Following on from the recent IAB Ireland webinar on digital audio in September, the co-chairs of IAB’s Audio Council, Lee Thompson of AudioOne and Ryan Reid from Zenith, part of Core, make the compelling case for brands to embrace digital audio.
Ireland Loves Audio. Ireland Loves Digital. Blend these two and you’ll find a rather appetizing cocktail. We’re great talkers but we also love to listen. This is something that sets us apart from other nations and this love of audio has embedded itself deeply into our digital lives.
In a recent Global Reuters News Institute, Comisiún na Meán report, Ireland was shown to lead the way when it came to podcast listenership. It highlighted that 43% of Irish adults had listened to a podcast in the previous month compared to 41% in the US, 37% in EMEA and 31% in the UK.
Using a broader lens, the most recent IAB Ireland RedC survey, conducted in January, confirmed a massive 78% of Irish adults were listening to digital audio content each week.
This equates to some 3m+ people tuning in weekly and more than 1.1 listeners enjoying music streaming, digital radio & podcasts every day.
This compares very favorably with more mature media staples such as commercial TV where weekly all adult reach comes in at 74% (TAM Ireland, August 2024).
No longer niche, it is now firmly in the mainstream yet still more magnetic for younger people, 18–44-year-olds, ABC1s and those in full-time employment. All audiences which are harder and more expensive to reach across other.
When it comes to audience size, digital audio can be relied upon to complement radio and expand the total potential size of audience that can be reached. This is because digital audio is particularly effective at delivering to the hard-to-reach younger cohort and people who have reduced, quit or never formed a linear media habit. Yes, they exist and in growing numbers!
The appeal of the format for advertisers has skyrocketed in recent years. As recently as 2018, advertisers were spending very little. The intervening 6 years have seen weekly audiences grow by 27%, reaching the current all time high of 78% all adult reach. But the real action has happened on the advertiser side where revenues have tripled over the same period.
And there are abundant signs that this trend is set to continue.
The most recent IAB Ireland PwC Online Ad Spend Study for 2023 put digital audio spend at an impressive €18m. When looking ahead, Audio was cited as an area for strong growth by 73% of industry respondents.
In Core’s Outlook for 2024, Digital Audio was forecast to grow by another 18.5%.
So, what are the drivers behind this rapid ascent and the inherent strengths the format offers advertisers who choose digital audio.
More Listening
One of the most substantial audio studies in the US is the Edison “Share of Ear” study. One of their key findings is that digital audio listeners spend almost two thirds more time listening to audio than linear audio listeners. One key driver for this lies in the sheer variety of content available.
The other key driver is the sheer accessibility of the content. Think about it. Our phones are our constant companions, smartspeakers are soon to be in a majority of Irish homes and increasingly our cars are digitally enabled.
Digitally connected devices have made digital audio content more accessible to us than other forms of traditional media.
Immersive Environment
When you listen to music or podcasts through headphones or earpods, you are enjoying a form of “direct to ear” entertainment. The listening environment is intimate and personal and the experience is truly immersive.
This environment creates the perfect conditions for ads to be effective, easily remembered and recalled. A Pandora NeuroInsights study confirmed that digital audio ads have a 49% stronger impact on memory than linear ads.
And ads that are more easily recalled correlate with higher sales and higher brand lifts.
Better Listener Experience
Ads are part of life’s rich tapestry. Core research suggests we face a 4% increase in ad exposure each year. And if this trend continues, by 2026 it will be 3,626 ads every week!
Critically with Digital Audio you will hear FAR fewer ads than on other channels.
Digital Audio is generally accepted to be a light ad load medium with 50-70% fewer ads running per hour than you will encounter across TV and Radio.
On SoundCloud, one of AudioOne’s publishers, there will never be more than 3 ads per hour. Contrast this with up to 20 ads across some linear media.
Minimum Wastage With Targeting
Digital Audio offers advanced targeting capabilities which have the benefit of eliminating wastage in your ad spend. These possibilities are really exciting and powerful. There are a huge number of targeting options available to you as an advertiser.
From simple targeting by device, time/day, location, genre to more sophisticated targeting options like targeting by mood – the type of music people are listening can reveal a mood – to language – where we can target people listening to foreign language content – to keywords – where AI can scan the content of podcasts to find exactly the right content environments, the possibilities are striking.
Actual Numbers – Better Reporting
When you run a digital audio campaign, you get actual numbers. Digital Audio will tell you exactly how many people listened to the ad (reach) and how much of the ad was listened to (engagement). As a result, Digital Audio reporting provides more value and more reliable insights than panel-based research used by other broadcast channels. Rather than report on opportunities to see or hear, Digital Audio reports on actual listens.
A Channel Full of Opportunity
To conclude, Digital Audio is a channel bursting with opportunity and promise. There is a guiding principle in media planning that budgets should be allocated to reflect how and where consumers spend their media time.
In the case of Audio, we see in the US that Audio accounts for 31% of the total media time but only gets 9% of media budgets. So Audio is significantly under-invested.
And we know using Core’s Ad Spend Outlook for 2024, that Audio will account for only 11.5% of total advertising spend this year. This proves that Audio is also significantly underinvested here in Ireland.
Simple calculus suggests a rather large gap exists between consumption and investment. And in the gap lies a compelling opportunity for advertisers.
Lee Thompson and Ryan Reid are co-chairs of IAB Ireland’s Digital Audio Council. Lee is also the co-founder of AudioOne while Ryan is a client directory with Zenith, part of Core.
