Radio boosts online brand browsing by 50%

by Maisie McCabe, 27 January 2010, 10:18am

LONDON - Radio advertising boosts brand browsing online by 50% and is four times more effective than other forms of advertising, according to new research from the Radio Advertising Bureau.

Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth

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The research, carried out by Dollywagon Media Science and Other Lines of Enquiry for the RAB, measured the actual browsing behaviour of respondents who heard 23 live radio campaigns from the travel, telecoms, motors, insurance and high street sectors.

The radio campaigns which delivered the highest effect on internet behaviour clearly communicated a simple proposition, used strong brand linkage and directed listeners to go online to a straightforward and self-evident web address.

Simon Redican, managing director at the Radio Advertising Bureau, said: "The internet has become an incredibly important interface for customer marketing but the problem is that it also allows access to all your rival's brands which means the key challenge is to ensure that customers seek out your brand specifically - marketers are increasingly turning to offline media to direct consumers to their brands online."

The radio ads drove on average 34% of the total brand browsing for an average of 10% of the media budget which the research said means the radio spend was on average four times more effective.

The research compared a sample of 1,200 people who had listened to the ads with 600 people who had not. Mark Barber, planning director at the RAB, called it the "first ever study quantifying how offline media influences the actual behaviour of consumers online".

Barber said the findings are highly significant for brands where the internet "provides the crucial final stage" of customer buying and radio advertising offers these brands the chance to "turbo charge" the marketing process.

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All Comments

Amod Munga - 27 January 2010

"The research compared a sample of 1,200 people who had listened to the ads with 600 people who had not." Does that mean if they had had only 300 people who had heard the ads, the headline for this article would read: "Radio boosts online brand browsing by 75%"? Or am I misunderstanding this completely and succeeding in only taking my ignorance out for all to see?

stephen abbott - 27 January 2010

Figures from The British Marketing Survey also show an uplift in the number of people who respond to other channels when they receive radio ads. Some channels more than others and some segments more than others. See www.thebps.co.uk for details, far too much to go into here.

Jude Nicholls - 27 January 2010

The calculation of relative effectiveness is complete hokum.

Mark Barber - 27 January 2010

To clarify a couple of points here:

The study compared the proportion of people who were actually exposed to radio advertising who then went on to browse for the advertised brands against the proportion of the sample that wasn't exposed to the radio that browsed for the same brands. Sample size therefore had no influence on the results.

I'd draw everybody's attention to the full report, detailing the methodology and in-depth results, including an explanation of how relative cost-effectiveness was calculated, is freely available at the RAB website, here: http://www.rab.co.uk/rab2009/publicationDocs/RAB_OnlineMultiplier.pdf

David Brennan - 27 January 2010

Hi Mark. I've been through the report but can;t find the answer to this question - If radio was responsible for 10% of spend but 34% of browsing, how do we know what the other media, accounting for 90% of spend, contributed to the campaign? If somebody hears a radio ad but also sees a TV spot or a poster, and then browses online, how could this research know which media had the greatest influence if it hasn't put other media exposure under the same spotlight?

Mark Barber - 28 January 2010

Hi David. This study was built on a widely accepted approach to measuring the effect of radio campaigns. The way we isolated the radio effect was to compare browsing within a sample of commercial radio listeners to that amongst a matched sample of non-listeners to commercial radio. Both samples are exposed to all other media, but only the commercial radio sample is also exposed to radio advertising. Therefore, we attribute the difference between the two to the additional effect that radio has contributed to the overall media mix. Using this approach, we are able to ascertain the base level of browsing for the brands featured in the study from the non-listener sample, which we attribute to having been stimulated by 'other media' \(i.e. everything except radio). We then take this as the base level of browsing stimulated by 'other media' for the listener sample, which \(when combined with the level of browsing identified as having been stimulated by radio) allows us to calculate the proportion of overall browsing generated by \(a) radio, and \(b) all other media combined. Clearly, within this all other media figure, different media will have stimulated browsing at different levels of efficiency but the study wasn't deigned to measure these specifics. The main point we wanted to demonstrate was that, across the campaigns we measured, the data reveals that adding radio to a mixed media schedule delivers high additional levels of online brand browsing, very cost-effectively.

Beverly B - 01 February 2010

I think it is excellent that you have set out to prove the power of multimedia activity. On/off-line integration is the only way forward, but I would contest your claim to be the 'first ever study quantifying how offline media influences the actual behaviour of consumers online'.... have a peak at the PPA report from Sept 07 \(http://www.ppamarketing.net/cgi-bin/go.pl/presentations/article.html?uid=430). It would be interesting to see if your research now counters their original conclusions that 'radio advertising is the weakest', especially in the light of increased online radio consumption since '07

Mark Barber - 03 February 2010

Hi Beverly. Thank you for pointing me in the direction of the PPA study. Having had a look through the research, I note that it was based on claimed behaviour at a generic level. In our experience, this sort of approach always underestimates the true impact of radio. In contrast, the RAB study used a single-source sample to link actual exposure to live in-market radio campaigns to actual web browsing behaviour for the advertised brands \(identified via the respondent's web browser history). All of this was analysed at an individual campaign by campaign and respondent by respondent level. In which context, I stick by my original claim that this is the first ever study quantifying how offline media influences the actual behaviour of consumers online. I think the results speak for themselves.