AUDIO MARKETING: THE NEXT BIG THING FOR THE INDUSTRY?
Sound may be an undervalued medium, but that’s changing rapidly, according to a new panel discussion ‘Hear me out: The future of creative is sound’ from The Drum and podcasting platform Acast, part of The Drum’s Creative Transformation Festival, earlier this year.
“You can close your eyes but you can't close your ears - sound and audio is ever present and all around us,” said Jack Preston, director of Acast Creative in the UK and US.
“It’s undervalued compared to lots of visual mediums but I do think things are changing. Over the last decade, the proliferation of smart speakers, voice search and podcasts are making sound much, much more relevant. And brands are having to adapt to that.”
Digital has allowed brands to get more from audio, not only because of an uptick in listening habits, but because analytics make audio more accountable and monetiz-able.
Dynamic ad insertion, which Acast pioneered, allows relevant ads for different regions and personas, and so increases the revenue that creators can make from a single piece of content.
Preston spoke about the transition from advertising to branded content, citing their Sponsored Stories partnership with Sainsbury’s as an example. Sponsored Stories is a new format which runs for three to four minutes in the space where an advert or regular sponsored read would normally sit.
The campaign promotes the supermarket’s new range of barbecue foods and features recordings of different podcast hosts, cooking.
“It's an amazing listening experience,” said Preston. “You can hear the food sizzling away, you can hear the wind in the trees, the birds tweeting, it feels like you're actually there. It’s a really nice experience compared to a standard voiceover ad. Those moments where brands take the time and the care to invest in creativity can really, really pay off.”
To support the fact that audio is growing, and opportunities are growing within that is the recent Media Nations 2021 report by Ofcom.
It shows that consumption of digital audio services, including online live radio, music streaming services and podcasts, has grown over time, especially among adults aged 15-34 for whom live radio on a radio set now accounts for less than a quarter of listening. Consumers continue to listen to radio and audio content on a wide range of devices. Although listening to live radio on a radio set has been in decline for the past few years, for adults overall it continues to account for much of their audio consumption.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, which have affected radio advertising revenues in particular- the industry has continued to take advantage of DAB and online platforms to innovate.
Plus, digital audio advertising expenditure stayed on a growth trajectory in 2020. In the past year radio broadcasters in the UK have launched new stations and services, while streaming platforms have continued to expand their products to include higher-quality audio and podcasts, including some exclusive to the platform.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, and the closure of some stations, broadcasters are continuing to innovate and launch new stations on digital platforms. In June 2020, Wireless Group launched speech station Times Radio,. In December 2020, Jack Media launched two new national stations on Sound Digital’s national DAB multiplex – Union JACK Dance and Union JACK Rock, closing JACK Radio, which had launched in 2018. In April 2021, Nation Broadcasting launched Nation Player, its own dedicated online player for its services, alongside three new services: Nation 70s, Nation 80s and Nation 90s.
Another station to launch on the Sound Digital multiplex in 2021 is Boom Radio, a station focused on serving babyboomer audiences, while in November 2020 Global launched Capital Dance on the Digital One multiplex. Over the past year, there has been further consolidation within the UK radio sector, with the motivation for deals including the expansion of geographic coverage of analogue networked services.