Vice President of Media Askin Emir spoke last September at the RAIN (Radio and Internet News) summit panel entitled ‘Monetizing Internet Radio I: From the Advertiser’s perspective.’ Here are some of the highlights of the discussion:
How are you looking at Internet Audio as a medium? How are you using it? How is it categorized internally at your agency?
Before I answer this question I would like to mention the importance of Streaming radio for agencies, especially agencies like ours. We are a radio only agency and it has been great to be able to tell our clients about this new form of radio.
We are also an agency that measures the results for every campaign we run. And again it was great that there was this new form of radio that was trackable and customizable. When this first hit we were there on the learning curve. First it did not work, but we learned how to use it and how to make it work and when the media plans are put together, as long as it makes sense for the product, we include it on buys among terrestrial network, local, satellite recommendations. Especially if the call to action is drive to web, we definitely put it on our media plans.
Is your agency currently buying Internet Audio? Are clients asking for it? Is the spend and interest growing?
Yes we buy Internet radio currently. No the clients are not asking for it initially. Since now we are experienced on streaming radio, as soon as we hear about what the client is trying to do and as long as it makes sense, we make recommendations for streaming. Spend and the interest will keep growing as long as we deliver what the clients are looking for. Our clients want to hit their target CPL, CPO, etc. For dot com clients streaming makes lots of sense. After the initial test, if streaming works, then they start asking about. In fact I have a client for whom I bought both terrestrial and streaming and after the test was over, all they wanted to buy was streaming.
Askin Emir is Vice President of Media at The Radio Agency. Please follow The Radio Agency’s Blog “Sounding Board” by subscribing to the RSS link above. Visit our website TheRadioAgency.com