Adwanted Group’s Post

Radio ads require less than 2.5x as much investment to achieve the same level of attention. That's one of the conclusions from an illuminating new piece of research from Adelaide, and explored brilliantly by Pierre Bouvard - CUMULUS MEDIA/Westwood One's Chief Insights Officer - in an article that we'll share in the comments. The study compares various formats' advertising attention unit (put simply, how much attention audiences will pay on average to advertising on various channels) to their CPM to ascertain the cost to achieve a certain level of attention, using linear radio as a benchmark of $1000 spend. While Facebook stands out as having the highest cost for attention compared to radio, it is by no means an outlier. Instagram, TikTok and X/Twitter all required a larger investment to achieve the same level of attention. Radio performs similarly to other audio channels (streaming at $984 and podcasts at $896) and still only slightly below linear TV at $846, despite no visual component. In the ever-raging debate over metrics in advertising, it is often easy to veer towards whatever is easiest to measure. Impressions, clicks and conversions are all apposite methods of gauging ad effectiveness, in the mediums where they're available anyway. But let's not lose sight of the fundamentals: ads need to grab attention to convey their message. Otherwise, they are effectively worthless. This research is a reminder that sometimes the most effective channels are not necessarily the easiest to measure at a granular level, but we forget them at our peril. #radio #advertising #measurement