innovative plug-and-play Streaming Box, included with every subscription, eliminates the headaches associated with streaming a station’s content, and ensures consistent listener measurement.
On that floating dock, on a dreamy Cottage Country afternoon, StatsRadio™’s founders believed in radio’s future. Even more so now, the leaders of this Québec startup believe in radio as the most powerful advertising tool to reach regional consumers. With StatsRadio™ innovative data services, broadcasters now have what they need to enhance, and to demonstrate, their stations’ effectiveness.
Visit www.statsradio.com for more details.
