Who listens to radio these days, anyway? Doesn't everyone use their iPods and iPhones to hear music?
Believe it or not, radio's audience is still growing, with more than 239 million persons ages 12 or older interacting with the medium at least once a week, according to Arbitron's new RADAR 106 report. That's four million more than radio's weekly audience in 2009, a sign that the oldest broadcast medium is still finding new listeners.
In fact, network radio reaches more than 88% of adults 18 to 34, a 3% increase from the previous year, and more than 93% of African-Americans and 96% of Hispanic persons ages 12 or older. Radio's even a bit affluent -- 96% of college graduates ages 25 to 54 with an annual income of $50,000 or more still listen to radio once a week, while 88% of 18-to-49-year-olds with college degrees and an income of $75,000 or higher tune in each week. As for iPods and iPhones, 1 in 4 Americans connect their iPod to a car stereo, while 27% of the country, or 67 million people, listen to online radio every month, according to Edison Research and Arbitron's 2009 Infinite Dial Report.
OK, but do people still buy ads on radio? Doesn't everyone change the dial during ad breaks anyway?
Radio just experienced its largest quarterly revenue gain since 2000, growing 8% to $4.5 billion in second-quarter 2010, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. The first half of 2010 is now up a combined 6%, the first yearly increases for radio since 2007. Surprisingly, a lot of that growth is driven by national advertisers, who've stayed away from the medium in recent years due to radio's inefficient measurement and buyer-unfriendly planning tools. As leading companies like Clear Channel and CBS Radio continue to integrate sales forces (not to mention bundle buys with outdoor ads for key clients), it's become easier for leading wireless, entertainment, automotive, retail and financial service marketers to place their ads in radio. Plus, people seem to be hearing them -- Arbitron's RADAR 106 report revealed that 190 million persons ages 12 or older heard at least one radio commercial a week. Arbitron's Portable People Meter, introduced in several markets in 2007, finally reached national deployment this past year and has also helped national marketers equate radio to other media on a demographic and average-time-spent basis for the first time.
