Overview

As commute times across the country have increased, so has time spent listening to radio. Longer commute times mean more time for you to reach a captive audience with your message. Radio is an excellent medium for advertising sales and promotions and for increasing brand awareness. And it can be purchased in a variety of units to fit your budget.

Recorded Scripts

Recorded scripts are typically 30 or 60 seconds long and are delivered to the station already produced. If you do not have a recorded spot, you can generally negotiate to have one of the on-air talent record the spot for you. You provide the copy and the talent will record for a small fee.

Sponsorships (Live Reads)

News, sports, weather and traffic sponsorships are typically 10 seconds to 15 seconds long. The advertiser provides a script or talking points to the on-air talent and he/she records it. Sponsorships are a great way to increase frequency and typically cost a fraction of a 30 or 60 second spot. In some cases, you can negotiate sponsorships at N/C.

Pros

• It is a frequency vehicle. Listeners will hear your ad many times over the course of a flight, and this will encourage them to act.
• Radio is easily targetable, both by market and by format, so you can reach your target audience by choosing stations that have high listenership among your target.
• Messaging can be changed quickly and easily.
• You’ll reach people while they’re out of the house; you have the potential to reach them while they’re close to your store.
• Radio is intrusive. It provides messaging that gets noticed.

Cons

• Many listeners channel surf during commercial breaks.
• Alternative listening options including iPods (pod-casting) and satellite radio are gaining popularity.
• Buying the right stations and dayparts to reach your target audience requires research.

Tips

• Purchase stations that have formats that make sense for your target audience. For instance, a News/Talk/Sports station will appeal to a slightly older audience. Classic Rock and Urban Contemporary tend to reach a slightly younger audience.
• Ask stations for an audience ranker, which will help determine the strongest stations against your demographic group (ie: Adults 18-34, Adults 35-54, etc.).
• When buying a schedule, generally the dayparts with the highest listenership are AM drive (6a-10a), midday (10a-3p) and PM drive (3p-7p). Some stations may also have very strong listening on Saturdays, during peak errand times of 9a-3p. Try to balance spots evenly between the dayparts.
• When negotiating your schedule, explain desired rotation among dayparts and time period. Also provide flight dates, the dates when you would like your spot to start and stop running and any other stipulations (including competitive separation).

How to maximize your budget

• Radio is negotiable. A general rule of thumb is never accept the first package. Always go back and try to negotiate lower rates or additional spots within acceptable dayparts at N/C.
• Request added value with your schedule to extend your campaign: live reads by the on-air talent, additional spots, tickets to events, opportunities to be on-site with station if they make appearances at appropriate venues or any other services/items that the station can provide.
• Request an invoice after each flight to show that the ads ran correctly. Let the rep know that you need to be alerted immediately to any missed spots. You will probably receive “makegoods” because ads that you planned to run during specific dayparts did not actually run. If possible, have these “makegood” ads run during the remainder of the flight in your requested dayparts.
• First quarter, the height of our season, is usually a slow time for radio sales. Reps are likely to give you better rates if you call at the end of December or early January.
• Get the most flexibility out of recorded spots by recording them as 50/10 or 20/10. This will allow you to record 50 or 20 seconds as the body of your spot and give 10 seconds to create a variety of tags that you can alternate depending on the promotion that you are running. The 10 second tags can be pre-recorded when you produce the radio or the station talent may record them for you. 
   

Terms

• Arbitron: Company that measures the actual reach of each station and approximates it’s target audience demographics based on diaries that individuals in metered markets complete. Considered the authority on radio metrics.
• Competitive Separation: The amount of time between when an advertiser’s ad is run and a competitor’s ad is run.
• Daypart: A unit of time by which broadcast media is sold (and sometimes Internet as well). For radio, it includes AM Drive (6am-10am), Day (10am-3pm), PM Drive (3pm-7pm), and Evening (7pm-Midnight).
• Flighting: How the timing is configured for the radio buy. It can be pulsed (running spots for two weeks, then off one week, repeated) or continuous (on for 6 weeks).
• Format: The station’s focus, i.e. News/Talk, Contemporary Hit Radio, Classic Rock.
• GRPs: Gross Rating Points, a unit of measurement which expresses the audience delivery as a percentage of the population. One gross rating point represents 1% of the audience. You purchase radio by buying a certain number of GRPs/TRPs. Typically, you won’t want to run below 150 GRPs/TRPs a week for a launch and 100 GRPs/TRPs a week to maintain a buy.
• Hiatus: A break between flights where no spots are running.
• Impressions: Every time a listener hears an advertising message, it is counted as an impression.
• Makegood: When a station has failed to run the advertiser’s spots in the requested daypart, he offers a makegood, meaning that he will “make it good” and run the ad in the correct daypart or close to it at no additional costs for the number of times that it was missed.
• MSA: Metropolitan Statistical Area, the geography by which radio markets are defined. They are determined based on the actual reach of the stations.
• N/C: No charge.
• PUR: Persons Using Radio, Percent of Adults in a market (Age 12+) listening to the radio at any given time.
• Spot: Ad unit.
• TRPs: Target Rating Points, GRPs that reach your specified target audience.
• Target Audience: The people that you are trying to reach with your advertising message. These are the most likely to become your best customers. They are typically expressed as a demographic or psychographic profile: i.e. Men 18 – 35, Household Income $75K+, well-educated or ski bums who travel to resorts 3+ times a season and love winter sports.