Radio Advertising: The Theater of Your Mind

 

Radio advertising, like magazine advertising focuses on narrow segments of the listening audience. If you want to reach young white teens, there is a radio station that attracts that demographic group. Do you want to advertise to young males age 25-34, there is a radio station format for that group. Radio stations can deliver every specific demographic target a business could want.  Radio also targets life style traits of listeners such as country or rap listeners.
Advantages of Radio Advertising
The biggest advantage of advertising on the radio is that it is a mobile medium. People listen to radio while they drive, exercise, shop, work, play and more.
Another advantage of radio advertising is its ability to paint pictures in the listener’s mind with creative dialogue, music and effects. It forces the listener to engage the programming and create images of a product or service.
A third advantage of radio advertising is it’s economical. Radio is much cheaper than TV or newspaper advertising. You don’t have to buy a mediums entire audience like you do with newspaper.
Next radio reaches 93% of a population over a week’s time. This is a national average and will vary from market to market. The ability to easily change and update scripts are paramount to radio broadcasting since news stories can and often do happen live.
 Radio is a personal advertising medium. Station personalities have a good rapport with their listeners. If a radio personality announces your commercial, it’s almost an implied endorsement. Radio listeners increase in the spring and summer, contrary to television audiences which increase in the fall and winter and decrease in the summer. This is a very important aspect to consider when you are choosing advertising media.
Disadvantages of Radio Advertising
Your message is limited to10, 30 or 60 seconds.
Local radio spots are only as good as the station production team.
Radio’s total audience over a weeks time reaches 93% but the audience is fragmented into 30 or more different radio stations.
On radio you can’t show your product or service with still or moving images.
Cost Per Thousand is the Key
The value of every form of advertising can be measured by their (CPM) Cost Per Thousand. This is what it costs you to reach one thousand people. The media sales people can tell you how many people they reach and a cost for ads. Divide the cost by the number of people reached, times one thousand, and you will have a cost per thousand.
Example:  $1,000 spent divided by 5,000 people reached = .20 times 1,000 = $200/M per thousand. You can also look at it as .20 cents a person reached.

Measuring Audiences

Ratings/Shares/Cumes/CPM
Like any other business, TV and radio have their own language and terms. Ratings, Shares, and cumes are the audience measurements of how many people are listening. This can get complicated so I will give you the overview.

Total population and total Radio Listeners
The total population in any market is referred to as the “universe� of potential viewers.
Ratings: ratings are the number of listeners in a universe (total population) expressed in percentages. For example, if the universe (total population) of a city is 500,000 people, and a radio program has 50,000 listeners, then you have a .10 or a 10 rating. (50,000 divided by 500,000 = 10%).
Share: Of all the listeners listening, you have a percent that are listening during a particular time period. In the example above, in a universe of 500,000 listeners, the number of people listening to the station is 400,000 and of the total of 400,000 radio listeners, 50, 000 are listening, then you have a 12.5 share of the total radio audience. (Total people listening is 50,000 divided by the total number of radio listeners in the market = the share percentage.
Cumes: Cumes stands for cumulative. This number represents the total number of unduplicated listeners during a week. It is also referred to as “reach.� That means if you listen on Monday and Wednesday, you are counted as “one� not two. You listened at least once. A cume gives you the total number of listeners during a week that listen to the station.

CPM: Stands for cost per thousand people reached by your advertisement or spot. The CPM is the measurement that is the common denominator of all media that tells you how much you are paying to reach one thousand viewers, or listeners, or readers. For example, if you run a spot on radio that cost $100, and 75,000 people listen to your spot, then you are paying $1.33 per thousand viewers reached with your spot. It’s better to bunch your commercials together than to spread them apart across a week. Radio is very effective and affordable for many small businesses.

A lot of radio sales reps will try to talk you out of advertising during specific times. They’ll offer you a reduced rate called TAP (Total Audience Plan) that splits your advertising time into 1/3 drive, 1/3 mid-day and 1/3 night. This may sound like a good
deal, but airing commercials during times when your audience isn’t listening is bad advertising. If however, you are sponsoring a show such as Paul Harvey or the Morning Farm Report, it makes sense to advertise once or twice a day on a regular basis, since those programs have regular listenership. Frequency is a vital element for effective radio advertising.

Since you can’t automatically recall the radio commercial and hear it again, you may hear the same commercial two, four, or maybe six times before the message sinks in. If you missed the address the first time, you consciously or subconsciously are hoping the commercial will be aired again so you can get the information you need. That’s the way radio advertising works. And that’s also the way you buy it.

Most of the time, radio advertising should be bought in chunks. High frequency over a short period of time is much more effective than low frequency over a longer period of time. It’s important for your audience to hear your spot again to get more information out of it. For example, if you wanted two-week advertising campaign and you could afford 42 radio commercials, the following buy would serve you well: On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, place three spots between 7-9 a.m. and four spots between 3-6 p.m. for two weeks. Notice that both day and hour periods are concentrated.

Buying Radio Advertising
By advertising in concentrated areas in tight day groups, you give the impression of being larger than you really are. And, people hearing your concentrated campaign for two or three days will think you’re on all the time. The radio sales reps may try to sell you three spots every day on the station for 14 days (a total of 42 spots). But your campaign won’t be nearly as effective. There is much more to advertising with radio but this gives you some background.