Radio’s new pitch line may be how its ads fit with everything else / More than half of all audio usage is in-home

Radio’s new pitch line may be how its ads fit with everything else. Like a restaurant goer overwhelmed by too many items on the salad bar to make a well-balanced plate of ingredients that go well together, marketers are facing the same problem when it comes to their media diet. The third annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, finds just two-in-five (43%) feel they understand their customers’ journey throughout their media day and that they’re putting campaign components together in the right way to reach them. That’s despite the fact that two-thirds say it’s a priority for all marketing to be integrated into a cohesive plan. The most common reason for missing that target is advertisers and ad agencies just don’t have the resources to achieve that goal. “Clearly, marketers can and should be doing more to drive precise orchestration of their marketing strategies,” Oracle’s Simon Robinson says. For radio, the survey suggests there’s a sizable opening for sales reps in their pitch to show how radio advertising will fit with other marketing activities. “Keeping the customer ‘switched on’ to your brand message is more challenging than ever before,” Robinson says. “Almost a quarter of companies (21%) surveyed believe that the customer journey is the singular most important factor for a successful campaign.” To that end, a majority (51%) of companies now say they “focus on the customer, not the campaign.” The survey of 956 marketers also shows what other reports have found: interest in digital ads is only growing.

More than half of all audio usage is in-home. The car and the workplace have emerged as the two listening locations most frequently targeted by radio programmers. But new research suggests a significant listening opportunity still exists in the home. When Edison Research looked at the totality of the audio space – including owned music, streamed audio, podcasts, TV music channels like Music Choice, and YouTube for music among other things – it found that more than half of all listening is done in the home. In-car accounted for a healthy 30%. The research firm says its Share of Ear study tracks all audio usage, both music and speech-based content, using a fully representative national sample reflecting the entire population.