Media enters ‘Age of Accountability'

INSIDERADIO
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2015

Radha Submarayan is challenging the research community to evolve in a way that puts the client at "the center of everything." The iHeartMedia president of insights, research and data analytics says the media business has entered "the age of accountability," where ad campaigns are judged not by rating points but by the results they produce for marketers. "Our clients care about results and radio has been so effective in driving results," she said Monday during her provocatively titled "ROI is the New Ratings" presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation conference in New York. Submarayan positioned iHeartMedia as ahead of the curve in the evolution to "results-oriented media." It arrived there, she said, by combining the audience research it conducts as a broadcaster with troves of data gained from its recent investments in data and analytics. Those include last week’s partnership with data management and analytics firm Unified, April’s alliance with programmatic ad tech platform Jelli and last year’s launch of AuDiO, a radio targeting tool for political advertisers. Pulling together broadcast and digital datasets is allowing the company to generate meaningful insights for clients, Submarayan said. "We bring the depth of digital data to all of our broadcast entities," she said. That’s helping iHeart target more granularly than to just women aged 25-54. Instead it can now zero in on "a new mom of twins at a time when she’s shopping for diapers," Submarayan explained.

A larger video audience opportunity is emerging online. There’s a bigger potential audience for radio broadcasters branching into online video. One in four U.S. adults watches original digital video programming at least once a month, a double-digit increase in audience size year-over-year, according to new research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Online video is seen as a direct pipeline to the difficult-to-reach 18-34 year-old audience, many of which don’t subscribe to cable TV. So-called cord-cutters and cord-nevers are inclined to find the ads shown during original digital video programming to be "more interesting" or "fun" (43%), according to the survey of 1,900 persons age 18+ conducted by GfK. They’re not alone – a third (35%) of the general original digital viewing audience is in agreement about the likability of the ads on this sort of content. The implications are greatest for the growing crop of digital video content producers looking to compete with TV networks. But some radio companies are also saying lights, camera, action. With its access to celebrities, involvement in live events and creative on-air talent, radio has plenty of raw materials to draw upon. That’s the idea behind VuHaus ("view house") a recently launched non-profit collaboration. Using seed funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the effort involves national web and mobile websites that stream live performances filmed by participating stations in their studios and around town. The video collective includes non-commercial adult alternative stations KEXP-FM, Seattle (90.3); KUTX, Austin (98.9); WFUV, New York